double bind
A dilemma in which someone receives contradictory instructions and cannot act on either.
Noun
- A dilemma in which someone receives contradictory instructions and cannot act on either.
- She is deciding, right then and there, if she wants to be seen naked on the internet, forever, an object of desire as well as derision. […] In a sense, as Angel notes, the scene dramatizes “the double bind in which...
Origin
Coined by English anthropologist, linguist, semiotician and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson.