Splitting Splitting (also called all-or-nothing thinking in cognitive distortion) may mean two things: splitting of the mind,

and splitting of mental concepts (or black a nd white thinking). The latter is thinking purely in extremes (e.g., goodness vs . evil, innocence vs. corruption, victimization vs. oppression, etc.), and can b e seen as a developmental stage and as a defense mechanism. In psychoanalysis, t here are the concepts of splitting of the self as well as splitting of the ego. This stems from existential insecurity, or instability of one's self-concept. Contents [hide] 1 Relationships 2 Borderline personality disorder 3 Narcissistic personality disorder 4 Janet and Freud 5 Melanie Klein 6 Otto Kernberg 7 Transference 8 See also 9 References [edit] RelationshipsSplitting creates instability in relationships, because one person can be viewed as either personified virtue or personified vice at differe nt times, depending on whether he or she gratifies the subject's needs or frustr ates them. This along with similar oscillations in the experience and appraisal of the self lead to chaotic and unstable relationship patterns, identity diffusi on, and Other-directed mood swings. Consequently, the therapeutic process can be greatly impeded by these oscillations, because the therapist too can become the target of splitting. To overcome the negative effects on treatment outcome, con stant interpretations by the therapist are needed.[1] Splitting contributes to unstable relationships and intense emotional experience s, something that has been noted especially with persons with narcissism. Alexan der Abdennur writes in his book on narcissistic personality disorder, Camouflage d Aggression, that "[t]hrough this splitting mechanism, the narcissist can sudde nly and radically shift his allegiance. A trusted friend can become an enemy; th e partner may become an adversary."[2] Treatment strategies have been developed for individuals and groups based on dia lectical behavior therapy, and for couples.[3] There are also self-help books on related topics such as mindfulness and emotional regulation that have been help ful for individuals who struggle with the consequences of splitting.[4] [edit] Borderline personality disorderMain article: Borderline personality disor der The borderline personality is not able to integrate the good and bad images of b oth self and others, so that people who suffer from borderline personality disor der have a bad representation which dominates the good representation.[5] This m akes them experience love and sexuality in perverse and violent qualities which they cannot integrate with the tender, intimate side of relationships.[6] These people can suffer from intense fusion anxieties in intimate relationships, because the boundaries between self and other are not firm. A tender moment bet ween self and other could mean the disappearance of the self into the other. Thi s triggers intense anxiety. To overcome the anxiety, the other is made into a ve ry bad person; this can be done, because the other is made responsible for this anxiety. However, if the other is viewed as a bad person, the self must be bad a s well. Viewing the self as all bad cannot be endured, so the switch is made to the other side: the self is good, which means the other must be good too. If the

other is all good and the self is all good, the distinction at which the self b egins and ends is not clear. Intense anxiety is the result and so the cycle repe ats itself.[citation needed] [edit] Narcissistic personality disorderMain article: Narcissistic personality d isorder People matching the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder al so use splitting as a central defense mechanism. Most often the narcissist does this as an attempt to stabilize his/her sense of self positively in order to pre serve his/her self-esteem, by perceiving himself/herself as purely upright or ad mirable and others who do not conform to his/her will or values as purely wicked or contemptible. Given "the narcissist's perverse sense of entitlement and spli tting. . .[s]he can be equally geared, psychologically and practically, towards the promotion and towards the demise of a certain collectively beneficial projec t." (Abdennur, the Narcissistic Principle of Equivalence)[7] The cognitive habit of splitting also implies the use of other related defense m echanisms, namely idealization and devaluation, which are preventative attitudes or reactions to narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury.[8] [edit] Janet and FreudMain articles: Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud Splitting was first described by Pierre Janet, who coined the term in his book L 'Automatisme psychologique. Sigmund Freud acknowledged Janet's priority, stating that 'we [Breuer and I] followed his example when we took splitting of the mind and dissociation of the personality as the centre of our position'.[9] However he also differentiated 'between our view and Janet's. We do not derive the psych ical splitting from an innate incapacity for synthesis...we explain it dynamical ly, from the conflict of opposing mental forces...repression'.[10] With the development of the idea of repression, splitting moved to the backgroun d of Freud's thought for some years, being largely reserved for cases of double personality: 'The cases described as splitting of consciousness...might better b e denoted as shifting of consciousness, that function or whatever it may be osci llating between two different psychical complexes which become conscious and unc onscious in turn'.[11] Increasingly, however, Freud returned to an interest in how it was 'possible for the ego to avoid a rupture...by effecting a cleavage or division of itself'.[12 ] His unfinished paper of 1938, "Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence" , took up the same theme, and in his Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]).. .[he] extends the application of the idea of a splitting of the ego beyond the c ases of fetishism and of the psychoses to neuroses in general'.[13] The concept had meanwhile been further defined by his daughter Anna Freud[citati on needed]; while Fenichel summarised the previous half-century of work to the e ffect that 'a split of the ego into a superficial part that knows the truth and a deeper part that denies it may...be observed in every neurotic'.[14] Kohut would then systematize the Freudian view with his contrast between 'such h orizontal splits as those brought about on a deeper level by repression and on a higher level by negation', and ' a vertical split in the psyche...the side-by-s ide, conscious existence of otherwise incompatible psychological attitudes'.[15] [edit] Melanie KleinMain article: Melanie Klein There was, however, from early on, another use of the term "splitting" in Freud, referring rather to resolving ambivalence "by splitting the contradictory feeli ngs so that one person is only loved, another one only hated. . .the good mother and the wicked stepmother in fairy tales."[16] Or, with opposing feelings of lo ve and hate, perhaps 'the two opposites should have been split apart and one of them, usually the hatred, have been repressed'.[17] Such splitting was closely l

inked to the defense of 'isolation...The division of objects into congenial and uncongenial ones...making "disconnections"'.[18] It was the latter sense of the term which was predominantly adopted and exploite d by Melanie Klein. After Freud, 'the most important contribution has come from Melanie Klein, whose work enlightens the idea of "splitting of the object" (in t erms of "good/bad" objects)'.[19] In her object relations theory, Klein argues t hat 'the earliest experiences of the infant are split between wholly good ones w ith "good" objects and wholly bad experiences with "bad" objects',[20] as childr en struggle to integrate the two primary drives, love and hate, into constructiv e 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 chi ld hates (bad, frustrating objects), 'because everything is polarised into extre mes of love and hate, just like what the baby seems to experience and young chil dren are still very close to'.[21] Klein refers to the good breast and the bad b reast as split mental entities, resulting from the way 'these primitive states t end to deconstruct objects into "good" and "bad" bits (called "part-objects")'.[ 22] The child sees the breasts as opposite in nature at different times, althoug h 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 progress es to the next phase, the depressive position, which 'entails a steady, though p ainful, approximation towards the reality of oneself and others'[23]: integratin g the splits and 'being able to balance [them] out...are tasks that continue int o early childhood and indeed are never completely finished'.[24] However, Kleinians also utilize Freud's first conception of splitting, to explai n the way 'In a related process of splitting, the person divides his own self. T his is called "splitting of the ego"'.[25] Indeed, Klein herself maintained that 'the ego is incapable of splitting the object internal or external without a co rresponding splitting taking place within the ego'.[26] Arguably at least, by th is point 'the idea of splitting does not carry the same meaning for Freud and fo r 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'.[27] As a result, by the close of the century 'four kinds of splitti ng 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"'.[28] [edit] Otto KernbergMain article: Otto Kernberg In the developmental model of Otto Kernberg,[29] the overcoming of splitting is also an important developmental task. The child has to learn to integrate feelin gs of love and hate. Kernberg distinguishes three different stages in the develo pment 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 betwe en 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 th inking about another person as bad implies that the self is bad as well, so its b etter to think about the caregiver as a good person, so the self is viewed as go od too. 'Bringing together extremely opposite loving and hateful images of the s elf and of significant others would trigger unbearable anxiety and guilt'.[30] Third stage: Splitting 'the division of external objects into "all good" or "all bad"'[31] begins to be resolved when the self and the other can be seen as poss essing 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 i

s all hateful either. If a person fails to accomplish this developmental task satisfactorily, borderli ne pathology can emerge. 'In the borderline personality organization', Kernberg found 'dissociated ego states that result from the use of "splitting" defences'. [32] His therapeutic work then aimed at 'the analysis of the repeated and oscill ating projections of unwanted self and object representations onto the therapist ' so as to produce 'something more durable, complex and encompassing than the in itial, split-off and polarized state of affairs'.[33] [edit] TransferenceMain 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 a n experiencing portion, the former recognizing the latter as not appropriate in the present and as coming from the past."[34] Clearly, 'in this sense, splitting , so far from being a pathological phenomenon, is a manifestation of self-awaren ess'.[35] Nevertheless, 'it remains to be investigated how this desirable "split ting of the ego" and "self-observation" are to be differentiated from the pathol ogical cleavage...directed at preserving isolations'.[36] [edit] See alsoBetrayal Compartmentalization Dehumanization Dialogical self Dissociative Identity Disorder - previously called Multiple Personality Disorder Emotional detachment Erik Erickson - psychologist False dilemma [edit] References1.^ Gould, J.R., Prentice, N.M. & Ainslie, R. C. (1996). The sp litting index: construction of a scale measuring the defense mechanism of splitt ing. Journal of personality assessment, 66 (2), 414430 2.^ Alexander Abdennur, Camouflaged Aggression (2000) p. 88 3.^ Siegel,J.P. Repairing Intimacy,1992 Linehan, M. 1993. 4.^ Jacobs, B. 2004, Siegel,J. 2010. 5.^ Siegel, J.P. (2006). Dyadic splitting in partner relational disorders. Journ al of Family Psychology, 20 (3), 418422 6.^ Mitchell, S.A. & Black, M.J. (1995). Freud and beyond. New York, NY, Basic B ooks 7.^ Abdennur, p. 88=9 8.^ Siegel, J.P. (2006). Dyadic splitting in partner relational disorders. Journ al of Family Psychology, 20 (3), 418422 9.^ Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (London 1995) p. 25 10.^ Freud, Five p. 33 11.^ Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (Middlesex 1987) pp. 534 12.^ Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (Middlesex 1987) p. 217 13.^ Angela Richards, "Editor's Note", Metapsychology p. 460 14.^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 145 15.^ Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (Madison 1971) pp. 1767 16.^ Fenichel, Neurosis p. 157 17.^ Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II (London 1991) p. 119 18.^ Fenichel, Neurosis p. 158 19.^ T. Bokanowski/S. Lewkowicz, On Freud's "Splitting of the ego in the process of defense" (London 2009) p. x 20.^ Richard Appignanesi ed., Introducing Melanie Klein (Cambridge 2006) np [173 ] 21.^ Robin Skinner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p . 98 22.^ Appignanesi, Klein p. 123 23.^ Appignanesi, Klein p. 131 24.^ Skinner, Families p. 98 25.^ Appignanesi, Klein p. 125

26.^ Quoted in Paul Holmes, The inner world outside (1992) p. 117 27.^ Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud (London 2005) p. 252 28.^ Quoting Robert Hinshelwood, in Quinodoz, Reading Freud p. 252 29.^ Mitchell, S.A. & Black, M.J. (1995). Freud and beyond. New York, NY, Basic Books 30.^ Otto F. Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (London 1990) p. 165 31.^ Kernberg, Borderline p. 29 32.^ Paul Brinich/Christopher Shelley, The Self and Personality Structure (Bucki ngham 2002) p 51 33.^ Brinich, Self p. 51 34.^ Fenichel, Neurosis p. 570 35.^ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 1995) p. 1 74 36.^ Fenichel, Neurosis p. 570