Volume 19, Issue 1/4, 2003
Special Issue on Gregory Bateson
Paul Ryan
Pages 173-196
Bateson, Peirce, and the Three Person Solution
Gregory Bateson identified an array of difficulties in human relationships including double binds, confusion between complimentary and symmetrical relations, and the ‘sliding triad’. This essay presents a solution to these and other difficulties in the form of a ‘yoga’ of relationships in which participants take turns playing three different roles keyed to the three phenomenological categories of Charles Sanders Peirce.