Splitting (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 9/25/15, 10:55 PM

Splitting (psychology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Splitting (also called black and white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking) is the failure in a person's thinking
to bring together both positive and negative qualities of the self and others into a cohesive, realistic whole. It is a
common defense mechanism used by many people.[1] The individual tends to think in extremes (i.e., an
individual's actions and motivations are all good or all bad with no middle ground).

The concept of splitting was developed by Ronald Fairbairn in his formulation of object relations theory;[2] it
begins as the inability of the infant to combine the fulfilling aspects of the parents (the good object) and their
unresponsive aspects (the unsatisfying object) into the same individuals, but sees the good and bad as separate.
In psychoanalytic theory this functions as a defence mechanism.[3] It is a relatively common defence mechanism
for people with borderline personality disorder in DSM-IV-TR.

Contents
1 Relationships
2 Borderline personality disorder
3 Narcissistic personality disorder
4 Janet and Freud
5 Melanie Klein
6 Otto Kernberg
7 Splitting, horizontal and vertical
8 Transference
9 See also
10 References

Relationships
Splitting creates instability in relationships because one person can be viewed as either personified virtue or
personified vice at different times, depending on whether they gratify the subject's needs or frustrate them. This,
along with similar oscillations in the experience and appraisal of the self, leads to chaotic and unstable
relationship patterns, identity diffusion, and mood swings. The therapeutic process can be greatly impeded by
these oscillations, because the therapist too can come to be seen as all good or all bad. To attempt to overcome
the negative effects on treatment outcome, constant interpretations by the therapist are needed.[4]

Splitting contributes to unstable relationships and intense emotional experiences. Splitting is not uncommon
during adolescence, but is regarded as transient. Splitting has been noted especially with persons diagnosed with
borderline personality disorder.[5][6] Treatment strategies have been developed for individuals and groups based

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on dialectical behavior therapy, and for couples.[7] There are also self-help books on related topics such as
mindfulness and emotional regulation that have been helpful for individuals who struggle with the consequences
of splitting.[8]

Borderline personality disorder

Main article: Borderline personality disorder

Splitting is a relatively common defence mechanism for people with borderline personality disorder.[6] One of
the DSM IV-TR criteria for this disorder is a description of splitting: "a pattern of unstable and intense
interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation".[9][10]
In psychoanalytic theory, people with borderline personality disorder are not able to integrate the good and bad
images of both self and others, resulting in a bad representation which dominates the good representation.[11]
This school hypothesizes that they consequently experience love and sexuality in perverse and violent qualities
which they cannot integrate with the tender, intimate side of relationships.[12]

Narcissistic personality disorder

Main article: Narcissistic personality disorder

People matching the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder also use splitting as a central defence
mechanism. Most often the narcissist does this as an attempt to stabilize their sense of self positivity in order to
preserve their self-esteem, by perceiving themselves as purely upright or admirable and others who do not
conform to their will or values as purely wicked or contemptible. Given "the narcissist's perverse sense of
entitlement and splitting ... [s]he can be equally geared, psychologically and practically, towards the promotion
and towards the demise of a certain collectively beneficial project".[13]

The cognitive habit of splitting also implies the use of other related defence mechanisms, namely idealization
and devaluation, which are preventative attitudes or reactions to narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury.[11]

Janet and Freud

Main articles: Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud

Splitting of consciousness (German: Spaltung )[14] was first described by Pierre Janet in L'Automatisme
psychologique. His ideas were extended by Freud and Breuer,[15] to explain splits in consciousness, not (with
Janet) as the product of innate weakness, but as the result of inner conflict.[16] With the development of the idea
of repression, splitting moved to the background of Freud's thought for some years, being largely reserved for

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cases of double personality.[17] However his late work saw a renewed interest in how it was "possible for the ego
to avoid a rupture ... by effecting a cleavage or division of itself",[18] a theme which was extended in his Outline
of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]) beyond fetishism to the neurotic in general.[19]

His daughter Anna Freud explored how in healthy childhood development a splitting of loving and aggressive
instincts could be avoided.[20]

Melanie Klein
See also: Melanie Klein: thought and Melanie Klein: reparation

There was, however, from early on, another use of the term "splitting" in Freud, referring rather to resolving
ambivalence "by splitting the contradictory feelings so that one person is only loved, another one only hated ...
the good mother and the wicked stepmother in fairy tales".[21] Or, with opposing feelings of love and hate,
perhaps "the two opposites should have been split apart and one of them, usually the hatred, has been
repressed".[22] Such splitting was closely linked to the defence of "isolation ... The division of objects into
congenial and uncongenial ones ... making 'disconnections'."[23]

It was the latter sense of the term that was predominantly adopted and exploited by Melanie Klein. After Freud,
"the most important contribution has come from Melanie Klein, whose work enlightens the idea of 'splitting of
the object' (Objektspaltung)[24] (in terms of 'good/bad' objects)".[25] In her object relations theory, Klein argues
that "the earliest experiences of the infant are split between wholly good ones with 'good' objects and wholly bad
experiences with 'bad' objects",[26] as children struggle to integrate the two primary drives, love and hate, into
constructive social interaction. An important step in childhood development is the gradual depolarization of
these two drives.

At what Klein called the paranoid-schizoid position, there is a stark separation of the things the child loves
(good, gratifying objects) and the things the child hates (bad, frustrating objects), "because everything is
polarised into extremes of love and hate, just like what the baby seems to experience and young children are still
very close to."[27] Klein refers to the good breast and the bad breast as split mental entities, resulting from the
way "these primitive states tend to deconstruct objects into 'good' and 'bad' bits (called 'part-objects')".[28] The
child sees the breasts as opposite in nature at different times, although they actually are the same, belonging to
the same mother. As the child learns that people and objects can be good and bad at the same time, he or she
progresses to the next phase, the depressive position, which "entails a steady, though painful, approximation
towards the reality of oneself and others":[29] integrating the splits and "being able to balance [them] out ... are
tasks that continue into early childhood and indeed are never completely finished."[30]

However, Kleinians also utilize Freud's first conception of splitting, to explain the way "In a related process of
splitting, the person divides his own self. This is called 'splitting of the ego'."[14][31] Indeed, Klein herself
maintained that "the ego is incapable of splitting the object—internal or external—without a corresponding

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splitting taking place within the ego".[32] Arguably at least, by this point "the idea of splitting does not carry the
same meaning for Freud and for Klein": for the former, "the ego finds itself 'passively' split, as it were. For Klein
and the post-Kleinians, on the other hand, splitting is an 'active' defence mechanism".[33] As a result, by the
close of the century "four kinds of splitting can be clearly identified, among many other possibilities" for post-
Kleinians: "a coherent split in the object, a coherent split in the ego, a fragmentation of the object, and a
fragmentation of the ego."[34]

Otto Kernberg
Main article: Otto Kernberg

In the developmental model of Otto Kernberg, the overcoming of splitting is also an important developmental
task.[12] The child has to learn to integrate feelings of love and hate. Kernberg distinguishes three different
stages in the development of a child with respect to splitting:

First stage: the child does not experience the self and the object, nor the good and the bad as different
entities.
Second stage: good and bad are viewed as different. Because the boundaries between the self and the
other are not stable yet, the other as a person is viewed as either all good or all bad, depending on their
actions. This also means that thinking about another person as bad implies that the self is bad as well, so
it's better to think about the caregiver as a good person, so the self is viewed as good too. "Bringing
together extremely opposite loving and hateful images of the self and of significant others would trigger
unbearable anxiety and guilt."[35]
Third stage: Splitting – "the division of external objects into 'all good' or 'all bad'"[36] – begins to be
resolved when the self and the other can be seen as possessing both good and bad qualities. Having hateful
thoughts about the other does not mean that the self is all hateful and does not mean that the other person
is all hateful either.

If a person fails to accomplish this developmental task satisfactorily, borderline pathology can emerge. "In the
borderline personality organization", Kernberg found 'dissociated ego states that result from the use of
"splitting" defences'.[37] His therapeutic work then aimed at "the analysis of the repeated and oscillating
projections of unwanted self and object representations onto the therapist" so as to produce "something more
durable, complex and encompassing than the initial, split-off and polarized state of affairs".[38]

Splitting, horizontal and vertical

Heinz Kohut has emphasised in his Self psychology the distinction between horizontal and vertical forms of
splitting.[39] Traditional psychoanalysis saw repression as forming a horizontal barrier between different levels
of the mind - so that for example an unpleasnt truth might be accepted superficially but denied in a deeper part
of the psyche.[40] Kohut contrasted with this vertical fractures of the mind into two parts with incompatible
attitudes separated by mutual disavowal.[41]

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Transference
Main article: Transference

It has been suggested that interpretation of the transference "becomes effective through a sort of splitting of the
ego into a reasonable, judging portion and an experiencing portion, the former recognizing the latter as not
appropriate in the present and as coming from the past".[42] Clearly, "in this sense, splitting, so far from being a
pathological phenomenon, is a manifestation of self-awareness".[43] Nevertheless, "it remains to be investigated
how this desirable 'splitting of the ego' and 'self-observation' are to be differentiated from the pathological
cleavage ... directed at preserving isolations".[42]

See also
Ambivalence (co-existing contradictory impulses, agony of ambivalence)
Betrayal
Compartmentalization
Dehumanization
Dialogical self
Dissociative Identity Disorder - previously called Multiple Personality Disorder
Emotional detachment
Erik Erickson - psychologist
False dilemma
Love–hate relationship (relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate)
Madonna–whore complex
Paranoid anxiety
Paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions
Psychoanalytic concepts of love and hate
You're either with us, or against us

References
1. The defense mechanism of splitting: developmental origins, effects on staff, recommendations for nursing care
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/224184).
2. Rubens, R. L. (1996). "The unique origins of Fairbairn's Theories". Psychoanalytic Dialogues: The International Journal
of Relational Perspectives 6 (3): 413–435. doi:10.1080/10481889609539128
(https://dx.doi.org/10.1080%2F10481889609539128).
3. Gabbard, Glen O.; Litowitz, Bonnie E.; Williams, Paul, eds. (2011). Textbook of Psychoanalysis
(http://books.google.com/books?id=_kH0L1x8B88C&printsec=frontcover) (2nd ed.). American Psychiatric Pub. p. 96
(http://books.google.com/books?
id=_kH0L1x8B88C&pg=PA96&dq=%22defense+mechanism%22+Splitting+psychoanalysis). ISBN 978-1-58562-410-2.
4. Gould, J. R., Prentice, N. M. & Ainslie, R. C. (1996). "The splitting index: construction of a scale measuring the defense
mechanism of splitting". Journal of Personality Assessment 66 (2), 414–430.
5. What is Borderline personality disorder - Splitting (http://bpdresourcecenter.org/glossary.html).

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6. Mary C. Zanarini, Jolie L. Weingeroff, and Frances R. Frankenburg (April 2009). "Defense Mechanisms Associated with
Borderline Personality Disorder" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3203733). J Pers Disord 23 (2): 113–
121. doi:10.1521/pedi.2009.23.2.113 (https://dx.doi.org/10.1521%2Fpedi.2009.23.2.113). PMC 3203733
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3203733). PMID 19379090
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19379090).
7. Siegel,J. P. Repairing Intimacy (1992) and Linehan, M. (1993).
8. Jacobs, B. 2004, Siegel, J. 2010.
9. "What is Borderline Personality Disorder?" (http://bpdresourcecenter.org/DSM-IV.html). Borderline Personality Disorder
Resource Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Retrieved 2013-04-27.
10. "Diagnostic criteria for 301.83 Borderline Personality Disorder" (http://behavenet.com/borderline-personality-disorder).
DSM IV - TR. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
11. Siegel, J. P. (2006). "Dyadic splitting in partner relational disorders". Journal of Family Psychology, 20 (3), 418–422.
12. Mitchell, Stephen (1995). Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought
(http://books.google.com/books/about/Freud_and_Beyond.html?id=4ODr9mxI53oC). New York: Basic Books.
ISBN 978-0-465-01405-7.
13. Abdennur, the Narcissistic Principle of Equivalence, pp. 88–89.
14. Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (1973). "Splitting of the Ego (pp. 427–9)" (http://books.google.com/books?
id=PsvZpv0ZRw0C&pg=427&dq=%22Splitting+of+the+Ego+%3D+D.\+Ichspaltung%22%22Spa/fwng%27-
splitting%22). The Language of Psycho-analysis (http://books.google.com/books?
id=DCpokE8C2WgC&printsec=frontcover). London: Karnac Books. ISBN 978-0-946439-49-2.
15. Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (London 1995) p. 25.
16. Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (London 1995) p. 33.
17. Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (Middlesex 1987) pp. 53–4.
18. Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (Middlesex 1987) p. 217.
19. Angela Richards, "Editor's Note", Metapsychology p. 460.
20. E, Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud (2008) p. 322
21. Fenichel, Neurosis p. 157.
22. Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II (London 1991) p. 119.
23. Fenichel, Neurosis p. 158.
24. Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (1973). "Splitting of the Object (p. 430)" (http://books.google.com/books?
id=PsvZpv0ZRw0C&pg=430&dq=%22Splitting+of+the+Object+%3D+D.\+Objektspaltung%22).
25. T. Bokanowski and S. Lewkowicz, On Freud's "Splitting of the ego in the process of defense" (London 2009) p. x.
26. Richard Appignanesi ed., Introducing Melanie Klein (Cambridge 2006) np [173].
27. Robin Skinner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 98.
28. Appignanesi, Klein p. 123.
29. Appignanesi, Klein p. 131.
30. Skinner, Families p. 98.
31. Appignanesi, Klein p. 125.
32. Quoted in Paul Holmes, The inner world outside (1992) p. 117.
33. Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud (London 2005) p. 252.
34. Quoting Robert Hinshelwood, in Quinodoz, Reading Freud p. 252.
35. Otto F. Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (London 1990) p. 165.
36. Kernberg, Borderline p. 29
37. Paul Brinich and Christopher Shelley, The Self and Personality Structure (Buckingham 2002) p 51
38. Brinich, Self p. 51.
39. H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (1971) p. 79
40. O. Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 145
41. H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (1971) p. 177 and p. 185
42. Fenichel, Neurosis p. 570.
43. Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 1995) p. 174

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