Splitting: The Black-and-White World of the Borderline The world of a borderline, like that of a child, is split into heroes and villains. A child emotionally, the borderline cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile anoth er’s good and bad qualities into a constant, coherent understandingof that person. At any particular moment, one is either “good” or “evil”; there is no in-between, no gray area. Nuances and shad ings are grasped with great diffculty, if at all. Lovers and mates, mothers and fathers, siblings, friends, and psychotherapists may be idolized one day, totally devalued and dismissed the next. When the idealized person fnally disappoints (as we all do, sooner or later), the borderline must drastically restructure his strict, infexible conceptualization. Either the idol is banished to the dungeon or the borderline banishes himself in order to preserve the “all-good” image of the other person. This type of behavior, called “splitting,” is the primary defense mechanism employed by the borderline. Technically defned, split ting is the rigid separation of positive and negative thoughts and feelings about oneself and others; that is, the inability to synthesize these feelings. Most individuals can experience ambivalence and perceive two contradictory feeling states at one time; borderlines characteristically shift back and forth, entirely unaware of one emotional state while immersed in another. Splitting creates an escape hatch from anxiety: the borderline typically experiences a close friend or relation (call him “Joe”) as two separate people at different times. One day, she can admire “Good Joe” without reservation, perceiving him as completely good; his negative qualities do not exist; they have been purged and attributed to “Bad Joe.” Other days, she can guiltlessly and totally despise “Bad Joe” and rage at his evil without self-reproach—for now his positive traits do not exist; he fully deserves the rage. Intended to shield the borderline from a barrage of contradic tory feelings and images—and from the anxiety of trying to rec oncile those images—the splitting mechanism often and ironically achieves the opposite effect: the frays in the personality fabric become full-fedged rips; the sense of her own identity and the identities of others shift even more dramatically and frequently. If you have not had the chance to read this book yet, please message me with your email address and I will email you a PDF copy. Peter x
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:42:36 +0000
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