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power-paradox
Power creates contradictory situations where renouncing power leads to dependence on a powerful yet despised protector, illustrating a double bind.
1 chapter across 1 book
How Real Is Real? (1976)Paul Watzlawick
2: Paradoxes
The chapter '2: Paradoxes' explores the nature of paradoxical communication, particularly the double bind, where contradictory demands inhibit appropriate action, thought, or feeling, causing psychological distress. It further examines paradoxes related to spontaneity and power, illustrating how power dynamics create double binds in social and psychiatric contexts, and how attempts to eliminate coercion paradoxically reinforce authority, as exemplified by historical and literary cases like Catch-22 and the Order of Maria Theresa.