Transcontextual

Insofar as assumptions are bound by familiarity, they represent an “explanatory world of substance [that] can invoke no dierences and no ideas but only forces and impacts” (Bateson 1972, 271). As Bateson argues, contrary to the familiar, possible, and explainable, there exists a “world of form and communication [that] invokes no things, forces, impacts but only dierences and ideas” (1972, 271). To characterize a dierential ecology of mind, he turns to “double bind theory,” which “asserts that there is an experiential component in the determination or etiology of schizophrenic symptoms and related behavioral paerns, such as humor, art, poetry, etc.,” and that are indistinguishable (1972, 272). His metaphor of schizophrenia signies a “genus of [nonpathological] syndromes,” an ecology of mind that he refers to as “transcontextual.”.