Splitting (psychology)
As fission or splitting defense is referred to a special psychological defense mechanism which consists of a reactivation of an early childhood mental state in which the individual is no integration of the positive and negative aspects of one's self and it has developed surrounding objects.
The division provides defense in specific stress or conflict that unbearable ideas about the self, or the objects are kept apart, with the result that the self or objects as either " just good" or " all bad " are perceived. Example, instead of negative feelings of a beloved person actually opposite to feel (which may eg represent a specific strain due to a non subdued early childhood trauma ), the image of that person in a "good" and "evil " is split share. This division protects the "good" object share before one's own aggression, which can be the "bad" object share compared with danger and excessive lived out in the next moment, or at least attributed projective. In addition, the cleavage defense protects the positive aspects of the self against overwhelming negative ideas about the self, until they come elsewhere in unadorned manner, in the form of self-doubt and self-hatred to self-injurious behavior expressed.
The cleavage is therefore a compromise of, in which the ego is forced to continually oscillate between two affective states back and forth, without that it could perceive their different tints in sync. This mechanism is supported by other immature defense mechanisms such as denial, projection, devaluation and idealization or projective identification. For individuals whose preferred defense mechanism is the cleavage, change the emotional states accordingly from striking abruptly. Just now beloved objects are now hated suddenly, he spontaneously proposes to sadness to joy, confidence is seemingly abruptly replaced by mistrust and violent fears are destroying broader confidence. All this is due to the consequential inability to tolerate ambivalence.
Overcoming the development stage of a predominant use of the splitting defense in early childhood is synonymous with the attainment of the ability to recognize good and evil and to accept the negative side of everything good. Consequence of a pathological fixation on the primitive mechanism of cleavage are maintaining distorted and unrealistic ideas of their own self-image and the object world and the relational representations. Clinically it is called here sometimes of " private logic " or " reduced to reality ".
Genesis
In the first months of the mental development of man from a close symbiotic bond with the primary caregiver is determined. However, the infant takes the primary caregiver, usually the mother, not as a complex individual with their own needs true. Rather, he stands in a respective exclusive relationship with the separate functions, which occupies the mother for the satisfaction of his needs. These exclusive relationships are called sub-object relationships. The mother is feeding, protection or comfort. When hunger "means" this caregiver so " fütterndes object" in fear " protecting property" and sadness " comforting object". In the immature psyche of the infant so individual relationships consist of functional partial aspects of the primary reference object, while their individual traits or characteristics can not be recognized as such at this stage of development. The same is true with the Self. Ideas of his own greatness and omnipotence on the part objects constantly available alternate feelings of despair and helplessness when the infantile needs are frustrated by the caregiver.
After 6-9 months, these previously perceived as separate self and object aspects are gradually integrated into consistent performances. It develops integrated self and object representations, conceptions of self and other that are complex and ambivalent. The mother is now increasingly recognized as a separate one's self from the self- existent individual with a will of its own, which is not fully to satisfy their own needs are available. This process is referred to as early Individuationsentwicklung.
The perception of separateness from the mother due to the infant abandonment fears on the one hand and anger at this " renegade " primary object on the other. Both the abandonment fears and the anger signal the psychic apparatus of the infant is a real threat for him from destruction and loss of protective and supplying caregiver and must endure and be processed. In this early stage of development, however, the child's psyche is not yet the mature coping variant of repression available, which only developed with increasing differentiation of the cognitive and emotional mental structure. Instead, sets the immature ego a primitive defense mechanisms to cope with such a threatening emotional states. Thus, the abandonment fear is countered with an intense desire for fusion, where the mother is perceived as " only good " object. The rage to which erweisende as an independent individual mother is, however, projected to the mother. This represents a compromise in which it is the less threatening alternative, that the mother of the infant angry faces, as the infant remains driven by anger, since the latter the anyway already experienced as threatening process of separation of the self from the maternal primary object would accelerate. Consequence of this projection of one's own anger at the mother is a representation of it as " only bad " object. This archaic fears of persecution resulted.
The thus formed primitive feelings of merger desire and paranoia are the components of the so-called Individuationskonfliktes early childhood development represents the inner world of the infant has thus a division into "good" and learn " evil." Melanie Klein speaks of a " divided world ". This stage of development is prone to damaging influences, especially as at this stage still fragile sense of a separate self of the infant is still dependent on the real presence of the primary caregiver, ie it has not yet developed object permanence.
Both phenomena, the division of the world and the lack of object permanence can only be processed by a reliable and consistent care to the primary caregiver. Dealing with the infant should be empathetic and patient. In particular, the changing ego states the child can trigger their own feelings of humiliation or abandonment fears in the mother. Your task, then, is not act upon those feelings, but to integrate them and to provide the child in such a metabolized form of identification is available. Thus, the child learns that his negative emotions (fear, aggression ) have no real menacing quality, but at best produce tolerable ambivalence. At the end of this recurring process of projective identification of originating from the Individuationskonflikt competing feelings is in the optimal case, the ability to accept that objects have both positive and negative components combine in himself as well as the certainty that the independent from its own self- individuality of the objects no threat represents for the relationship with them and for the existence of one's self.
When this processing of Individuationskonfliktes fails, for example, by an unpredictable, Refusals, unempathisches, kränkbares or impatient behavior of primary caregiver that of abandonment and paranoia of early childhood phase can not be overcome. The recognition of the contradictions and ambivalence of the self and the objects thus remains permanently fragile and goes under specific loads by division into " good" and "evil" again lost. The caregivers are then "bad" also perceived in youth and adulthood only in terms of "good" and functions for one's own self and self-image is subject to constant fluctuations of grandeur and worthlessness. In the absence of important reference people 's self-esteem may also sometimes be difficult to maintain (object dependence ), which manifests itself in feelings of inner emptiness to annihilation anxieties. These feelings can occur already at a merely fantasized loss of a protected object.