Protest? Then What?
How economic globalization creates a social double bind and a mental health epidemic in the west worker population
Christian Voirol, Marie-Claude Audétat, Valérie Miéville-Ott

Abstract
This article postulates that the global market is an open system that has no control process. It also advances that “developed” societies unconsciously make contradictory and paradoxical demands on their workers – called a “double bind” in psychology – that put the workers in unmanageable situations. The fact that these paradoxical demands are not explicit can drive the individuals subjected to them to madness. The authors posit that the epidemic of mental health problems at work in developed societies is exacerbated by the effects of this social double bind. The authors suggest that the paradoxical nature of market demands should be made explicit and that a regulative process should be introduced to thwart the market’s exponential drift, which is a characteristic of open systems.

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