Splitting (psychology)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Splitting (also called binary thinking, black-and-white thinking, all-or-nothing thinking, or thinking in extremes) is the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the

defense mechanism[1] wherein the individual tends to think in extremes (e.g., an individual's actions and motivations are all good or all bad with no middle ground). This kind of dichotomous interpretation is contrasted by an acknowledgement of certain nuances known as "shades of gray".[2]

Splitting was first described by Ronald Fairbairn in his formulation of object relations theory;[3] 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, instead seeing the good and bad as separate. In psychoanalytic theory this functions as a defense mechanism.[4]

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.[5] 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 outcomes, constant interpretations by the therapist are needed.[6]

Splitting contributes to unstable relationships and intense emotional experiences. Splitting is common during

mindfulness and emotional regulation that claim to be helpful for individuals who struggle with the consequences of splitting.[10][11]

Borderline personality disorder

Main article: Borderline personality disorder

Splitting is a relatively common defense mechanism for people with borderline personality disorder.

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".[12][13] 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.[14]

Narcissistic personality disorder

Main article: Narcissistic personality disorder

People matching the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder also use splitting as a central defense mechanism. Most often narcissists do 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.[15]

The cognitive habit of splitting also implies the use of other related defense mechanisms, namely

narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury.[14]

Depression

In depression, exaggerated all-or-nothing thinking can form a self-reinforcing cycle: these thoughts might be called emotional amplifiers because, as they go around and around, they become more intense. Typical all-or-nothing thoughts:

  • My efforts are either a success or they are an abject failure.
  • Other people are either all good or all bad.
  • I am either all good or all bad.
  • If you're not with us, you're against us.[16]

Janet, Bleuler and Freud

Splitting of consciousness ("normal self" vs. "secondary self") was first described by

repression, splitting moved to the background of Freud's thought for some years, being largely reserved for cases of double personality.[23] 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",[24] a theme which was extended in his Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]) beyond fetishism to the neurotic in general.[25]

His daughter Anna Freud explored how, in healthy childhood development, a splitting of loving and aggressive instincts could be avoided.[26]

Klein

See also: Melanie Klein § Thought, and Reparation (psychoanalysis) § Klein

There was, however, from early on, another use of the term "splitting" in Freud that referred 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".[27] 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".[28] Such splitting was closely linked to the defence of "isolation ... The division of objects into congenial and uncongenial ones ... making 'disconnections'".[29]

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)[30] (in terms of 'good/bad' objects)".[31] 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",[32] 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

depressive position, which "entails a steady, though painful, approximation towards the reality of oneself and others":[35] integrating the splits and "being able to balance [them] out ... are tasks that continue into early childhood and indeed are never completely finished".[36]

However, Kleinians also use 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'".[21][37] Indeed, Klein herself maintained that "the ego is incapable of splitting the object—internal or external—without a corresponding splitting taking place within the ego".[38] 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".[39] 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".[40]

Kernberg

In the developmental model of

Otto Kernberg, the overcoming of splitting is also an important developmental task.[41]
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:

  1. The child does not experience the self and the object, nor the good and the bad as different entities.
  2. 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".[42]
  3. Splitting – "the division of external objects into 'all good' or 'all bad'"[43] – 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'.[44] 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".[45]

Horizontal and vertical

Heinz Kohut has emphasized in his self psychology the distinction between horizontal and vertical forms of splitting.[46] Traditional psychoanalysis saw repression as forming a horizontal barrier between different levels of the mind – so that for example an unpleasant truth might be accepted superficially but denied in a deeper part of the psyche.[47] Kohut contrasted with this vertical fractures of the mind into two parts with incompatible attitudes separated by mutual disavowal.[48]

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".[49] Clearly, "in this sense, splitting, so far from being a pathological phenomenon, is a manifestation of self-awareness".[50] 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".[49]

See also

References

  1. PMID 224184
    .
  2. ^ "Dichotomous Thinking and the Pittston Coal Strike". Psychology: A Journal of Human Behavior. 27 (4): 17. 1990.
  3. doi:10.1080/10481889609539128
    .
  4. ISBN 978-1-58562-410-2. Archived
    from the original on 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2016-10-06.
  5. ISBN 978-0-415-59634-3
    .
  6. PMID 8869581
    .
  7. ^ "What is Borderline personality disorder – Splitting". Archived from the original on 2013-11-02. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  8. ^
    PMID 19379090
    .
  9. ^ Siegel, J. P.; Linehan, M. (1993) [1992]. Repairing Intimacy.
  10. ^ Jacobs, B. (2004). {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ^ Siegel, J. (2010). {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  12. ^ "What is Borderline Personality Disorder?". Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Archived from the original on 2013-05-15. Retrieved 2013-04-27.
  13. ^ "Diagnostic criteria for 301.83 Borderline Personality Disorder". DSM IV – TR. Archived from the original on 20 April 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  14. ^
    PMID 16937998
    .
  15. ^ Alexander Abdennur. The Narcissistic Principle of Equivalence. pp. 88a–89.
  16. ^ Gilbert. pp. 63, 98. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  17. ^ Janet, Pierre (1899). De l'Automatisme Psychologique [Of Psychological Automatism] (in French). p. 317.
  18. ^ Moran, Dermot; Parker, Rodney K. B. (eds.). Studia Phaenomenologica: Vol. XV / 2015 – Early Phenomenology. Zeta Booksa. p. 234.
  19. ^ Bleuler, Eugen (1908). "Die Prognose der Dementia Praecox — Schizophreniegruppe". Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie (in German). 65: 436–434.
  20. ^ Freud, Sigmund (1995). Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. London. p. 25.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  21. ^
    ISBN 978-0-946-43949-2. Archived
    from the original on 2020-09-30. Retrieved 2020-10-03.
  22. ^ Freud, Sigmund (1995). Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. London. p. 33.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  23. ^ Freud, Sigmund (1987). On Metapsychology. Middlesex. pp. 53–54.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  24. ^ Freud, Sigmund (1987). On Psychopathology. Middlesex. p. 217.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  25. ^ Richards, Angela. "Editor's Note". Metapsychology: 460.
  26. ^ Young-Bruehl, E. (2008). Anna Freud. p. 322.
  27. ^ Fenichel. Neurosis. p. 157.
  28. ^ Freud, Sigmund (1991). Case Histories II. London. p. 119.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  29. ^ Fenichel. Neurosis. p. 158.
  30. ISBN 978-1-78181-026-2. Archived from the original
    on 2017-01-11.
  31. ^ Bokanowski, T.; Lewkowicz, S. (2009). On Freud's "Splitting of the ego in the process of defense". London. p. x.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  32. ^ Appignanesi, Richard, ed. (2006). Introducing Melanie Klein. Cambridge. p. 173.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  33. ^ Skynner, Robin; Cleese, John (1994). Families and how to survive them. London. p. 98.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  34. ^ Appignanesi. Klein. p. 123.
  35. ^ Appignanesi. Klein. p. 131.
  36. ^ Skinner. Families. p. 98.
  37. ^ Appignanesi. Klein. p. 125.
  38. ^ Haolmes, Paul (1992). The inner world outside. p. 117. ... the ego is incapable of splitting the object—internal or external—without a corresponding splitting taking place within the ego.
  39. ^ Quinodoz, Jean-Michel (2005). Reading Freud. London. p. 252.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  40. ^ Hinshelwood, Robert. Reading Freud. p. 252. ... a coherent split in the object, a coherent split in the ego, a fragmentation of the object, and a fragmentation of the ego.
  41. ISBN 978-0-465-01405-7
    .
  42. ^ Kernberg, Otto F. (1990). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. London. p. 165.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  43. ^ Kernberg. Borderline. p. 29.
  44. ^ Brinich, Paul; Shelley, Christopher (2002). The Self and Personality Structure. Buckingham. p. 51.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  45. ^ Brinich. Self. p. 51.
  46. ^ Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self. p. 79.
  47. ^ Fenichel, O. (1946). The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis. p. 145.
  48. ^ Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self. pp. 177, 185.
  49. ^ a b Fenichel. Neurosis. p. 570.
  50. ^ Rycroft, Charles (1995). A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London. p. 174.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Splitting_(psychology)&oldid=1192765429"