Splitting & Borderline Personality Disorder

(from Wikipedia)

Splitting can be explained as thinking purely in extremes, e.g. good versus bad, powerful versus defenseless and so on. Splitting can be seen as a developmental stage and as a defense mechanism.
Splitting was first described by Pierre Janet. He initially coined the term splitting in his book L'Automatisme psychologique. Sigmund Freud also worked to explain this idea, and it was later more clearly defined by his daughter Anna Freud.




If a person fails to accomplish this developmental task, borderline pathology can develop. The borderline personality is not able to integrate the good and bad images of both self and others. Kernberg also states that people who suffer from borderline personality disorder have a ‘bad representation’ which dominates the ‘good representation’. This makes them experience love and sexuality in perverse and violent qualities which they cannot integrate with the tender, intimate side of relationships. These people can suffer from intense fusion anxieties in intimate relationships, because the boundaries between self and other are not firm. A tender moment between self and other could mean the disappearance of the self into the other. This triggers intense anxiety. To overcome the anxiety, the other is made into a very 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 as 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, where does the self begin and end? Intense anxiety is the result and so the cycle repeats itself.

People who are diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder also use splitting as a central defense mechanism. They do this to preserve their self-esteem. They do this by seeing the self as purely good and the others as purely bad. The use of splitting also implies the use of other defense mechanisms, namely devaluation, idealization and denial.

Splitting creates instability in relationships, because one person can be viewed as either all good or all bad at different times, depending on whether he or she gratifies needs or frustrates them. This, and similar oscillations in the experience of the self, lead to chaotic and unstable relationship patterns, identity diffusion and mood swings.

Consequently, the therapeutic process can be greatly impeded by these oscillations, because the therapist too can become victim of splitting. To overcome the negative effects on treatment outcome, constant interpretations by the therapist are needed.