Toward a Recursive Theory of Everyday Double Binds

摘要

In this article I present a reassessment and detailing of the practical implications of some everyday double binds, distinguishing different kinds based on degree of inescapability and suggesting ways that double binds can even prove beneficial for social and interpersonal integration. I will relate the double bind to the concept of recursion from linguistics and show how double binds, and their paradoxes, emerge recursively in interpersonal relational dynamics. I will suggest that double binds are inevitable, but they are not by definition inescapable, in that when one faces into a double bind one can sometimes surmount it.