Splitting
Definitions
Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual
“Splitting is the tendency to compartmentalize positive and negative perceptions and feelings, and consequently to view self and others in caricatured, black-or-white, all-good or all-bad categories.”
“Splitting may involve viewing certain people as ‘all good’ and others as ‘all bad,’ or may involve alternating contradictory perceptions of the same person.”
“A consequence of splitting is a failure to integrate disparate aspects of identity into a coherent whole. Consequently, patients whose personalities are organized at the boderline level show ‘identity diffusion’: Their attitudes, values, goals , and feelings about self are unstable and changing, and their self-perceptions can oscillate between polarized extremes.” 1
Kernberg, Otto
“…splitting protects the ego from conflicts by means of the dissociation or active maintaining apart of introjections and identifications of strongly conflictual nature, namely, those libidinally determined from those aggressively determined … .”
“…as long as these contradictory ego states can be kept separate from each other, anxiety is prevented. Such a state of affairs is, of course, very detrimental to the integrative processes which normally crystallize into a stable ego identity, and underlies the syndrome of identity diffusion.”2
Quotes
Sapir, Edward
“Once we have made up our minds that all things are either definitely good or bad or definitely black or white, it is difficult to get into the the frame of mind that recognizes that any particular thing may be both good and bad (in other words, indifferent) or both black and white (in other words, gray), still more difficult to realize that the good-bad or black-white categories may not apply at all.”3
Discussion
Basically, splitting is as a lack of tolerance for ambiguity. Anything that isn’t clear is made clear by forcing it into one of a limited number of possibilities. This usually forms a binary system of good/bad, progressive/conservative, rationalist/empiricist, and so on, but needn’t be restricted only to two options. For example, people are typically lumped together according to their politico-economic allegiances to either capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism, anarchy, or libertarianism.
On a personal level, which is where splitting becomes really problematic for people, splitting effectively reduces everything down to two categories: with me or against me. This is why splitting (known as black-and-white thinking in the realm of cognitive science) is a feature of just about every category of psychological ailment. It’s the simplest possible way of making sense of the world and is therefore our most powerful survival tool.
- With me = good = approach
- Against me = bad = retreat/attack
Children and dogs are capable of this, ants are capable of this, and single celled organisms are capable of this; and those who do it best are the ones that survive.
This is also why splitting and the issues that rely so heavily on it (borderline, narcissism, depression, etc.) are so resilient and resistant to treatment. Until the person believes that you are not trying to hurt them (or are not in some way allied with hurtful people), they will always be hostile to any attempt to help.
Working with splitting therefore requires serious patience, and the ability to repeatedly introduce the idea of ambivalence in a non-threatening way. This can take a very long time and be immensely frustrating, which is why borderline and narcissism in particular are generally viewed as difficult to deal with and impossible to cure.
The irony here is that this reaction is itself a splitting defense, caused by becoming the target of a client’s intensely emotional splitting. Even the most experienced therapist can become so frustrated that they regress into their own splitting reaction; in this case curable/incurable. They then use this split to rationalise passing the client off to someone else, or they begin to “forget” sessions or “miss” the client’s email to book a next session (both classic examples of repression).