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Fam Proc 10:397-410, 1971

The Double Bind as a Universal Pathogenic Situation

CARLOS E. SLUZKI, M. Da
ELISEO VERÓN, Ph.D.b
aDr. Sluzki is Director, Center for Psychiatric Research, Department of Psychopathology and Neurology, G. Aráoz Alfaro Hospital,
Lanús, province of Buenos Aires, and at Dept. of Psychiatry, Mt. Zion Hosp. San Francisco, Calif.
bProfessor Verón is Director, Center for Social Research, Torcuato di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires.

In this report we have tried to propose specific models for the genesis of three types of neurosis (i.e., hysteric, phobic,
and obsessive-compulsive). We believe that this approach, based on a conceptual reconstruction of the specific learning
contexts and experiences of an individual, is applicable to the study of the other functional disturbances as well. A
central position is assigned in this to the ubiquity of double-bind phenomena which are assumed to be of greater
importance than previously believed.
A few months ago the first author started the psychotherapeutic treatment of a university student who has a study
problem: in spite of this man's positive motivation and his interest in studying, he is incapable of concentrated effort as soon
as he sits down in front of a textbook. Otherwise he is a voracious reader, and his mental block interferes only with the
reading of school books. He will sit before them for hours, his mind wandering, while making fruitless attempts to
concentrate on the reading. Nobody forces him to study, although it should be mentioned that in his family high value is
placed on academic achievement and both his parents are university graduates.
Here, then, is a person who wants to study but cannot. In one of the sessions he mentions, as an aside, that he also has a
problem with brushing his teeth. He knows that he should but uses all sorts of subterfuges to avoid brushing them; he
simply does not like the idea but does not know why. What he typically does is to delay brushing his teeth until it is time to
leave the house, and then he would be late if he started brushing them. He realizes that his behavior amounts to a trick, and
he himself calls it irrational. He mentions that as a child he had painfully irritated gums and therefore avoided brushing his
teeth whenever possible, although both his parents stressed the necessity and importance of having clean teeth. He goes on
to say that the way his parents tried to give special weight to their demands regarding tooth brushing, as well as many other
of his activities, was to argue that to do all this on his own initiative would be clear proof of his being "grown up," i.e.,
independent. In his childhood the patient soon began to resort to little tricks, such as moistening the toothbrush and
displacing the tooth paste on the shelf, to make believe that he had brushed his teeth, and this, to his great surprise and
self-admiration, fooled the adults. He reports that hitting upon this deception was a fascinating experience for him. If we
compare this recollection with the problem he now has brushing his teeth, we find that the two phenomena are structurally
identical, although there is one difference: nowadays the injunction comes from within. Furthermore, it can be seen that the
two phenomena are structurally identical with the complaint that brought him into therapy, i.e., his study problem. In both
his present problems, that is, the trivial one with his tooth-brushing and the very upsetting one related to his studying, the
injunctions come from within the subject himself but are treated as if they originated from some outside authority that
cannot be directly flouted, but can very well be fooled. This fooling is achieved by a sort of "I want to, but cannot" premise
by means of which he, on the one hand, cannot be accused of not complying with the injunction but, on the other hand, need
not comply with it. What, then, were the original messages given by his parents as they trained him to brush his teeth? First
of all, "You must brush your teeth," and secondly, "To want to brush your teeth is an adult attitude," and, therefore,
independent and commendable. These two messages, however amount to the paradox, "Do exactly as we say, but on your
own initiative," and could be elaborated into, "If you do not obey, we shall be angry with you, but if you obey only because
we are telling you, we shall also be angry, because you should be independent" (that is, to want to do whatever one should
do of one's own will). This injunction creates an untenable situation, because it demands that an external source be
confused with an internal one. But, on the other hand, it is also the almost ubiquitous model for the internalization of social
rules. Its universal occurrence in no way alleviates its paradoxical nature. How can it be counteracted? Perhaps by dealing
with its external aspect only? But with regard to this, the patient's childhood world contained yet another rule: any
opposition to the parents was considered an act of badness, which produced annoyance and charges of disaffection, another
not exactly infrequent complication. Thus, the explicit injunction, "You must mind us," was reinforced for this patient by
assigning to any act of rebellion an intensely negative meaning. So there is no exit: to mind is a good thing, because it
satisfies the demand for obedience, but it is bad because it does not comply with the demand for independence; while not
minding, on the other hand, implies independence, which in itself is good, but violates the injunction to be obedient. And
finally, the injunction, "You must do this of your own will," wedged in as it is between the other injunctions, eventually
leads to the internalization of not only the source of these injunctions, but of the whole complex of binds inherent in the
paradox. To want to brush one's teeth but "to have no time" and to want to study but "to be unable to" thus becomes the only

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legitimate way out of the impasse between minding and not minding, or of satisfying both the premises of obedience and
independence.
There is every reason to assume that this pattern must have repeated itself throughout the patient's early learning
experiences and that it has led him to see a whole range of situations as determined by the same contradictory injunctions
and, therefore, as a member of the class of paradoxical situations produced by his family milieu.
What are the essential ingredients of this phenomenon? They are its occurrence within a framework of relationships with
significant others; the need to discriminate correctly (given the importance of the dependence-independence conflict); the
impossibility of leaving the field (given the dependency inherent in childhood); the impossibility of asking for clarifications
(due to the vicious-circle nature of the paradox involved, and perhaps to the label of "rebellion" given to such a request for
clarification); and, finally, a message that contains an injunction regarding a concrete fact and a second injunction regarding
this class of facts, that contradicts the first. But what we have just presented is nothing but a list of the essential components
of a double bind, the core element of the communicational theory of schizophrenia.
Expanding on this theoretical model we want to turn next to a brief presentation of a body of hypotheses we derived from
a systematic, empirical study of the speech patterns of neurotic patients. This approach leads to an appreciation of the
double bind model as a universal (and not only schizophrenia-specific) theory of pathogenesis.
We adopted the view that neurosis is "a technique (or a system of techniques) for the manipulation of meaning
transmitted in interpersonal situations" (7). This means that the neurotic processes information according to a body of
codification rules, that is, of "norms for the attribution of meaning to the objects in the 'real world' (including the subject
himself as well as his behaviors), and at the same time. of norms which define the relations between these meanings" (7).
We further assumed that an understanding of the rules of interaction, which tell us something about the subject's "world
view," will also permit us to make inferences about the learning contexts that produced these rules in the first place.
As we developed these genetic hypotheses, which may be considered an attempt to formulate a communicational theory
of the neuroses, we based ourselves on Ronald Fairbairn's (4) postulates about the mental development of the child.
According to this author, the child passes through the following three evolutional stages: (1) infantile dependence, marked
by a relative lack of differentiation between the self and the non-self and a preponderance of the incorporation or the
"taking" of objects; (2) transition; and (3) mature dependency, characterized by "relations between two independent beings
who are completely differentiated" and by a predominance of "giving" in object relations.
The transitional stage ushers in the core dilemma of all mental development: dependence versus independence. This
conflict between leaving the security of close object relations in favor of the inevitable uncertainty of independence is part
and parcel of the process of socialization: parents tend to stimulate the impulse towards independence and to neutralize the
needs for dependency. This process is a complex one, as the parents will have to redefine to their child almost daily,
avoiding any overlap of boundaries, the respective areas of dependency (where action, except within a frame of compliance,
is bad), of independence (where action based on compliance is bad), and a third, "experimental" one (which could be called
one of "supervised experience in independence").Obviously, to define these areas operationally will be all the more difficult
for the parents if they themselves are having trouble in a specific area. Ultimately, however, these major or minor
difficulties have their common denominator in the parents' own personality styles, which by themselves make certain modes
of socialization more probable than others.
This is how the universal conflict between dependence and independence acquires specificity in each separate instance:
whatever learning model predominates in a given family will determine the nature of the child's adaptation.
In the first stages of the learning process the search for "right" responses leads the child to a categorization of behaviors,
that is, to a rudimentary codification system of what is good or bad, effective or ineffective. This codification will evolve
and expand to the extent that the responses turn out to be well adapted to the learner's life situation and capabilities and will
eventually become the basis for his understanding of the world as a whole.
It will be seen that our model takes into account an essential and well-documented feature of any learning process,
namely the fact that, in any concrete situation in which learning occurs, there also takes place a transmission of the rules
implicit to learning itself. We are referring here to the phenomena of acquiring a predisposition (a learning-set) or of what
Bateson has called deutero-learning, i.e., learning to learn (2).1 We want to stress that "learning to learn" is of a higher
logical level than "learning" and that it, therefore, takes place on the level of meta-messages, which are about structures or
classes of situations or messages of a given kind.
Applying this notion to what we said previously, it appears that learning typical of the transitional period may not only be
beset by conflict on the content level (i.e., the basic problem inherent in the dependence-independence dilemma), but also
by conflicts on the next higher (the deutero-learning) level. This means that contradictions and incongruencies may arise
from the way the parents define the learning situation. They derive in all likelihood from the parents' own conflicts and
manifest themselves in their relationship to the child. The co-presence of these two sources of conflictone universal,
stemming from the dependence-independence dilemma (in all its multiple variations), and one potential and specific to each

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case, that of the parental conflictsorganizes the interaction in each person's learning process. The way these conflicts
eventua]ly turn into specific patterns of interactioni.e., the stability and pervasiveness of the contradictory
messages-structures and of the type of responses favored, its timing within the developmental process, et ceterawill, in
the long run, give rise to specific forms of neurosis (conceived in terms of behavioral stereotypy). In other words, the
contradiction contained in the original learning situations will make the child respond in a way that to him will seem the
most successful and will eventually lead to a set of rules for dealing with the outside world. Once these rules are established
he will "recognize" over and over again in new situations the familiar structure of the contradiction contained in his early
learning experiences and, finally, he will provoke in others those behaviors that will reinforce and "justify" his own
interpersonal conduct.
These rather abstract considerations now need to be made more specific. To do this we shall summarize here the way we
have tried to define those contradictions inherent in the specific learning experiences that eventually generate hysteric,
phobic, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors respectively.

Hysteria
Hysterics show a positive orientation to external objects, but their evaluation of themselves is negative.2 Their
exhibitionistic and seductive behavior is in keeping with both these views for, on the one hand, it serves to attract the
outside object, but on the other hand, it presupposes within the hysteric a lack of conscience and a kind of selective
blindness for his own seductiveness. If, as a result of this, the external object is attracted to him, it must be rejected because
it touches upon those aspects he values negatively. But this rejection will of necessity be temporary, for to stop attracting
the other person is tantamount to renouncing the loved object. This contradiction is bound to create a "yes, but no" behavior
that will tend to repeat itself indefinitely. The hysteric concieves of his role as passivei.e., he suffers the consequences of
the others' actions. The others engage in activities, and he adopts inner states. In terms of who controls whom, one could
say the hysteric engineers his inner states so as to produce specific actions on the part of others.
What kind of early learning experiences could lead to this behavior One may assume it would be in the nature of this
learning context to punish the subject whenever his behavior is actively geared towards achieving results but to reward him
when he assumes the right inner states in response to parental action. Activity thus becomes associated with punishment
and passivity with reward.3 Now it is well known that any socializing medium will at times demand certain forms of active
behavior. In the interpersonal situation we are here examining, the parents will meta-communicate to their child what kind
of behavior they expect of him, but these implicit expectations will be in conflict with the explicit "rules of the game." The
only viable way of not violating the explicit rules, while at the same time responding adequately to the implicit
demandswhose violation also carries the threat of frustration and punishmentis through indirect compliance with these
demands within the frame of the explicit rules. This amounts to a progressive ability to manipulate his inner states so as to
adapt himself to the situation on hand. One example of this would be a child who, when actively demanding his parents'
attention, is told "don't bother us," but when throwing a tantrum quickly gets it. Thus the parents pay attention only to those
behaviors that do not explicitly demand it, and vice versa.
In view of the foregoing, the contradictory and paradoxical messages responsible for the emergence of hysteria can
perhaps best be summarized in the formula: "Take initiative, but remember that it is forbidden to take initiative."

Phobics
Passing now to the phobic patient, it appears that his basic problem lies in the distinction between dangerous and
harmless situations, since for him the world never ceases to be potentially dangerous.4
What learning model may eventually account for phobic behavior? Explicitly, the learning situation will be such as to
encourage the subject towards independence. But since the parents conceive of the world as full of dangers, they will
meta-communicate to their child "the world is very dangerous." Thus taking risks of any kind will be punished and
avoiding-behavior rewarded.5 The simultaneous presence of both injunctions creates an incongruency: the explicit
encouragement of independence contradicts the implicit rule to avoid exaggerated dangers, since, by parental definition, the
world of independence is dangerous. There is, then, no other way out of this impasse than to act independently only in those
areas that have been declared safe by the parents, or in other words, to act with fictitious independence.
All of the phobic's interactions can be seen as the outcome of this learning process. When he interacts with others, the
immediate activation of his avoidance behavior is a mechanism for both judging the safety of his environment and defining
the relationship with his partner through the meta-message, "I am not a grownup, I need protection." This attitude is as
contradictory as the paradoxical injunction that produces it, which can be summarized by the formula, "Be independent by
depending on me."

Obsessive Compulsives

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Yet another picture emerges with the obsessive-compulsive patients. They assign a positive value to certain of their
actions and a negative one to others.6 Both the danger of acting as well as the means of controlling this danger are
internalized. One of the essential features of the obsessive-compulsive coping technique consists in utilizing one's own
"acceptable" behaviors to control or neutralize "objectionable" or "bad" ones. As a result of this, however, the acceptable
behaviors lose their meaning, since they now have no purpose of their own except to stand in lieu of the unacceptable
actions: to be busy repeating an acceptable action prevents the emergence of the unacceptable ones, and this becomes the
basis of obsessive-compulsive rituals.7 The overwhelming need to avoid doing the wrong thing is compounded by the
conviction that to think of doing something amounts to having done it. The occurrence of ideas or behaviors requiring
rejection triggers off the ritual of undoing to re-establish the equilibrium. This process is complicated by the fact that "the
bad" is conceived of as contaminating certain actions that until then were considered neutral or even good, and this
eventually requires a re-structuring of the rituals.
Let us try to identify the learning context that may be conducive to the genesis of the obsessive-compulsive neuroses. The
child is expected to attain independence following the rule that if he wants to avoid punishment he must learn "to do the
right things." To comply with this rule is considered the right behavior, but there is no instrumental reward connected with
it. If the child does something "bad" or does not do the "right thing," he is punished. If, on the other hand, he behaves
properly, he is not rewarded but is simply considered to have done his duty. 8
But while on one level the parents encourage the child to assume duties as a form of "independence," on another level
they meta-communicate to him that he is intrinsically bad (e.g., "Of what else could one expect from you?"). Independent
behavior is thus defined as good and the child encouraged to behave accordingly, while at the same time he is labeled bad
and capable only of doing bad things. This creates an untenable situation.
This impasse probably originates from the premature imposition of certain demands. If the parents make demands that
exceed the child's present capabilities, he is bound to fail. If they then attribute these failures to the child's ineptitude rather
than to his immaturity, he himself will eventually conceive of his failures as "badness," deserving punishment.9
Since the attainment of independence requires the child to exercise his own initiative and since all spontaneous action
has been defined as necessarily bad, the emergence of badness becomes a constant danger. This conflict can be summarized
by the paradoxical formula, "Be independent, although, of course, you are incapable of it."
It should be noted that our formulae of paradoxical injunctions are theoretical constructs. In real-life situations the
contradictory rules are, of course, transmitted in many different ways, through different channels of communication, by
different persons, and in different situations that all together make up the vast repertory of learning contexts.
These mutually incompatible messages, pertaining to different logical levels, can be transmitted (a) both through the
same channel (verbal, paralinguistic, nonverbal, or contextual) or through different channels; (b) both by the same person
or separately by more than one (10); (c) within the frame of one given learning context or as an interference phenomenon
between learning contexts; and d) simultaneously or successively.
The paradoxes themselves can be similarly classified, depending on what element of the entire learning context is
primarily involved; e.g. (a) both messages refer to the learner (as is the case with the paradoxes inherent in the three forms
of neurosis mentioned in the foregoing); (b) both messages refer to their sender (for instance, any statement amounting to:
"Only when I am suffering am I really happy"); (c) the frame of reference and the source of the message are both linked, yet
incompatible (as is the case with, for instance, the Liar Paradox, i.e., the statement by Epimenides the Cretan, "All Cretans
are liars"). For an introduction to the problem of paradoxes in human communication cf. Watzlawick et al. (9).
Anybody's typical behavior is thus the outcome of the different learning contexts he has internalized. It thus makes sense
to think in terms of principal and secondary contexts (or of paradoxes produced by them), just as it makes sense to talk
about predominant and accessory behavior traits.
Now, if the codification rules imposed by the socialization process do condition the subject towards a certain "world
view," this also implies that the neurotic encounters over and over again the conflicts created by the paradoxical nature of
the original situation. For him this situation recurs whenever the dependence-independence dilemma is reactivated in any
one of its many variations and, when this occurs, the paradoxical rules for the resolution of the conflict, i.e., neurotic
behavior, will be resorted to again. The recurrent nature of this pattern suggests a sort of circular reinforcement, i.e., a
positive feedback. The paradox has, therefore, both an "historical" and a "present" aspect, and this is why the neurotic
disturbance tends to be self-perpetuating.
Numerous variables impinge on the process of socialization, such as basic personality traits of the subject or the intensity
of instinctual drives, etc., but there are also factors having specific bearing on the learning context that can determine the
intensity, persistence, and virulence of a given clinical picture, or the question as to which clinical picture will emerge.
These latter are: (1) the simultaneous or successive occurrence of the main learning contexts; (2) the very early occurrence
of paradoxical injunctions; and (3) the intensity and nature of the many possible corrective experiences originating within
the family or coming from the extra-familial environment.

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To summarize, the following are the characteristics common to all the learning models mentioned above. First of all,
contradictory messages given simultaneously and belonging to different logical levels (one message contains an instruction
and the other an instruction or an information that contradicts the first one but refers to the class of instructions of which the
first one is a member). This takes place in a contextthe familythat cannot be evaded and in which it is of fundamental
importance for the subject to discriminate meanings correctly. Finally, the pattern repeats itself over time, since it is the
context for a number of different learning experiences and thereby predisposes the subject to expect this kind of experience
even in cases where the essential ingredients of the original situation are absent.
These characteristics are identical with what several authors consider the essential ingredients of a double-bind situation,
e.g. (3) (6).
On the basis of the general considerations contained above, it may now be proposed that the double-bind theory is not
specific to the etiology of schizophrenia but, rather, defines a universal pathogenic situation: any pathology of a
psychologicaland therefore interactionalnature would have to have as its antecedents a learning context in keeping
with the premises postulated by the Palo Alto group fourteen years ago.
The hypothesis that double-bind situations may be involved not only in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia but also in
other forms of psychopathology was advanced by Ferreira (5) who described double binds in delinquency, and Watzlawick
(8) who suggested specific connections between certain clinical pictures and the particular areas of human functioning in
which double-binding occurs.
It will be remembered that the double-bind theory was originally proposed in 1956 by Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and
Weakland as an explanation of the etiology of schizophrenia. The early enthusiasm with which the psychiatric world
accepted it has since been replaced by a continuous polemic that either takes issue with the undeniable gap between the
theory and the evidence supporting it or merely the fact that very little work has been produced so far to support and go
beyond the original formulation. This stagnation, we believe, is due largely to the lack of a suitable methodology for the
analysis of patients' utterances, as well as for the conceptual reconstruction of the learning contexts involved and the
validation of any hypotheses advanced so far.
What we propose is that the double-bind theory has a much wider applicability than originally postulated. We further
propose that the first step towards validating this expanded conceptual model would consist in a reconstruction of the
specific learning context underlying each of the clinical pictures by establishing a rigorous connection between the original
paradox and the ensuing pathology. To this end, the approach described in this paper in respect to certain forms of neuroses
could be applied in the sense that intermediate steps must be found between the double-bind theory (which in Bateson's
own words is more an epistemology) and each clinical picture. The second step would then be to operationalize the
concepts thus developed by applying them to the verbal productions of patients, and finally, by verifying them through
longitudinal studies. It seems to us that the lack of longitudinal verification is due not so much to the practical difficulty of
such studies, but to the lack of intermediate links between the theory and its practical application.
For the time being, the task of formulating specific hyoptheses for the genesis of schizophrenia is beyond our
capabilities. Very probably our research efforts will have to be directed towards a reconstruction of the meta-rules, i.e., of
the rules governing the relation between learning models, that are perhaps the result of the consistently inconsistent
imposition of learning contexts by the parents. It may well be that such inconsistencies as are contained in the erratic
meta-communication of parental expectations will lead the child to internalize the rule that there are no rules for a clear
interpretation of reality, with the result that he will tend to attribute to a situation meanings in conflict with the context in
which it "Crazy" behavior may thus become the only "acceptable" way out of any injunction demanding, in one way or
another, "Learn to live up to our expectations, but independently from what we may tell you," or, in other words, "Distrust
your senses and learn to see the world as it really is."

REFERENCES
1. BATESON, G., "Conventions of Communication: Where Validity Depends on Belief," in Ruesch, J. and Bateson,
G., Communication, the Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York, W. W. Norton, 1951 (Chapter 8).
2. BATESON, G., "Social Planning and the Concept of 'Deutero-Learning,'" in Bryson, L. (Ed.), Science, Philosophy
and Religion, 2nd Symposium, New York, Harper & Row, 1942.
3. BATESON, G., JACKSON, D. D., HALEY, J. and WEAKLAND, J. H., "Toward A Theory of Schizophrenia,"
Behav. Sci., 1, 251-264, 1956.
4. FAIRBAIRN, W. R. D., An Object-Relations Theory of the Personality, New York, Basic Books, 1952.
5. FERREIRA, A., "The Double Bind and Delinquent Behavior," Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 3, 359-367, 1960.
6. SLUZKI, C. E., BEAVIN, J., TARNOPOLSKI, A. and VERÓN, E., "Transactional Disqualification," Arch. Gen.
Psychiat., 16, 494-504, 1967.

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7. VERÓN, E. and SLUSKI, C. E., Communicación y neurosis, Buenos Aires, Editorial del Instituto, 1970.
8. WATZLAWICK, P., "Patterns of Psychotic Communication," in Doucet, P. and Laurin, C. (Eds.), Problems of
Psychosis, Amsterdam, Excerpta Medical Foundation, 1969.
9. WATZLAWICK, P., BEAVIN, J. H. and JACKSON, D. D., Pragmatics of Human Communication, New York,
W. W. Norton, 1967.
10. WEAKLAND, J. H., "The Double-Bind Hypothesis of Schizophrenia and Three-Party Interaction," in Jackson, D.
D. (Ed.), The Etiology of Schizophrenia, New York, Basic Books, 1960.

Reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. C. E. Sluski, Dept. of Psychiatry, Mt. Zion Hospital, 1600 Divisadero Street,
San Francisco, Calif. 94115.

1Predisposition, a term originally used in experimental learning psychology, refers to the result of a subject's repeated exposure
to a given learning situation, so that his trial and error behavior on any subsequent exposure to situations of the same type is
drastically reduced. This is what Bateson (2, 1) calls deutero-learning. There are, then, two separate levels of
information-processing involved: one that has to do with information about the contents of the particular situation and the other,
on a higher logical level, with information about the type of task or situation.
It should be remembered what happens when, once a predisposition is established, the experimenter changes the nature of the
learning situation so that it now contradicts the predisposition. In Bateson's terms this is the "experimental neurosis" produced by
Pavlovian experiments. If these two separate levels of learningthe one related to the content, and the other to the pattern or
structure responsible for the predispositiondid not exist, the particular contradiction that gives rise to the experimental neurosis
could not exist either.

2According to Fairbairn, for the hysteric the accepted or "good" object is outside and the rejected or "bad" inside.

3This would be a "classical Pavlovian context," as defined by Bateson (2), in which any information as to what the subject is

supposed to do is excluded from the sequence of events that make up the learning situation. But at the same time the subject is
included in the sequence to the extent that he is not expected to react to it actively and with a view towards modifying the situation,
but through a self-modification.

4According to Fairbairn, in the case of the phobias both the accepted and the rejected objects are outside the subject.

5The explicit learning context of the phobic seems to be identical with Bateson's (2) concept of "instrumental reward": it defines

behaviors the learner must engage in actively in order to be rewarded. The learning situation acknowledges and encourages
independence on the part of the subject. Implicitly, however, it meta-communicates that the situation is an "instrumental avoidance"
context (for a definition of this term cf. footnote 8).

6This is in keeping with Fairbairn's postulate that with these patients both the accepted and the rejected object is internal.

7"The obligation to do the right thingor not to do the wrong onecamouflages the prohibition against doing the wrong thing.

This prohibition is not recognized because it would otherwise generate anxiety and because any prohibition implies, by definition,
the possibility of doing what is prohibited" (7).

8This situation is one of "instrumental avoidance," in which the conditioned stimulus is followed by a disagreeable

experiencee.g., an electric shockunless the subject responds with a certain action. The subject thus learns how to insert his
own action into the sequence of events in order to avoid punishment. Therefore the reward lies in the avoidance of punishment.

9Another important fact is that the parents couch their injunctions and punishments in abstract terms, such as referring to "what
one must do," and thereby define themselves as the mere intermediaries between the child and the rules. This leads the child to
attribute an impersonal nature to these injunctions" (7).