In her book, "Imbroglio" Janice Cauwels writes:
Traumatic Splitting
"Saunders and Arnold, for example, argue that many borderline
symptoms are not defenses against intrapsychic conflict, as the
psychoanalysts would have it, but rather internalizations of actual
experiences of abuse... Within the childhood abuse context, Saunders
and Arnold reformulate splitting in terms of its:
TIMING: Although the primitiveness of splitting suggests that it
originates in early childhood, Saunders and Arnold argue that it
can arise at any point before adolescence due to the devastating
impact of chronic abuse within a "safe" family environment.
RELATIONAL CONTEXT: It is not the mother-child relationship that
generates splitting, but rather that between the child and the male
perpetrator of abuse. The abuse that results from her ignorance,
powerlessness, or neglect in this particular situation is what giver
the mother's unresponsiveness to the child its connotation of profound
betrayal.
STATUS AS DEFENSE: Splitting is less a defense than a repetition
of the child's actual experience of abuse, denial, contradictions,
and mixed messages. What Saunders and Arnold call 'a learned template
superimposed on contemporary experience' is activated in the borderline
when she anticipates a repitition of her early relationships. The
extreme reactions that helped the abused child deal with genuine
dangers are inappropriate to similar situations in the present and
are labeled pathological in the borderline adult...how can a child
be expected to picture an abuser realistically, integrate her love
for and hatred of him, and develop a stable identity of her own?
Splitting can also be explained in terms of another concept
discussed by Saunders and Arnold that may apply to borderlines.
Traumatic Bonding is the term used by other researchers for the
intense, inextricable attachment to someone who alternates loving
connection or dependency with intermittent mistreatment. As well as
perceiving people as good and bad, the borderline may be attracted to
those who genuinely alternate affection and abuse, each of which is
then exaggerated in the borderline's mind.
Echoing Dr. Siever's earlier reference to splitting as state
dependent, Dr. Herman agrees with the explanation just outlined:
"Why would a child fail to integrate idealized or terrifying images
of her caretakers? The reason would have to be either constitutional
or adaptive. Splitting is adaptive. Children must preserve some sense
of connection at any cost, in this case by walling off the image of
the abusive figure from the positive one. I think they do so in a
state-dependent way, flipping between modes of affection and terror
that accurately reflect their environments. They grow up constantly
scanning their interpersonal environments to see if they're safe,
reading subtleties of expression, posture, gesture, and so forth in
an almost uncanny way. But if you ignore the original reason for this
behavior, it looks perverse, incomprehensible, and ultmately
pathological."
BIOLOGICAL SPLITTING
'...splitting may be a kind of specialized state-dependent learning'
says Dr. Siever.
Borderlines have highly polarized dissociated states and use
dissocation as a defense. When something triggers a positive
representation, it may be stored with very good feelings. But the
very bad feelings may be so overwhelming and devastating that when
those are triggered, they must be kept dissociated. It's not that
borderlines cognitively can't recall what another person is really
like, but their representations become split off from each other in
a sort of state-dependent fashion. The affective immediacy is gone
because it doesn't have the same resonance.
Splitting develops a psychological life of its own with borderlines.
They can use these idealized images as protection against the negative
feelings of rage or helplessness. So they've developed a whole
psychological vocabulary.
But in this defense, like others, may evolve or be made more likely
from some of the underlying termperamental factors. Someone with an
unstable or impulsive temperament is more likely to use splitting as a
defense. There's no doubt that abuse and trauma can lend themselves to
using dissociation, but some people are nevertheless better at it than
others."
In the book, "Lost In The Mirror", Dr. Richard Moskovitz describes
splitting this way:
"This defensive fiction is called splitting. It is a natural
outgrowth of the discontinuity of the infant's experience ..splitting
may serve a particularly useful function when a crucial love object,
such as a parent, severly violates trust, as occurs with physical or
sexual abuse...Splitting enables the child to accept the 'good parents'
love without it being tainted by something heinous.
...If you are borderline, you may never have acquired that basic
trust in a loving caretaker. Or, once having learned to trust, you
may have been so betrayed that you have had to retreat to a world of
discontinuity, peopled by caricatures ...splitting prevents you from
developing an enduring image of yourself and others and is partly
behind your elusive sense of identity...splitting is a defense
intended to protect, but it is also a treacherous force that can
destroy relationships and sabotage treatment."
