The Double Bind

by Chris Bohjalian

I read this over two months ago, and it disturbed me on so many levels I still can't figure out what to say about it!

I've enjoyed almost all of Bohjalian's books, ever since Oprah promoted "Midwives". This is probably his most serious since that book. It deals with rape and post traumatic stress disorder.

I didn't completely understand the psychological term "double bind" as it was described in the book, so I had to look it up in Wikipedia, which was pretty helpful--the essence of a double-bind is two conflicting demands, neither of which can be ignored, which leave the victim torn both ways in such a way that whichever demand they try to meet, the other demand cannot be met. "I must do it but I can't do it" is a typical description of the double-bind experience.

In this story, Laurel (a social worker to homeless people in a small Vermont town) is caught in a double bind when she attempts to resolve the story of one of her "cases"--a man who, on his death, leaves a cache of beautiful photographs, many of which are of famous people taken throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. Among the pictures is one of her, from years earlier, right before the traumatic event whose continued suppression is the other demand on her life. Laurel is compelled to solve the mystery of the man's past--the shelter hopes to raise funds with an exhibit of the photographs--but she can't do it without coming face to face with the truth of what happened to her.

This leads to a schizophrenic break--and in fact, double binds are often cited in the case histories of schizophrenic patients.

I was completely ignorant that Laurel had already suffered a break, which I blame on not having read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I continued to believe, right till the very end, that the use of elements of that book meant that this book was a fiction-inside-a-fiction.

I did have suspicions--the pieces of the puzzle Laurel tried to solve were falling too easily into place.

Bohjalian leaves his readers hanging at the end--you don't know that Laurel is able to come back to health, although the one positive aspect is that her family and friends rally around her, and one hopes that their love can set her on the road.

One of the loveliest aspects of the book is the inclusion of photos taken by a real-life homeless person who died in a shelter; Bohjalian credits the discovery of his photos as a major inspiration, but he also hopes that when readers see them they are reminded that homeless people are real--that many of them have lives, have been productive members of society, before their lives spiral out of control.