Therapeutic Impasses in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Treatment: Revisiting the Double Bind Hypothesis Philip A. Ringstrom, Ph.D. In 1956, Bateson and colleagues published their seminal paper on double bind theory. Though long ago discounted as a truly etiological theory of , the double bind hypothesis left an enduring and unshakable impression, for perhaps what is most maddening in life are repeated encounters with feeling “damned if one does and damned if one doesn't.” The double bind hypothesis, however, went much further than this colloquialism but, in so doing, often defied operational definition. In her review of the many attempts to empirically capture the double bind situation, Abeles (1976) concluded that investigators were “researching the unresearchable” (p. 113). Sluzki (1976) pointed out, however, that “what the group was really most interested in was not the observables per se, but the underlying pattern (structure) the observables eventually revealed” (p. 162). It is precisely the underlying patterns in the analytic relationship to which this investigation of the double bind hypothesis in contemporary psychoanalytic thought is devoted. It is my belief that the prevailing psychoanalytic dialogue in the United States from the early 1950s to the early 1960s was so grounded in Freudian-based —————————————

Dr. Ringstrom is faculty at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles and at the California Institute for Clinical Social Work. I wish to express my deepest appreciation to the following friends and colleagues for their encouraging comments and helpful of earlier drafts of this paper: Lew Aron, George Atwood, Howard Bacal, Tony Bass, Bernie Brandchaft, Jack Dender, Jim Fosshage, Irwin Hoffman, Lynn Jacobs, Joe Lichtenberg, John Lindon, Elizabeth Lokan-Egdahl, Naomi Malin, Donald Marcus, Steve Mitchell, Thomas Ogden, Loretta Polish, Owen Renik, Estelle and Mort Shane, Marcia Steinberg, Steven Stern, Bob Stolorow, Gary Sattler, Norm Tabachnick, and Judith Vida. © 1998 The Analytic Press - 297 - drive-discharge theory that there was no bridge from that psychoanalytic perspective to the double bind research group's investigation of underlying interactional structures of . In contrast, the evolution of contemporary psychoanalytic theory, influenced by emerging theories of infant observation and child development, not to mention the relational, social constructivist, and intersubjective perspectives, now calls for a reevaluation of role of double bind theory in our thinking. My focus here is on those essential impasses, which can arise irrespective of the theoretical orientation of the analyst, ones from which neither analyst nor analysand initially knows the way out, but from which emerge essential transformative experiences. It is my hypothesis that such impasses arise from paradoxically no-win interactional themes, which define intersubjective experiences particular to given therapeutic dyads. The double bind situation I am exploring involves a between two logical types. Logical types (a concept that will be discussed in greater detail shortly) pertain to rules of classification about levels of abstraction. As represented in this paper, they refer to classes of the therapeutic relationship: ones defined by themes of engagement coconstructed by the analyst and the patient on the basis of each one's own self-organizing principles (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992). The logical types entail classes of therapeutic dialogue involving unconsciously coconstructed verbal and nonverbal narrative themes. To establish the place of double bind theory in contemporary psychoanalysis, a brief review of the evolution of concepts that organize these classes of coconstructed narratives (logical types) is necessary. The beginning point of this discussion involves revisions and refinements of the concepts of transference and countertransference. Within the last decade-and-a-half, contemporary psychoanalytic theorists have recognized the inherent limitations in positing models of transference exclusively on the basis of either the patient's history of intrapsychic or object relational conflict, on one hand, and models based on developmental deficits or attachment problems on the other (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983; Bacal and Newman, 1990). In developing broader, more inclusive conceptualizations of transference, theoreticians such as Greenberg (1986) and Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood (1987) conceived of bidimensional models involving a) the repetitive, resistive, reenacted dimension of the transference versus b) the developmental, selfobject, or reparative dimension of the transference. The - 298 - former stresses the tendency of patients to organize and therefore engage their analysts in old pathogenic interactional scenarios; the latter embodies patients' organizing and engaging their analysts in new reparative and developmentally reconstituting relationships. Lending even fuller relational thrust to this idea, Steven Stern (1994) eloquently reconceptualized these two dimensions of transference into classes of the therapeutic relationship, the repetitive dimension representing the “repeated relationship” and the developmental dimension the “needed relationship.” In so doing, Stern implicitly decentered the emphasis on the patient's bidimensional transference by arguing that his relational model equally stresses the analyst's countertransferential reactions. For the analysis to work, Stern asserts, it is crucially important for the analyst, through the mechanism of projective identification, to become caught up fruitfully in both dimensions of the patient's transference; in such states the analyst should explore and master his countertransference reactions for the purpose of elucidating and interpreting what the patient is experiencing. It appears, however, that in his effort to refine and focus his innovative ideas, Stern is emphasizing that aspect of the definition of countertransference which attends primarily to the therapist's reactions to the patient's transference states. A more generalized definition of countertransference (Heimann, 1950; Kernberg. 1965; Racker, 1968) includes all the therapist's thoughts and feelings about the patient, not just his reactions. When we turn to a more inclusive view of countertransference, we can see that the therapist, for reasons of his own personality, may not be able to achieve the mastery that Stern advocates; especially, under circumstances such as those addressed in this paper.1 The third evolution of ideas building my argument advocates the abandonment of the concept of countertransference per se in favor of redefining the totality of the therapist's experience as organized simply by his own transference organization (Natterson, 1991; Stolorow, 1995; Aron, 1996) My viewpoint is that the analyst and the patient —————————————

1 I see no evidence in his article that Stern would object to this more generalized definition of countertransference, but that in focusing his own thesis he simply, expeditiously focused on the more reactive aspect of the therapist's countertransference. - 299 - encounter one another from the vantage point of their own bidimensional transference systems. When analyst and patient come together, their psychoanalytic dialogue may be, for heuristic purposes (ones that I am advocating are especially helpful for understanding therapeutic impasses), bifurcated into two classes of interactive transferences: amalgams of both the analyst's and patient's transference organizations, henceforth defined as the needed transference relationship and the repeated transference relationship. The potential for amalgamation is suggested by Orange (1995), who, paraphrasing Loewald, argues that such conditions of “‘cotransference’ treat the organizing activity of patient and analyst as ‘two faces of the same dynamic’” (p. 67). In the case of the double bind, a confusion of these logical types (i.e., the needed and the repeated relationships) results in a state of mutual mystification in which both the analyst and the analysand come to experience a system of communicating in which each feels he is “damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.” What I am positing is that double binds occur when what is being communicated on each of the needed and repeated transference relationship levels obliterates the meaning of the other level. To understand how this paradox between the needed and the repeated dimensions of the therapeutic relationship occurs, we must momentarily entertain the significance of Russell's “Theory of Logical Types” (Whitehead and Russell, 1910) in the shaping of the double bind hypothesis. Russell's theory deals with principles governing how logical types are distinguished into classes and members of classes. The central thesis of his theory is that there is a discontinuity between a class and its members; that a class cannot be a member of itself; and that one of its members cannot represent the entire class (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967p. 193) Therefore, when the distinction between logical types or levels of abstraction, that is, levels of communication breaks down, a paradox is generated. Russell's solution to such paradox is known as the “levels of language” distinction. That is, at its lowest level, language forms statements about objects. The moment we say something about this level of language, we have to use metalanguage. To talk about metalanguage, we must employ metametalanguage, and so on. The ability to metacommunicate solves the logician's problem; but it does not readily resolve the paradoxical communication arising in mutually dependent relationships, especially when the relationship is constrained by an injunction against either party's metacommunicating - 300 - about what is occurring or either party's escaping the field of crazy communication. Under these circumstances, one rapidly sees the development of a form of pathogenic communication, one precisely like that which persuaded Bateson's research group (1956) that they had potentially cracked the communication code underpinning the etiology of schizophrenia. In summary, when logical types become confused, paradox ensues; and, from the vantage point of this paper, logical typing, or classification, errors between the needed cotransferential relationship system and the repeated cotransferential relationship system result in each obliterating the meaning of the other. Lost in this conundrum, the analyst and the patient each spiral into the experience that neither can do anything right in the other's eyes; that the subjective sense of self of each has been negated; subjugated unwittingly to a mutually self-negating paradox, which also double binds them together.2 In attempting to operationalize the double bind situation, Bateson and colleagues (1956) stated that there exists—in any mutually dependent relationship—a recurrent communicational theme, in which two primary injunctions are invoked that do not just contradict one another: they actually disqualify one another. An injunction, according to Rabkin (1976) may either enjoin or direct. Hence, both the repeated and the needed relationship dimensions manifest in the communication of either constraints or prescriptions. What the analyst and analysand each experience being communicated unconsciously by the other is that, “You must do what I ‘need’ or else you will be punished”; while also (often simultaneously) experiencing, “But if you do it, you —————————————

2 It is this intensively, mutually intersubjectively negating quality of interaction that suggests that the double bind situation may be analogous to what Ogden (1994) has termed the “subjugating third” in the analytic relationship. In the unconscious search for a new and more authentic means of relating, a patient may, through repetitive enactments, partially negate an aspect of his own subjectivity through his unconscious attribution of a personal quality of himself onto his analyst. In this manner, he also partially negates something about the analyst's present state of mind. Reciprocally, there is little reason for us not to also elaborate Ogden's concept of the “subjugating third” to include how the analysand may well be experiencing the analyst, that is, that the latter is negating something about the former's subjective sense of self by virtue of a theoretical or personal predilection (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992; Hoffman, 1994) or other “dumb spots, hard spots or blind spots” (McLaughlin, 1992). - 301 - will be punished.”3 Both levels of injunction typically involve complex mixtures of verbal and nonverbal communication, lending to the obscuring of which level of the relationship is being communicated in the unfolding double bind. A gradually evolving collision course emerges from this interpersonal context of learning in which each party is trying to learn how the other is making sense of their relationship and utilizing it for his or her own needs and purposes. Ironically, it is this very process of mutual learning that is implicated in the emerging and essential double bind impasse, for it is the repetitiveness of the double bind system of communicating that gives it its ultimate force in obfuscating each participant's sense of “What on earth is going on?” To understand this context of interpersonal learning better involves a brief discussion of the second most important concept of the double bind research team, that is, “deutero learning.” That is, whenever one is exposed to any situation in which action is required, the subject must scan it and determine if it belongs to a class of similar situations from which he or she has previously learned how to behave or if it is of another class, requiring a new process of trial and error. The connection of deutero learning and logical classification errors emerged in a letter from Bateson to Norbert Wiener (Haley, 1976): On this principle we can imagine the generation of paradox in the deutero learning system when an organism experiences following some failure and learns that it must not learn that punishment follows failure. This would be approximately the picture of a man who having been punished for failure later is punished for showing his expectation of punishment after failure, e.g., punished for cringing [p. 66]. Compounding the calamity of the two mutually exclusive levels of injunction is the prohibition against either party's “leaving the frame” by either meaningfully commenting on the double bind (metacommunicating) or terminating the relationship (Watzlawick et al., 1967). —————————————

3 The term punishment arises from the original operational definition of the double bind situation. It might be more appropriate, however, to speak of aversive or resistive reactions (Lichtenberg, 1989), which stall if not threaten further therapeutic progress. - 302 -

These two prohibitions constitute the third and fourth injunctions of the original double bind formulation, which truly amplify the already crazy-making injunctions of each partner's sense of being “damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.” Some of the dynamics behind what makes it impossible to metacommunicate are explored later, as are the possibly paradoxically therapeutic advantage of neither party's easily “leaving the field” of therapeutic relationship, as both must endure the central paradox (Ghent, 1992) of the double bind to ultimately transcend it. Obviously, the question begs, What interpersonal context of learning might be arising between the analyst and patient to create the double bind scenario? It is my belief that at least one potential precursor state may be that, on the needed relationship level, an unwitting clash occurs between what the patient “needs” to develop authentically and what the therapist “needs” to practice authentically (Slavin and Kriegman, 1992; Mitchell, 1993; Bacal and Thomson, 1996). Thus, both parties are catapulted back to the repeated relationship level wherein a particular clash arises between how each one historically responds to a sense of threat under the circumstances of thwarted authentic engagement. This abstraction, of course, is far removed from both parties' subjective experiences of confusion, obfuscation, and distress over their chaotic relationship. Indeed, when one considers the multiply complex configurations of the personalities of both analyst and analysand—including multiple versions of self-authenticity (Mitchell, 1993; Bromberg, 1994) as well as multiple repetitive, resistive, ossified strategies of defense against real or imagined onslaughts to one's authentic expression—it becomes easier to imagine the tumblers of the two separate subjectivities interlocking in virtually imponderably encoded sequences, which then stultify the psychoanalytic encounter. Out of this morass emerges unpredictably an ongoing situation in which both parties feel enjoined to act and in which both potentially feel damned if they do and damned if they don't. Historically, the resolution to the double bind has been in some form of metacommunication, that is, news of a difference. What emerges is a spontaneous and unpredictable level of language about the confounding paradox similar to the solution to the Zen koan (Suler, 1989). I believe that from such a metacommunication a new state of intersubjectivity arises that enables both parties to recognize something about the other's subjective contribution to the bind as well as the - 303 - impact each is having on the other.4 The consequence of this metacommunication lends itself to that quality of intersubjective relating wherein the subjectivities of both persons in the dyad can be more fully acknowledged, more fully recognized (Benjamin, 1988, 1992, 1995; Shane and Shane, 1990; Aron, 1991 & 1996; Ehrenberg, 1992). This new state of intersubjectivity, after all, is the precursor of all human intimacy, a state transcending each party's subjective frame of mind that compels both to recognize potentially something new about themselves and each other. Case Study Charles, 41-years-old, began analysis with a palpable sense of defeat and doom. He reported that his several experiences in treatment up to this point had been highly unsuccessful and, in a couple of circumstances, extremely harmful. Charles's background illuminated his extreme vulnerability. He described a lifelong relationship with his mother dominated by her acts of emotional usurpation and physical engulfment (both real and imagined). Conversely, he described his father as being either totally avoidant—owing to the father's own narcissistic preoccupations—or completely domineering, for example, on those occasions when his father would lecture Charles, for sometimes as long as three hours, on how he should improve his life. What Charles had concluded from his previous therapy was that within him lurked “a small neglected and abused child,” silently —————————————

4 In a similar manner, Ogden (1994) promulgates the “psychoanalytic third” as a form of metacommunicational resolution of the “subjugating psychoanalytic third.” He writes: “The individuals engaged in this form of relatedness unconsciously subjugate themselves to a mutually generated intersubjective third … for the purpose of freeing themselves from the limits of who they had been to that point…. In [it], analyst and analysand are each limited and enriched; each is stifled and vitalized. The new intersubjective entity that is created, the subjugating analytic third, becomes a vehicle through which thoughts might be thought, feelings might be felt, sensations might be experienced, which to that point had existed only as potential experiences before each of the individuals participating in this psychological-interpersonal process” (p. 101). - 304 - out for attention, succor, and soothing. According to Charles, in some core ways he had stopped developing emotionally when he was barely a year old and his younger sister was born. (He also had two brothers, three and five years older.) To repair this wounded “infant” and to enable “it” to develop, he desperately needed me to find and attend to “it.” This sensitive attention to his “wounded infant,” then, defined a crucial aspect of Charles's “side” of our needed cotransference relationship; and it made sense to me, for as long as I was attuned to what he called his frightened “infant” affect state or was quick to recognize the derailing impact of my not doing so, the treatment continued to deepen, with Charles becoming ever more connected and engaged. A recurrent theme of our emerging double bind communication, however, was Charles's increasing sensitivity to feeling blamed whenever I shared what it was about me that seemed to frighten him. That is, the very communication that had the effect of making him feel that his experience of me was being recognized and understood also began to make him feel as though I were saying that he was at fault for having this experience. These episodes confused me. My experience was that if I did not share my recognition of his fear he became frightened and more withdrawn as he felt neither “seen” nor understood. Yet, if I did empathically share my recognition, there was an ever-increasing likelihood that he would feel blamed. I began to feel damned if I provided what I was told was “needed” and damned if I did not. My initial efforts to untie what was becoming an entangled knot led me to ask Charles what sort of response from me would make him feel less blamed. Charles's suggestion—although it was not apparent at the time—became the first injunction of the double bind. He indicated that whenever I made a comment about the effect our relationship had upon him (i.e., a transference interpretation), he needed me to link it to the events of his childhood. I learned that, no matter how many times I acknowledged the traumas of his upbringing—and there were very many—I could never take for granted that this historical context was automatically assumed by both of us. For Charles not to feel blamed, it was crucial to him that I acknowledge his background as if I had never done so before. Initially, such historically contextual responses were met favorably. They summarized extensive investigation of the roots of Charles's subjective state of mind and therefore made him feel that I was more - 305 - attuned to and more connected to him. I had successfully responded to the first injunction of what I “needed” to do and so had restored that version of the needed relationship which Charles and I codiscovered. Soon, however, this same response began to deepen Charles's . He actually started to feel even worse than if I had not followed his prescription. Suddenly it struck him that, if what I had done was not intended to scare him, or to make him feel blamed, or bad, or unworthy, then possibly his past “perpetrators” also had not meant to evoke these feelings. With this realization, his entire belief system collapsed and everything he had thought was true was instantly disqualified. He literally felt compelled to disavow all his recollections of gross parental malattunement and obfuscation. Consequently, to restore his original belief system—that the vast majority of his relational experiences had been dismissive if not psychologically “lethal” (since this belief was crucial to restoring his homeostatic sense of self [Bromberg, 1995; Davies, 1996]—meant that he had to give up his belief in the efficacy of our therapeutic relationship. It meant throwing himself back into his original state of dread. The price of self-restoration was that suddenly ours became another repeated relationship—I must be like all the others. But to forgo his needed relationship with me also constituted an unbearable state of hopelessness. In this context, the double bind was full blown; we both felt “damned” if I followed his injunctions and “damned” if I did not. At this juncture, it is important to acknowledge that, in the attempt to capture the sequence of the unfolding double bind, the events, which seemingly emerge with clarity retrospectively, were beyond either Charles's or my apprehension as they occurred. Hence, the obfuscation, which so typically is experienced as a source of torment, is profoundly lost in the illustration Discussion To set the stage for discussion, it is important to describe briefly how this clinical situation would typically unfold. Our multiple sessions per week would routinely begin with Charles, sitting in silence for up to 10 or 12 minutes, exhibiting facial expressions of anguish, sadness, and fear. Finally, he would say, barely audibly, “This is hard.” To this remark I would empathically state (on the basis of numerous other - 306 - occasions when our exploration had uncovered and jointly codified such mutual realization), “You're really afraid of opening up today for fear of my attacking you.” And I would always speak in a soft and deliberately nonthreatening tone. Such an interpretation would typically engender a plaintive nod of agreement, followed by his opening up, exploring his experience of being in the room with me, and sharing his associations about his experience. With increasing frequency, however, my acknowledgment, which had been so essential for cultivating a sense of safety, stopped seeming to be empathic. Instead, Charles felt that, even though what I was saying was accurate, I was blaming him for the way that he was feeling. I did not share this feeling, but accepted that, for reasons I did not understand, Charles did experience me as blaming him. Now, I think it is important to acknowledge that, although I believed I was responding to the needed relationship by being empathic with Charles's state of fear, at least sometimes, according to Charles's experience, I was not, at least not with anywhere near the level of sufficiency he longed for. For what he wanted went beyond such empathic recognition and took us into an area of need that did not completely or comfortably fit within my own analytic predisposition; that is, my own needs to practice authentically. In tone, Charles wanted me to hold him, to rock and soothe him with my words; to make him feel that in no way would I allow his “infant within” to be harmed by either of us or anyone else; that, in essence, I discerned the source of all his fears, even when it was unclear to him, and rescue him from them. And, most of all, he needed to know that ultimately I would adopt him. While I did alter my tone to try to match his state affectively and I did not dispute his longings (both of which actions were significantly palliative), I found that I could not genuinely ignore investigating the meaning of what was transpiring between us. I felt that to ignore meaning might tilt the treatment from a benign regression into a malignant one (Balint, 1969); the assessment of which is highly complicated (Ghent, 1992), exquisitely intersubjective, and, statistically prone to error. After all, what one analyst regards as symptoms of malignant regression may appear to another as behavior requisite to the process of making structural change. Furthermore, whereas some contemporary psychoanalysts emphasize the role of provision, particularly in the case of patients so deprived of requisite developmental nurture as Charles was, my own bias inclines me not - 307 - to suspend exploration and interpretation, especially when my experience with a patient such as Charles proves that such an approach, though at times trying for both parties, reflects important accretions of therapeutic growth. In short, to practice authentically, the analyst is forced to go with what he believes is best, despite the absence of any guarantees. Nevertheless, from an intersubjective standpoint, the analyst is not exempt from being a part of the creation of the double bind. To return to the double bind, Charles's initial injunction insisted that I acknowledge his experience and its validity (that is, his feeling blamed if I did not also acknowledge the historical roots of this fear). But, when I responded to this version of the needed relationship, I simultaneously provoked the secondary and the disqualifying injunction of the repeated relationship dimension. That is, if I followed the first injunction, I automatically stirred within him the fear that if I were not actually blaming him, there would not be any validity to his recollections of feeling blamed by others. Finally, the tertiary injunction against metacommunicating about this paradox was inferred in the form of, “If you comment on this bind, I will disconnect even further because I now really feel blamed.” It should be noted that this third injunction constitutes one of the chief prohibitions against metacommunicating about the double bind. That is, the analyst dreads pointing out his own experience of the double bind because he recognizes that doing so will humiliate the already -prone patient. This then leads to yet another menacingly constricting level of experience in which the analyst may feel, “We're damned if I metacommunicate, and we're damned if I don't.” Ironically, the fourth double bind injunction against either party's leaving the field of the relationship may enable some therapeutic dyads to sit with the uncertainty of the impasse. This fourth injunction is especially ironic since this prohibition is possibly one of the most pathogenic aspects of double bind communication within a family—the identified patient finds it impossible to escape the crazy communication system in which he is a participant. In this case, it would have been excruciatingly difficult for either Charles or I to abandon this treatment. For him, it would have spelled another horrifying treatment failure. For me, it would have been deeply distressing to abandon one for whom I had developed appreciable regard and feelings of affection. Furthermore, I held a strong sense that the many storms through which we would necessarily have to sail - 308 - would eventually land us on safer, more fertile soil wherein of Charles's own mind could finally blossom. Hence, the fourth injunction actually provided us with the time and space to remain stuck together in our seemingly imponderable paradox. By staying with the uncertainty, one day we hit upon something that loosened the knot. Charles exclaimed that part of his fury came from his impression that I did not feel that I was a part of its creation. He exclaimed, “You see this as entirely my problem! You believe that you aren't blaming me! That I am making all of this up. Just like my parents thought. That I was the source of all of my own problems!” At this point, I vehemently disagreed with Charles's assertion. I told him that, in fact, I absolutely accepted that what I was saying felt blaming to him, despite my wish or intention for it not to. I asserted all over again that our experience had been cocreated, that neither of us had figured out how I could consistently make comments about what he was experiencing or make interpretations about what his experience meant, without at times doing so in a manner that, to the regret of both of us, left him feeling blamed. I also acknowledged that his recurrent accusation that I was “blaming” him left me at times feeling blamed. Further, the irritation he sensed sometimes coming from me was real. It was based in part on my sense of frustration at not being able to convey what I experienced as “blameless” statements without their being experienced as blaming! I told him that this was especially frustrating when it occurred precisely at the times I thought that I was expressing exactly what Charles had stated he needed and wanted me to say. This acknowledgment was truly transformative. It clarified my willingness to accept the double bind as ours and not Charles's alone. Most of all, it was a relief, because it was not remotely disingenuous. I could not authentically exempt myself from being a crucial variable in the equation of his feeling blamed, anymore than I could authentically accept (from my subjective reality) that I was, in fact, blaming him. Here our subjective experiences would have to collide irreconcilably, but neither lethally nor ultimately even disconnectedly.5 Here we —————————————

5 Concepts related to this come from Bollas's (1987) “dialectics of difference” and Renik's (1995) “epistemological symmetry,” wherein both the differing points of view of the analyst and patient are respectfully asserted without either pulling rank over the other. - 309 - would begin to achieve that state of paradox Benjamin so eloquently describes that preserves the sense of subjectivity of each of us with neither of us having to be dominant nor submissive. With this metacommunication came a kernel of mutual recognition. A multitude of schematically different possibilities unfolded with this new understanding. The potential for a new accommodation—a new way of looking at relationships—opened slightly for Charles. Mutual responsibility instead of his terrifying sense of omnipotence now seemed a tiny degree more plausible. The inevitability of two persons intimately connecting, surviving the failure to communicate, and ultimately being transformed by it also became a tiny bit more conceivable. The need to isolate, as a dominant mode of defense when Charles was fearful, relinquished a bit of its stranglehold on him. But, most of all, an intersubjective structure began to emerge for loosening future binds. Epilogue: The Double Bind Sequel After completing an initial draft of this paper, I realized that, to seek its publication, I would need to obtain Charles's permission and, in so doing, would need to show it to him. Since I could not predict how he would react, I faced the prospect of showing Charles the paper with uncertainty and some trepidation. The person most bewildered by his actual reaction to the paper, however, was Charles himself. Indeed, he was flabbergasted over how upset he felt at my disclosure. His reactions swept from feeling honored and special to feeling deceived and exploited. He shared that it had been his private fantasy, even wish, that I was writing about him since doing so would testify to his importance to me. Further, it fortified his feeling that I took our work seriously and meant that he occupied my thoughts outside of our sessions. Still, he resented the intrusiveness of my introducing the paper into our treatment as well as the bind in which asking him for his permission to publish it placed him. Further, and most relevant, it triggered a profoundly negative maternal transference, in which images from his adolescence emerged of his mother's entering his honors history project in a contest without his permission and of other times when she allowed Charles's younger sister to submit some of his term papers as her own for high school class assignments. - 310 -

Yet another fantasy was that I had ruthlessly taken something that was ours and was attempting to publish it for my own advantage. He said it was as if we were two scientists, both earnestly working on the same experiment, but I had sneakily tried to publish our results without crediting him. All of this spoiled our intimacy and challenged our alliance. When I suggested not using our work in my paper, Charles, was equally horrified. He feared that if I did not use our work it would mean that he was no longer special to me or that I might be resentful and in some way retaliate. Although he was upset with me for having introduced the issue, he felt that we were now both stuck with it and the situation could not so easily be remedied. Meanwhile, he kept feeling unready to read the paper. There were other things in his life more pressing, and he felt certain that reading the paper would be stimulating in a way that would require time from his analysis, which he resented expending on “my behalf.” Initially, I was relatively comfortable with waiting for him to read the paper. Although I was interested in moving forward with needed revision, I accepted that this would have to occur much more within Charles's time frame. A problem emerged a couple of months after my announcement, however. I was to present a version of the paper in approximately three more months at an international conference. Beginning to feel the pressure over the possibility of needing to change cases should Charles not grant his permission, I once again had to intrusively bring up the unread paper and the pending conference. My raising the issue again renewed Charles's . Seeing his agitation, I again volunteered not to include our work as my case illustration. My suggestion again met with strong opposition. This time, however, Charles insisted on knowing how I would feel if I were to eliminate our work from the paper. I told him honestly that I would be disappointed, since I believed it was a good illustration. Nevertheless, I assured him that I was not without the option of other illustrative material and that furthermore, and most important, I truly felt that his analysis took precedence. This assurance deeply moved him but did not, as it could not, resolve the compelling bind in which we were caught. Because I needed to have an answer from him, we negotiated a time frame in which he would agree to read the paper and give me his response. When our negotiated date arrived, Charles asked that we arrange a double session and that I read the paper to him so that he - 311 - might hear it coming from me and would not have to deal with his reaction to it all alone. Charles admitted that the double bind formula perfectly described our current relationship. According to him, rejecting my request filled him with the terror of my retaliation and my wish to be rid of him. On the other hand, granting me permission felt like an act of submission and self-betrayal. Couched in terms of his upbringing, this felt like another life and death situation in which one of us would have to “die” so that the other would live and have his way. Thus, he was damned if he granted me permission and damned if he didn't. But evidence of new intersubjective structuralization also appeared: Charles could see the double bind I was in as well. Since he could neither readily grant me permission to publish the case illustration nor give me permission to omit it, he spontaneously recognized how I too was trapped. A crucially important distinction about this iteration of our double bind impasse, however, was our ability to metacommunicate about it. This ability followed from our work with the earlier impasse.6 In this case, the mutually negating positions we were taking were more open and therefore less subject to the maddeningly bewildering conditions of the first double bind. This time, Charles could clearly see our mutual predicament. Further, that inaction, which had often been his adaptation to similar life events, was in this case impossible. This torment continued for quite some time until the agreed on deadline of his response was reached. By now I had learned first-hand what it is like to “inhabit” Charles's psychic reality. I had lost almost all interest in the topic of my paper, which had actually been a fascination of mine since I was initially introduced to the double bind hypothesis in 1973. Were it not for the preexisting commitment to present to the conference, I might have become resigned to a kind of interminable loop with Charles never reading the paper and my never bringing it up out of a dread of feeling like a perpetual intruder into his analysis. As the deadline date approached, I felt a greater sense of dread. I wished I had never used Charles as an example. I felt that I —————————————

6 It might be worth speculating that the resolution of the first double bind impasse “softens” the shame reaction that initially constricts metacommunicating about the bind. This mitigation of shame enables the development of an intersubjective bridge for talking about subsequent impasses. - 312 - had made an incorrect clinical assessment, that I had imposed where I should not have. But before I had to ask, Charles arrived with his answer. He began our session by stating that he had decided to give me permission to use our work in my paper. He had ultimately resolved that my intentions—however self- serving—were well meaning and that he had come to understand that his negative reaction was a displacement of feelings about his mother. “I realize,” he said, “that my anguish here is about her and not you. It's how she needed to exploit me and still does that I'm reacting to. It's how I'm terrified, even to this day that the moment I refuse her anything she will die! This is not what your paper is about for either of us.”7 The most enduring impact of Charles's and my work with double binds is our immediate recognition that at any moment of impasse we are once again experiencing each of our subjective points of view as being negated by the other's, a consequence to which we are vulnerable at times when an authentic difference arises in our perspectives. Today, however, such impasses are much more quickly remedied by this recognition. With this realization there is a restoration of the possibility of both interdependence and separateness without either one's subjectivity permanently obliterating the other's. When the gripping knots of one double bind relational theme loosen, so too do the tenacity of others. These may be seen as essential impasses, transformative in their resolution. References Abeles, G. (1976), Researching the unresearchable. In: Double Bind: The Foundation of the Communicational Approach to the Family, ed. C. E. Sluzki & D. C. Ransom. New York: Grune & Stratton. —————————————

7 The successful mitigation of the double bind impasse in this case bears transformational similarity to what Ogden (1994) has termed the transformation of the “subjugating third” into a “psychoanalytic third.” Ogden writes, “A successful analytic process involves the superseding of the (subjugating) third and the reappropriation of the (transformed) subjectivities by the participants as separate (and yet interdependent) individuals. This is achieved through an act of mutual recognition…” (p. 106). - 313 -

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