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%DISINTEGRATIVE DOUBLE BIND COLLUSIVE EVIL MESSAGES 900322

     Often  people  communicate  via  messages  which   in
context   are   disintegrative  because  they   are   self
contradictory.

     The overt message may be "We want to be sure we  stay
within the letter of the law."   Yet the wink of the  eye,
the  tone of voice,  the gesture,  or the body language is
saying  something like "But not within the spirit  of  the
law,  and only as far within the letter of the law so that
we do not get caught!"  The overt message may be one which
attempts  to  claim  the  right for respect  in  terms  of
maintaining  personal  and  communal integrity;   yet  the
covert message is contrary to the overt message.

     Often  people  want to appear respectable and  to  be
people  of integrity while they are not worthy of  respect
and undermine personal and communal integrity.

     On other occasions people want to appear as worthy of
respect   because  they  are  appropriately  in  rebellion
against   some   common  power  or  authority  which   the
subculture   to  which  they  are  appealing  regards   as
contemptible.    Respect  may  then be won by  what  power
and/or  authority  is violated.    In  such  circumstances
people  within their rebellious subculture may openly  and
overtly   communicate their disdain via coherent  messages
in  which  there is no inconsistency  between   overt  and
covert messages.     Yet  it may not always be  so  within
such  a subculture.

     In   rebellious  subcultures  it  may  be  that   the
rebellion  is of such a character as to undermine personal
and   communal  integrity;   and so it is  not  ultimately
worthy   of  respect.   If the rebellion is  callous  with
indifference  to  the  violation  of  personal  integrity,
placing   ultimate value upon being in  rebellion,    then
there  may be  members of    the  subculture  who  with  a
transcendent     sense  of   integrity  may  be   counter-
revolutionaries,    people  who may  need   to communicate
messages  of  rebellion   with covert  implications   that
they  do not really  mean  what they   say.   Such  covert
messages may have to be  hidden,  so  that only people  of
similar  mind,     attitude,     heart  and   spirit   may
discover   each   other and  work  together  cooperatively
to   regain  health within   their   unhealthy  rebellious
context.

     Recipients  of  double  meaning,   and  double   bind
messages  are put in a difficult situation.   They may  be
asked to acknowledge the  overt and/or the covert message.
The other person may be testing them to see if they are in
cahoots with the spirit of the double message.  To fail to
respond  appropriately  with  a  similar  double   meaning
message is often a matter of life and death:  literally in
the  sense of threatened murder,   or  in the sense of the
slower    death   of   personal   disintegration   through
participation in collusive games of mutual self deception.

     Addicts  and codependents participate in and generate
a great deal of confusion, many crises,  misunderstanding,
and alienation.   Involved therein are many double meaning
messages which are so ambiguous that recipients cannot  be
sure  what the intended overt and covert meanings may  be.
The result is that participants in such communication tend
to  be driven by fear which assumes the worst,  even  when
the worst is absent from the present situation.  Thus fear
drives  situations from good to bad with each  participant
unable to  communicate clearly just what is happening, and
no  one  being able to learn from the mistakes  which  are
being made.

     Respect for  communications which are  ambiguous  and
self  contradictory  is  dangerous  because  it  leads  to
many different  forms of disintegrative behavior,   and to
traps  where   such  disintegrative  behavior  cannot   be
recognized and dealt with in healthy ways.

     Even  so,  it is necessary to recognize that even  in
healthy  communication there is inevitable  ambiguity  and
there   are  paradoxes  and  mysteries  which  cannot   be
eliminated  by  attempts  to be  completely  explicit  and
overt.

     The  healthy  life involves  efforts  to  communicate
openly,  honestly and explicitly; yet gracefully accepting
the occasions when ambiguity,  paradoxes and mysteries are
inevitably present in real lives.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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