Created by the anthropologist, psychologist and American epistemologist Grégory Bateson, the concept of the schismogenèse was conceived at the time of its study of the people of Iatmul, particularly by observing the behavior of a mother who, in a type of paradoxical communication, attracted the child by the word, but pushed back it by a gesture. This concept approaches the Double constraint (double bind). The schismogenèse introduces a interactionnelle analysis of the human behavior.

The Québécois psychologist and sexologist Yvon Dallaire applied this concept of schismogenèse to the marital relation and named it schismogenèse complementary, or climbing, to describe a type of relation action-reaction by which the answer of to an action or a word of the other causes increasingly divergent and emotive reactions, as in the example according to drawn from its book Cartographie of an argument of couple (ED. Youth, 2007):

One: “You are still late! ” The other: “I had an urgency of last minute at the office. ” One: “You could have telephoned to me at least for informing yourself some. ” The other: “I have just said to you that I had an urgency at the office; I could not thus call you. ” One (while sighing): “It is not the first time that you make me this blow. ” The other (exasperated more and more): “And moreover, there was a terrible traffic which still delayed me. ” One: “Be to You always late. ” The other: “Thus Let us go! It is not true, that very seldom arrives. ” One: “On the contrary, that more and more often arrives. The other (while assembling the tone): “Is this of my fault if the owner gives me an urgent file at the last minute? I remind to you that we need my wages to live. ” One (with a disgusted air): “It is that, your owner is more important than me. ” The other (incrédule): “What do you say there? Still exaggerate you as usual. ” One (begging, on the edge of the tears or the explosion): “How do you want that I trust you? You take to me for whom? Somebody who has anything else to make only await you? ” The other (seeking to leave the part): “Good, it set out again! ” One: “It is of your fault too. Do not try to conceal itself. When will you finally take account of me? ”

The complementary schismogenèse would have base neuro-bio-psychological which inevitably pushes two people who like and in good faith with increasingly large difficulties of communication. The tension caused by this schismogenèse complementary would be at the origin of the majority of the arguments of couples and the explosions of verbal violence and physics too often met in the married and family life.