Information virus transmitted from one mind to another through communication

It is accepted that the insanity is not contagious. But what if it isn't? Or not quite so?

In fact, we know almost nothing about the epidemiology of mental diseases. Of course, thanks to Freud we have the theory of neuroses and childhood injuries. But what about the truly hardcore diseases like schizophrenia?



 

About it there are many unconfirmed hypotheses. For schizophrenia characterized by a disturbance in the ratio of neurotransmitters, which may indicate neurophysiological reasons. On the other hand, it often turns out that schizophrenia is not the first in his family with mental illness, which speaks in favor of genetic predisposition.

In addition, there were quite a lot of similarities in the families of schizophrenics, which may indicate child injury and violations in the process of education.

Many psychiatrists believe that all these factors contribute and accumulate, at some point crossing the critical point. However, there is a rather elegant theory of schizophrenia, explaining how the specifics of the family situation and the factor of heredity.

50 years of the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who headed the research group psychiatrists in Palo Alto, formulated the theory of "double message" (double bind).

According to Bateson, schizophrenia is a particular form of communication. In other words, schizophrenia may be passed through a special kind of message. Typically, this occurs within the family, and hypothetically it can affect whole genealogical branch. But don't get ahead of ourselves. First you need to understand what is a double bind and how it works.

Bateson shares one interesting observation, which led him to the idea of a double message. One day he took one of her patients home to see his mother, and then had to pick it up. And that's how he recalls the meeting:



The house looked like a model, that is, with real estate sellers "sample". Not as a house, equipped for life, but rather as a house has to look organized.

I once discussed with the patient and his mother and assumed she must be quite frightened man. He said, "Yes." I asked: "What is she frightened?" "Neoliberales vigilance" he replied with an accurate neologism.

Beautiful artificial plastic vegetation located on the exact center of the drapery. Two Chinese pheasant located symmetrically. Wall carpet exactly where it should be.

There was his mother, and I felt in this house for several uncomfortable. He hasn't been around for five years, but it seemed that everything is going well, so I decided to leave it and come back when the time comes to go to the hospital.

So I was on the street having a completely empty an hour, and began to think, what would I like to do with this situation. And how to report it? I decided that I wanted to bring in something both beautiful and messy. I decided that the most suitable flowers, bought gladioli.

When I returned to pick up the patient, I gave them to his mother with the words that he wanted to in her house there was something "both beautiful and untidy". "Oh,' she said, ' these flowers are not sloppy. And those who wither can be cut with scissors."

As I now understand interesting was not so much "castration" nature of this statement, but the fact that she placed me in a position I'm sorry, even though I apologized, i.e. she took my message and reclassified it. It has changed the pointer marking the message type, and I believe she does it all the time.

She always takes other people's messages and respond to them as if they were any indication of the weakness of the speaker, or the attack on her that need to turn in evidence of the weakness of the speaker, etc.

The patient is now rising (and risen in childhood) is a false interpretation of his messages. He says "the Cat is on the table" and gets the answer, which implies that his message is not the sort, as he believed, when he sent him.

When the message returns from it, his own determiner of the message is obscured and distorted. She also constantly contradicts its own key messages. She laughs when he says something to her absolutely not funny, etc.

For this brief meeting Bateson saw only one of the fragments of what later he would call a double message. However, it is obvious that this habit of the mother to the requalification of the message itself will cause the child problems with marking messages, that is, with such messages of a particular type be it game, danger, fun, humor or business communication.



 

In a purely linguistically many of the messages may not vary. For example, the phrase "I hate you" does not necessarily Express hatred. Depending on the context and related signals, it may be part of a playful game chatting or flirting.

Usually we will mark the message type is non-verbal: gestures, facial expressions, intonation and context of utterance. We don't realize how we recognize their meaning. We just grasp it.

For a schizophrenic, this setting becomes impossible. Due to the fact that the mother (or someone else) for many years have consistently mislead, he is just not able to recognize the message type.

Bateson says that "the schizophrenic demonstrates the flaws in three areas".

  • First, he has difficulty in attributing the correct communication modality of the messages that he receives from others.

  • Secondly, the message with which he speaks to others.

  • And thirdly, it also faces challenges of attribution the right communication modality of own thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Further research Buitenom family situations schizophrenics led to the identification of more stringent laws in the nature of communication between members of such families.

Form of communication, which he called the double message includes two messages. The first can be expressed in verbal and sound pretty specific. For example: "do Not do so-and-so or I will punish you." Or: "If you don't do so and so, I will punish you."

Always the second message contradicts the first and is also supported by some metaphorical punishment.

But describing it is harder than the first because it is at a more abstract level, and is transmitted, as a rule, non-verbal means. This can be a tone, a posture, a gesture, a meaningful action.

Verbal formulations can be quite diverse: "do Not consider it punishment," "don't think of it as I punish you" "do Not submit to my prohibitions", "don't think about what you shouldn't do", "do Not doubt my love. My ban is (or is not) the expression", etc.

In addition, the "victim", as a rule, cannot leave the field. A double bind is most effective in the case of close relations or dependencies. The child depends on the mother and can not sever relations, to condemn her words and actions, or to ignore them. He is forced to react on a double message, to adapt to it. But it is to adapt to it, not from hacking his mind, impossible.

Besides, you need to keep in mind that dual message is not an isolated act. For it to have had its devastating effects, it must be a recurring experience, in which it becomes a familiar expectation. In the end, this leads to the fact that any fragment of double bind or a hint of it can cause panic or rage.

Strictly speaking, the source of the double letters in the family does not have to be a mother. This can be any member of the family, closely associated with the victim. Bateson notes that pain is not one person but the whole family is "schizophrenogenic system". That is affected at all, but for the rest of the family is something like a healthy carriage, and only one will exhibit the classic symptoms of schizophrenia.

However, in the vast majority of cases the main role is played by either a single mother or a mother who has the family absolute, despotic power. The father may be absent, or be too weak and too indifferent to intervene and support a child stuck in contradictions.

As for emotions, mother, she, apparently, feels towards the child's feelings of anxiety and hostility. But since these feelings are unacceptable for her, she denies them, while feigning love and care, forcing the child, thereby treating her like a loving mother.

In fact, it seems that the approach of the child's mother reacts alienation, indifference and even some hostility, and when he pulls away, reacting to her behavior, she begins to show fake loving and attracting behavior.

In this situation, the child, if he wants to maintain his relationship with his mother (and he wants it in any case), can not dare to regard her behavior as hostile as she did not recognize. That is, the child needs to deceive himself and his feelings.





Bateson gives the following example:

For example, if the mother is experiencing hostility (or affection) to the child and at the same time feels the need to distance herself from him, she might say: "Go to sleep, you're tired. I want you asleep."

This statement, apparently expressing concern, in fact, intended to deny a feeling which could be formulated as follows: "Get out of my sight! Until then, you bore me!"

If the student correctly distinguishes between the signals metacommunicative mother, he faces the fact that she also doesn't want to see him and feigns love, introducing him astray. But the child will be "punished" if you learn to distinguish between message levels correctly.

So he must accept the idea that he is tired rather than recognize the deception of the mother. This means that he must deceive himself about its internal state to support the mother in this deception. Thus, to survive, he must wrong to distinguish as your own internal messages and messages to his mother.

Of course, the context of doubt maternal love even injure itself, not to mention the result of such contradictions in this context. However, a double message and can relate to more domestic issues.

For example, the mother may offer the child to choose something on their own, to insist on the manifestation of free will. The child may refuse and ask for the advice of his mother, having received the penalty of a reproach in lack of independence and may try to make a choice and get punished for choosing something.

A child lost in this infernal game in any way. He is either just wrong, or right for the wrong reasons. Once he starts to win, the rules immediately change to the opposite.

 

 

Julia simultaneously on the causes of negative feelings

As thought shapes the destiny of man

Thus, in the light of the theory of double messages, the madness no longer looks like a purely personal problem of some "psycho". Rather, it acquires the shape information of the virus transmitted from one mind to another through communication. That's just his transfer was a long process that requires regular repetition and is therefore not so obvious.

Studies of Bateson showed that the double bind is sensitive not only people, but also dolphins and dogs, and probably many other living species. And the implementation of these paradoxes goes beyond family and is possible everywhere, where messages are passed from the Federal legislation to religious traditions.

 

Author: Dmitry Tests

 

P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! ©

Source: psychologytoday.ru/public/shizofreniyu-vyzyvaet-osobaya-forma-kommunikatsii/

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