Psychotherapy Volume 23/Spring 1986/Number 1
PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SPLITTING
CHARLES R. MARMAR AND MARDI J. HOROWITZ
Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute
The term "splitting" has been used in
complex and sometimes contradictory
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
ways in the description of serious
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
personality disturbances. It is often
unclear who is the agent of the
splitting, what is split, and what if any
defensive function is served. This study
reports on a case applying
configurational analysis to verbatim
transcript of the brief dynamic
psychotherapy of a borderline patient
treated for posttraumatic stress
disorder. The findings, linked directly
to the clinical material, support the
conception of splitting as an active
process by which the patient wards off
anxiety assoicated with realistic
integrated images of the self and
others.
The concept of splitting has received increasing
attention in the psychoanalytic and general psy-
chiatric literature in recent years. Lichtenberg &
Slap (1973), Pruyser(1975), and Grotstein( 1981)
trace the complex and oftentimes confusing plethora
of meanings and usages of the term from Breuer
& Freud's (1893-1895) early references to splitting
of consciousness through the current usage, par-
ticularly in reference to splitting in borderline pa-
tients. What follows is a summary of these disparate
conceptualizations of splitting phenomena in bor-
derline patients and the report of an investigation
of splitting by the application of the technique of
Grateful acknowledgement is made to N. Kaltreider, M.
Hoyt and J. Krupnick for their comments on this manuscript
and to N. Wilner for editorial assistance.
Reprints may be ordered from Charles R. Marmar, Center
for the Study of Neuroses, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute,
Box 37A, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143.
configurational analysis (Horowitz, 1977a, 1979;
Horowitz et ah, 1984).
This empirical study is proposed as one research
paradigm, applicable to the intensive study of
single cases, which can show how a high-level
metapsychological abstraction such as splitting
can be related to the actual dialogue in psycho-
therapy. While splitting has been a metapsychol-
ogical construct employed in the description of
patients with dissociative disorders, schizophrenia,
and schizoid personality disorders, this study ad-
dresses itself to phenomena seen most frequently
in borderline patients.
Mahler (1968, 1971) describes the splitting of
the child's attitudes and emotional reactions to
persons in the world. Such phenomena have been
reported to be particularly noticeable in the rap-
prochement subphase of separation-individuation
in children whose mothering was problematic.
Mahler considers splitting to serve a specific de-
fensive function, namely, to protect the fragile
developing good self-image of the child against
the destructive effects of the bad frustrating maternal
introject.
Kernberg (1975) defines splitting as "an essential
defensive operation of the borderline personality
organization which underlies all others that follow.
It has to be stressed that I am using the term
splitting in a restricted and limited sense, referring
only to the active process of keeping apart intro-
jections and identifications of opposite quality"
(p. 29). In an earlier publication, Kernberg (1966)
specifies that what is split is not only the affect
states of the ego but also the self and object images.
Masterson & Rinsley (1975) expanding on
Kernberg's (1966) contribution as well as those
of Mahler (1968, 1971) stressed the mother's faulty
libidinal availability during the rapprochement
subphase of separation-individuation as it affects
splitting in the borderline personality. They describe
a split object relations unit, with separate with-
drawing and rewarding part-units, each unit con-
sisting of a component part-self-representation,
part-object-representation, and predominantly
21
 Charles R. Mar mar & Mardi J. Horowitz
linking affect. The two units are said to be actively
isolated from each other by the defense mechanism
of splitting.
Kernberg's formulations provide the cornerstone
for the psychoanalytic understanding of splitting
phenomena in borderline patients. Within psy-
choanalytic circles, Kernberg's work has been
widely heralded as one of the major theoretical
and clinical developments of recent decades. The
acceptance of these contributions in general psy-
chology and psychiatry has, however, been limited
by the confusions surrounding the semantic com-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
plexities of the term, and the often abstract meta-
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psychological presentation of the material. There
is a tendency in psychoanalytic writing to proceed
directly to the highest level of abstraction in de-
scribing clinical phenomena. There are relatively
few detailed case examples or reports of verbatim
transcripts of the therapeutic interactions upon
which the concept of splitting has been based. It
is somewhat analogous to reporting the conclusions
of an experimental study without fully describing
the raw data and statistical procedures used to
support the conclusions.
Pruyser (1975), in a scholarly review of the
history of the term "splitting," pointed out that
considerable semantic confusion exists in regard
to this concept. The term has been used by various
authors as a transitive and intransitive verb, a
noun, and an adjective. The result is that it remains
uncertain who does the splitting and what, if any-
thing, is split. In the above two quotations from
Kernberg, splitting is used first to describe a process
and second to describe a structural set of segregated
affect states and object representations which result
from the process. Structure and function are not
always clearly differentiated, which unnecessarily
complicates matters. To go one step further and
personify the ego, suggesting that the ego splits
itself as both subject and object of the action,
creates the kind of semantic quagmire that stim-
ulates Pruyser to suggest that the term be abandoned
altogether.
Kohut (1971) uses the terms vertical and hor-
izontal splitting of the ego in narcissistic patients
in reference to a different class of phenomena.
The vertical splitting of the ego leads to openly
displayed but unrealistic infantile grandiosity which
in turn depends on the defensive disavowal of
feelings of low self-esteem and shame. The hor-
izontal split refers to the difference between quasi-
realistic expectations of others and unfulfilled ar-
chaic narcissistic demands of the patient which
22
are kept repressed. Kohut is not specifically re-
ferring to the segregation of affect states or self-
and object images which is the subject of this
investigation. It is clear that he is referring de-
scriptively to split-off sectors of the personality
which result from the operation of defenses of
dissociation and repression. While this concep-
tualization of splitting is helpful in the under-
standing of narcissistic personality disorders, the
unfortunate choice of the same term contributes
to further confusion in the understanding of splitting
in the borderline personality.
Lichtenberg & Slap (1973) distinguish splitting
as a broad construct from splitting of representations
which they regard as a specific defense mechanism:
"The specific function of the defense mechanism
is to separate two currents of strong feelings and
urges when these currents would arouse anxiety
if simultaneously experienced towards an object"
(p. 781). They differentiate the defense of splitting
of representations from denial, defined as "the
disavowal of whole percepts and the substitution
of wish-fulfilling fantasy," and from repression,
"the repulsion of a mental content from con-
sciousness in conjunction with a linkage of that
content with a conflictual memory" (p. 781). They
argue that splitting is a phenomenon separate from
repression because in split representations both
sets of feelings and urges are experienced con-
sciously at different moments, so that neither set
can be considered to be securely held out of
awareness.
Volkan (1976) provides clinically rich examples
of the primitive splitting of object representations
in borderline patients. He describes a patient who
evaluated people solely according to their intel-
ligence—good geniuses or bad idiots.
Volkan, in agreement with Kernberg (1966,
1975), Mahler (1971), and Lichtenberg & Slap
(1973), describes the state of emotional flooding
with primitive anxiety experienced when the ther-
apist encourages patients to integrate split rep-
resentations. This is supportive evidence that
splitting serves a defensive function. Patients split
their representations of themselves and others into
all-good and all-bad part objects, and thus ward
off the dread anxiety associated with realistic in-
tegrated whole object images. The strength of
Volkan's work lies in the avoidance of jargon and
the close adherence of theory to the actual case
material.
Horowitz (1977a) examines splitting from the
cognitive structural viewpoint, in terms of the

processing of information about important rela-
tionship experiences. From this cognitive per-
spective, he defines splitting as the "segregation
and multiplication of inner schemata of self and
other. Instead of integrated, realistic, and coherent
self and other models, the person schematizes role
dyads on the basis of multiple 'good' and 'bad'
self and other images" (p. 550). He describes the
property parallel but not overlapping processing
of the meanings of important experiences, such
that positive and negative meanings are accessible
to consciousness but are not compared with one
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another in the manner of usual realistic problem-
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solving.
Dorpat (1979) argues against the inclusion of
splitting as a mechanism of defense. He regards
the class of phenomena described by others as
splitting to be better understood as manifestations
of the defense mechanism of denial. He considers
the use of the transitive verb of splitting as ap-
plicable to the separations of material things, not
abstractions including affects and representations.
In his view the denial is directed toward anger at
a need-fulfilling object, that is, the disavowal of
the negative side of the ambivalence. This for-
mulation is at variance with the clinically observed
alternating dissociation of attitudes seen in bor-
derline patients under conditions of shifting frus-
tration and gratification. Further, while denial of
an aspect of reality is an inherent consequence of
splitting, denial or negation is generic to all defense
mechanisms and does not account for the unique
character of specific defensive operations (Brenner,
1981).
Grotstein (1981), in an excellent overview of
the mechanisms of splitting and projective iden-
tification, postulates two forms of splitting. This
first is an adaptive cognitive perceptual process
of discrimination which allows for the accurate
assessment of similarities and differences con-
tributing to reality perception. The second is a
defensive process intended to keep apart good and
bad images of the self and others in order to
defend against the anxiety of contamination of
the good object with the invasive persecutory
properties of the bad object. This view of splitting
as a defense is in agreement with the formulations
of Kernberg (1966, 1975) and Volkan (1976).
Melito (1983) discusses splitting in reference
to Piaget's phases of cognitive development. The
sensory-motor or preconceptual stage in cognitive
development is characterized by thought dominated
by the context of the moment, which does not
Phenomenological Analysis of Splitting
allow for multiple perspectives of a particular ob-
ject. Melito suggests that the splitting can be
understood as a loss of identity across interpersonal
contexts. In his view this may reflect developmental
immaturity as in the normal child before age 18
months or may be defensive in nature in individuals
capable of conceptual integrative thought but who
disavow one polarity of the perception for defensive
purposes. Melito's article provides a fascinating
integration of the contributions of Piaget (1947,
1968) to the understanding of libidinal object con-
stancy. The Piagetian perspective clarifies the un-
evenness in cognitive functioning seen in indi-
viduals with borderline personality. The same
person, in a relatively conflict-free sphere of cog-
nitive functioning may utilize integrative conceptual
thought in the appreciation of conservation of mass
(the notion that the volume of a fluid remains
fixed despite its being shifted to containers of
various heights and widths) while in the highly
conflicted area of intimate relationships, splitting
reflects a defensively motivated regression in pro-
cessing of ambivalence.
The historical overview indicates that there is
both controversy and inconsistency among psy-
choanalytic thinkers in regard to the use of the
term "splitting." The clearest consensus emerges
among a subgroup working from an object relations
viewpoint, most strongly represented by Kemberg,
Lichtenberg & Slapp, Volkan, Horowitz, and
Grotstein. Their collective thinking represents a
line of conceptualization of splitting with the fol-
lowing central components: Splitting refers to the
segregation of the mental representations of the
self and others, such that part rather than whole
images are formed. Objects may be seen as either
all good or all bad rather than having both good
and bad attributes. Similarly, strong currents of
contradictory feelings, such as love for a person
who is gratifying and hatred when the same person
is at another point in time frustrating, are kept
apart. When feelings of anger emerge toward the
frustrating object, the person has no access to
modulating memories of previous positive feelings
which might temper the reaction to frustration.
The sense of perspective, which requires the in-
tegration of mixed experiences across time, is
impaired, leading to an unrealistic and at times
dramatic overreaction to the experience of the
moment. While these segregated affect states and
related images of the self and others are accessible
to consciousness at different moments, with neither
side of the ambivalence securely repressed or con-
23
 Charles R. Mar mar & Mardi J. Horowitz
sistently denied, the fact that only one side of the
ambivalence is present in awareness at a given
moment precludes the realistic integration of ex-
perience.
From a developmental framework, Mahler's
observations on object representation prior to the
development of libidinal object constancy, and
Melito's discussion of preconceptual thought
dominated by single perspective rather than mul-
tiple simultaneous perspectives of an object, appear
consistent with the cognitive operations seen in
adult splitting mechanisms. While it is tempting
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to postulate developmental arrest in cognitive
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functioning, or regression to immature cognitive
processing as described by Mahler and Melito,
as explanatory for adult splitting phenomena, cau-
tion is required in arguing any point-to-point cor-
respondence between the immature appraisals of
the developing 12- to 16-month-old toddler and
the dichotomous representations of the adult bor-
derline.
Confusion results when different authors employ
the same term in reference to different phenomena,
when metapsychological jargon is not clearly and
operationally anchored in actual clinical material,
and when various semantic forms of the term are
used interchangeably, sometimes implying struc-
ture and at other times implying process. It is the
purpose of this investigation to take up the challenge
of Preuser and others concerning the semantic and
conceptual lack of clarity by examining splitting
phenomena at a lower level of abstraction. A mi-
cronanalysis of moments of the verbatim transcript
of brief psychotherapy with a borderline patient
will be presented in order to operationalize the
concept using as an informational base the actual
words spoken in a segment of the therapeutic
interaction.
Method and Case Description
Configurational analysis is an intensive single-
case-study method designed to describe the char-
acteristic states of patients in psychotherapy, the
characteristic ways in which patients experience
themselves and others during these states, and the
associated patterns of information processing. This
technique has proved useful in the description of
single minutes in therapy, several brief psycho-
therapies, and an entire psychoanalysis (Horowitz,
\911a,b, 1979; Horowitz etal., 1984).
The states are defined by reviewing the vid-
eotapes of the treatment sessions to identify units
of patient behavior with characteristic parameters.
24
For each state, the specific nonverbal behaviors,
verbal behaviors, and congruence between the
form and contents are ascertained. Such states
frequently recur in a characteristic cyclical fashion
which may be modified in the course of treatment
(Horowitz, 1979).
State transitions are reviewed in order to elucidate
the content of the triggers or events that influence
the shift from one state to another. Biological,
intrapsychic, and interpersonal triggers may in-
fluence state transitions with stressful life events,
dreams, drugs, and fatigue playing a role. The
patient may attempt to stabilize one state of mind
in order to ward off entry into a state of dreaded
anxiety, shame, guilt, or rage. For each state,
judges formulate the most prevalent role-rela-
tionship model of a patient, a model containing
three elements; the patient's self-concept, the pa-
tient's image of others, and the patient's intentions
or expectations concerning interaction with others.
Within each state, one or more central, conscious
ideas about an event in the patient's life are spec-
ified, and the subjective meanings of the conscious
idea are elaborated. These ideas are matched against
enduring attitudes such as self-images and models
of the world. In the event of a mismatch, emotions
such as fear, anger, shame, and guilt are generated,
which in turn mobilize controls directed at the
emotions and the ideational structures. These con-
trols may be exclusively intrapsychic operations
or they may involve interpersonal transactions in
which external objects are used to aid in the control
of internal processes. The controls may facilitate
a shift to a second state, with its own specific
ideational-emotional content, specific self- and
object representations, and unique verbal and
nonverbal behaviors. The configurational analysis
is extended until the characteristic states for a
given person are specified, the state transitions
explained, and the cycle of states established.
One clinical judge (C. R. M.) did an exhaustive
review of videotapes, audiotapes, and transcripts
of evaluation and treatment sessions, with a focus
on abrupt transitions in the patient's state of mind.
These points of state disjunction seemed logical
targets for in-depth analysis that might shed light
on competing theories of splitting mechanisms.
A second judge (M. J. H.) independently studied
segments of the tapes and transcripts selected by
the first judge to include salient material prior to,
during, and after points of abrupt state transition.
An early and later section from one such segment
of approximately ten minutes' duration taken from

the middle of the fifteenth treatment session of a
20-hour brief therapy is presented in the results
section. The final formulations of states, role re-
lationship models, and information processing in-
volved in state transition are based on a consensus
of the two judges.
This method was applied to the study of a 32-year-old married
Caucasian woman who was referred to a specialized outpatient
stress and anxiety treatment clinic at a university teaching
hospital. One year prior to her referral, she had engaged the
services of a contractor in order to remodel an old home which
she and her husband had recently purchased. In the course of
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remodeling, the couple had been impressed with the competence
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and seeming good will of the contractor and came to regard
him as a friend. On the night of the incident, the contractor
had worked overtime and left quietly, only to return in the
middle of the night, break into the house, and threaten the
patient and her husband with a gun as they lay in bed. The
intruder proceeded to pistol-whip the husband, inflicting facial
injuries. The patient lay helpless and terrified while witnessing
the assault on her husband and feeling certain that they would
both be killed. She managed to recover her senses, talk the
assailant down, and to her surprise he left without inflicting
any further injury on the couple.
The husband required plastic surgery for his facial lacerations
but after treatment made a full recovery from both the physical
and psychological trauma of the assault. In contrast, the patient
was progressively troubled by the incident. Her initial response
was to feel protective toward the assailant, and she was enraged
with police for their "meddlesome" investigative efforts. ("By
this time I was so sympathetic to George, I mean he was the
hero of the piece, the detectives were the villains.") At a
family celebration following the husband's discharge from the
hospital, she carried her sympathies for the assailant to the
extreme of toasting the assailant in gratitude for not killing
them. She would not allow herself to experience any angry
feelings or thoughts toward him, and unsuccessfully tried to
stifle her husband's considerable rage. Her explanation for
this behavior was that if she expressed anger or even thought
negatively about the assailant, in a magical way he would
know this and return to kill her.
Over the twelve months following the incident, she became
progressively symptomatic. She experienced nightmares, dif-
ficulty in falling asleep, unbidden images of the intruder pointing
the gun in her face that were difficult to dispel from con-
sciousness, and concerns that strangers who vaguely resembled
the contractor might be secreting a weapon and planning to
kill her. When alone, she felt the presence of the assailant in
the home with her. At the time of her initial interview, she
was in a full-blown intrusive phase of a stress response syndrome
(Horowitz, 1976), exhibiting the prototypical symptoms of a
posttraumatic stress disorder.
Of interest in her past history is her relationship with a
harsh and punitive mother whose love she tried to gain by
being a good girl, believing as a child that if you are good,
then you can correct all the evil in the world. She had a warm,
close relationship with her father, but felt she lost him at age
18, when he was temporarily assigned to the east coast only
to return and in the patient's perception reject her in favor of
her mother. Her first marriage at age 25 lasted two and a half
years, and following her divorce she worked as a saleswoman
for a large retail chain. She led "a rakish life," became pregnant,
Phenomenological Analysis of Splitting
and had an illegal abortion with subsequent serious medical
complications. She then lived with a man for 3 years and
from this relationship she had a son, now age 3. After con-
siderable strife, she left this man for her second husband,
whom she described as "like a father figure; he was the age
of my father when I lost him when I was 18."
Results
Two sections of the verbatim transcript taken
from the middle of the fifteenth treatment session
have been selected to illustrate two dramatically
different and characteristic states for this patient.
Following each excerpt, the formal properties of
the state will be microanalyzed, and finally the
configurations of the two states compared to il-
lustrate how the splitting concept can be related
to specific clinical details. The excerpts are taken
from thefifteenthhour of a twenty-hour treatment.
The first material begins with the therapist re-
iterating a major theme of the treatment, specifically
that the assailant's attack on the patient's husband
had a number of unresolved meanings for the
patient:
T: It sounds like the incident with George (the assailant)
really encapsulated a l o t . . . that's why it's been so hard
for you to deal with everything. It just touched off re-
verberations in all sorts of areas of your life. The shock
was terrific!
P: When your . . . when your . . . ideal is a person . . . and
. . . you trust him and you have tried so hard to see good
. . . (crying)... in other people and not hurt people . . .
something like the attack on my husband . . . just finally
destroys you . . . 'cause it takes your whole world . . .
and it turns it upside-down and then you think, 'What's
real?'
T: Mmm.
P: What's real? And you start feeling (gasping) . . . you
start feeling like there's something wrong with you, you
know (gasping) . . . people say, why did you hire George
to begin with, you fool?
T: Mmm.
P: And my sister said, 'Don't you know the world is so ugly'
. . .It's just so bad . . . you feel so angry like somebody
is rubbing your face with it, and I am always saying, no,
no, no! It's not like that. I wasn't foolish. I was good.
Then I think I can't get a hold of anything, nothing's real
any more.
T: Mmm.
P: It's just dehumanizing. I . . . now I , uh . . . you know
it's like I was a happy puppy and somebody's trying to
train me to go to the bathroom someplace else, and all
my little droppings of happiness; they're rubbing my nose
in it and saying, 'See, it's bad, isn't it?' It's bad to look
for happiness and goodness, (crying) It's bad to try so
hard. You'll fail. You'll fail. . . . Have you ever gone to
Vegas or Reno or something and gambled?
T: Uh-huh.
P: Have you ever watched people . . . come and get a string
of good luck, and others get on a string of bad luck
T: Are you saying you're on . . .
25
 Charles R. Mar mar & Mardi J. Horowitz
P: I'm on a string of such shitty luck, I feel it's got to turn
for me soon or I'm going to lose my mind. I'm so afraid
that if I let go I would just be covered with snakes and
worms and mice, and you know it's just that everything
is evil . . . and I'm desperately trying to hang on to the
facts of reality, but I get so angry. As you can see, I have
so much anger in me.
The patient had employed George, the future
assailant, in large part because he belonged to a
group that the patient highly valued. She described
herself as the embodiment of a liberal ideal, and
was disdainful of any expression of prejudice.
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She chose this man despite her knowledge that
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his company was being investigated for construc-
tion fraud. To complicate matters, it appears that
George behaved in a completely responsible,
friendly manner prior to the assault, allowing the
patient to futher idealize him. At one point in
therapy, she described him as a "sweet miracle
worker."
It is against this enduring conceptualization of
George that the patient must evaluate his assault
on her husband. The most serious subjective
meaning of the assault for this patient is that a
dread evil has returned into her life. In her own
imagery it is as if she is invaded by snakes and
worms and mice. The return of evil is elaborated
into a series of catastrophic self-concepts; she
feels she was, is, and always will be a fool, a
naive dreamer, a complete failure.
The breakdown of the idealization of George
generates feelings of shame for having judged him
so naively, guilt for her imagined contribution to
her husband's attack, fear that she is in danger
of being attacked herself, and most importantly,
a consuming rage with herself, the assailant, and
fate for her misfortune. It is the rage which is so
disorganizing for her. It threatens the patient's
usual conception of herself and the assailant as
all good, and she tries desperately to disavow it.
("I am always saying, no, no, no! It's not like
that, I wasn't foolish, I was good. And then I
think I can't get a hold of anything; nothing's real
anymore.") She is flooded with intense affect,
and under the pressure of these feelings, becomes
transiently disorganized in her thought processes.
In this state, the patient experiences herself as
a dirty little puppy, and her representation of the
assailant is that of an evil person who is rubbing
her face in the dirt, confronting her with the es-
sential badness of herself and the world. There
is a frightening sense of loss of boundaries with
the assailant who is experienced as the carrier of
a venomous plague which invades her.
26
The next step in the configurational analysis is
a microanalysis of the controls initiated by the
patient to alter this profoundly painful state. The
following transcript contains the shift away from
this pervasive sense of danger and badness in the
patient's experience, a shift facilitated by the ther-
apist's interventions.
T: It might really help you to consider that no one and no
situation is either all good or all bad. You began to reevaluate
the assault that way, but you brushed aside your better
judgment, and went back to the old assumption that it's
all good until something goes seriously wrong, then it's
all bad. (Spoken in a gentle, supportive, rocking tone.)
P: People try to tell me that, they try to give me some balance.
I suppose they mean well, but they seem to come from
such a cynical attitude.
T: Um, it's not, you know, it's not black and white, and
it's hard to develop that mid-ground where you're judging
every situation as to how much of this or how much of
that is present, and operate on your balanced judgment.
P: Huh (clears throat). It's always been that way for me. I
can really see it. (sniffs) If something goes wrong, I think
everything's wrong then.
T: Mm-hmm, yeah.
P: It's like the end of the world for me . . . it's been a
destructive sort of undercutting for me . . .it's what led
me into the depression, always.
T: Uh-huh.
P: When anything went bad, I couldn't say, well, this will
pass, just because this is bad doesn't mean everything is
bad.
T: Right.
P: I just try really hard not to get into these depressions. But
every once in a while I get on a string of bad luck, and
I have no reinforcement, I have nothing that says, Hey
this is not really the whole picture. I mean (regains com-
posure), I'm so delighted with my son's life, and everything
seems so cool and he's so . . . affectionate.
T: Yeah.
P: My son is a total joy . . . but you know, I need some
good things to happen to me, because to be able to lift
myself up again and say 'O.K., you know this really isn't
so bad and you can find the best out of the situation.' I
have called upon all the resources I have within myself
in the last year to maintain my sanity through these . . .
very heavy things that have happened to me . . . I am
tired, I am very, very tired, I need some positives. I
need. . . .
T: You need somebody to say, 'I'm going to help you.'
P: I know, I know, you're right.
The configurational analysis of the second state
begins with the therapist's intervention that the
patient would be better off if she could simulta-
neously view both positive and negative traits or
attributes of herself and others, and that the im-
portant events in her life have multiple meanings
that do not fit a black-and-white dichotomous and
dissociative view of reality. The patient appears
to attend less to the specific content of the inter-
vention than to the therapist's manner, which is

gentle and supportive, and to the rocking lullaby
quality of the therapist's voice. The predominant
subjective appraisal of the intervention by the pa-
tient is that the therapist cares for her and considers
her to be a worthwhile person. This is matched
against the patient's enduring attitude of herself
as an all-good person and results in a transition
to a state of well-being, with diminution of the
feelings of shame, guilt, worthlessness, and rage
which characterized the first state. The control
over these threatening affects is achieved by reliance
on the external support of the therapist. The pa-
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tient's thought processes, transiently disorganized
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in the first state, become more coherently organized
in the process of rapid reintegration characteristic
of borderline patients (Grinker et al., 1968; Gun-
derson & Singer, 1975).
In the second state, she experiences herself as
a good but needy person deserving the attention
of others. ("I need some positives.") The therapist
is experienced as a good, nurturing caretaker.
Having stabilized these positive images of herself
and her therapist, she then proceeds to organize
her further associations along this positive polarity.
She experiences herself as a good mother with an
ideal son. "I'm so delighted with my son's life,
and everything seems so cool and he's so affec-
tionate—my son is a total joy."
A moment later in the same hour, she comments
about a friend that she has counseled informally.
"And you know, they said I failed with Sarah.
And I said, that is really ridiculous. That girl has
been an alcoholic since she was fifteen and I have
given her a new sense of her values and work
and hopefully things will turn out all right for her.
I don't feel like a failure toward her."
Immediately following her comments about her
girlfriend, Sarah, she discusses her husband: "You
know in many ways he's making me happy right
now, he can't make me . . . you know, he can't
solve my problems. I have to solve my problems
like these either or, black or white things we have
been talking about. He can't solve that, that's
something that's been, you know, practically from
birth, a reaction to my mother. It's just that you
see, I want to have, I want to succeed at a marriage,
and it's all probably going to work out."
Once the patient is able to stabilize a positive
image of herself in relation to the good, reassuring
therapist, she elaborates a series of positive images
in other role relationships in her life. These are
strikingly and unambivalently positive in contrast
to the set of images in the first state which were
totally and bleakly negative. There is as well a
Phenomenological Analysis of Splitting
complementary positive or negative image of the
object. The patient's affects in the two states are
similarly polarized along a pleasure-pain dimen-
sion. These differences can be highlighted by laying
out side by side, in schematic form, the config-
urational analysis of these two states (see Figure
1).
Discussion
The configurational analysis permits a careful
phenomenological examination of the concept of
splitting. In answer to the question, What is split-
ting?, it is clear that it consists of dissociation
between two unique states. These occur in a portion
of the transcript which is only several minutes in
duration. In the first state, the patient is terrified,
enraged, cries uncontrollably, is transiently dis-
organized in her thought processes and regards
herself and the assailant as exclusively bad. In
the second state, she regains her composure, feels
pride and joy in her accomplishments, is no longer
tearful, speaks coherently and in an unpressured
manner, and regards herself and the therapist as
unambivalently good. The defective self-images
of a naive fool, a dreamer, and a complete failure
in the first state (a bad puppy dropping dirt in the
unconscious shorthand of the patient) are in stark
contrast to the self-images of the good mother,
wife, friend, and patient who deserves the support
of the nurturing therapist in the second state. This
is in accord with Kernberg's (1966) formulation
that what is split are not only affect states of the
ego, but also object images and self-images. It is
concordance that links theory to the concrete re-
ferents of a verbatim transcript.
It is clear that splitting, as it applies to split or
segregated affect states and images, is used as an
adjective to describe particular kinds of affect states
and images. What can be said then, in the light
of this configurational analysis, of splitting as a
process that might be used for defensive purposes?
For splitting to constitute a process there must be
an agent that does the splitting, the term must
have meaning as a verb, and there must be an
object of the action. There is evidence from this
case that this patient characteristically and con-
sciously tried to stabilize her idealized good images
of self and even other people such as the assailant.
Her initial response to the attack on her husband
was to continue to idealize the assailant and to
devalue the police. ("By this time I was so sym-
pathetic to George, I mean he was the hero of
the piece, the detectives were the villains.") This
patient initially segregated the ambivalent images
27
 Charles R. Mar mar & Mardi J. Horowitz
STATE ONE
Event Memory of how assailant attacked husband.
Respondent Evil I am a fool, a dreamer,
Ideas has and a failure to have thought
returned that assailant was a sweet
miracle worker.
Emotions Fear, rage, shame, and guilt
Enduring I need purely good allies
Attitudes to survive
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Controls Failure of usual _ Encourages therapist
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control which is to be supportive
to stabilize all-
positive images
of self and valued
others.
Representations Self: Bad ("A bad puppy dropping dirt")
Other: Bad ("Pushing her face in the dirt")
Figure 1.
of the assailant into the good assailant and the
bad police. While this was at the expense of a
realistic appraisal of the event, and grossly in-
terfered with her ability to process the meaning
of this stressful life event for her, resulting in her
development of a highly symptomatic, unresolved
posttraumatic stress disorder one year after the
event, it did transiently protect her from entering
the state of dread and demoralization that later
erupted. Only later, during the fifteenth hour of
treatment, under the protective umbrella of the
therapeutic alliance, does she abandon the ideal-
ization of the assailant and experience the primitive
dysphoric affect characteristic of state one.
It can be inferred that the patient split the rep-
resentation of the assailant as a defense against
experiencing the disorganizing affects associated
with a reality-based integrated image of the intruder.
The patient, rather than "the functions of the ego,"
is the agent of the action, and the varied good
and bad part representations of the assailant are
the objects of this action. In this context, splitting
has meaning as an active process. Further, this is
supportive evidence that splitting serves a defensive
function in this borderline patient, since it protected
her from entering a painful state. Like other im-
mature defenses such as projection and projective
identification, the patient's splitting mechanisms
resulted in a distortion of reality that made it
highly problematic for her to process the meaning
of her stressful life event.
28
STATE TWO
Therapist advises patient to see good
and bad at same time (in rocking, lullaby tone).
Therapist thinks I am a good
am worthwhile mother, friend,
and wife
| Fear, rage, shame, and guilt
f Pride, joy
I am a good person
Self: Good, needy, and deserving help
Other: Good, nurturing caretaker
In conclusion, the application of the method of
configurational analysis to selected verbatim tran-
script material appears useful in the clarification
of a complex phenomena such as splitting. It must
be understood, however, that the final formulations
of states, role relationship models, and information
processing involved in state transitions on which
these findings are based involved the selection of
verbatim material by one judge and the consensus
formulations following independent review of the
material by two judges. This approach to seg-
menting and formulating the therapeutic process
does not permit a formal test of the reliability of
independent judgments, and is therefore suject to
the conceptual bias of the investigators. Other
judges may have chosen different state descriptors,
episodes of state transcription for study, or provided
different explanations for the observed phenomena.
This method is, however, an advantage over the
usual case-conference approach to formulation,
or the testimony of individual experts about psy-
chopathological mechanisms, in that it follows a
specific format for classifying phenomena, and is
anchored to the verbatim material of the case.
Work is in progress to assess the reliability of the
configurational analysis method, with preliminary
success reported for reliable state identification
by both experienced and inexperienced clinical
judges' ratings of videotapes (Marmar, et al.,
1984). While questions of reliability and validity
must be addressed, the attempt is to respond to

the challenge of Knapp (1974), Meehl (1978) and
others who have criticized standard psychotherapy
process methods and who advocate a pattern rec-
ognition methodology more akin to the techniques
applied with success in archaeology, astronomy,
and geology. The study of the phenomena of split-
ting is a step in the direction of the development
of such a methodology.
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