For the Analyst's Notepad Section, the Editors welcome the contribution of brief vignettes or notes on clinical subjects which demonstrate nascent ideas that may not yet be fully elaborated for more formal presentation. We hope also that this space might become a forum for the exchange of ideas and clinical experiences, proceeding responsively from issue to issue.

The major thesis of this paper is that telling a patient to follow the rule of free association is a double bind communication. The term double bind communication was coined by Bateson (1972) to describe communications which contain contradictory messages. As an example, he told about the mother of a schizophrenic patient who said to