The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are / quote 15 of 101
Society's game with self-contradictory rules
Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules. Just because we do not exist apart from the community, the community is able to convince us that we do—that each one of us is an independent source of action with a mind of its own. The more successfully the community implants this feeling, the more trouble it has in getting the individual to cooperate, with the result that children raised in such an environment are almost permanently confused. This state of affairs is known technically as the “double-bind.” A person is put in a double-bind by a command or request which contains a concealed contradiction. “Stop being self-conscious!” “Try to relax.”