A Family, Relationship, and human Communication Problem: Splitting

Did you ever have the experience of telling someone(friend or family member) something private only to discover the information coming back to you from a third person and in a form that is very distorted? This can be very disconcerting, to say the least. For example, many years ago, (when I was young and had a full head of hair), my uncle reported to me a comment my brother had made about me. The report made me very angry but it also caused me to feel very peculiar. After all, what was I to do with the information? What did it mean and did it reflect what my brother truly felt?

This is something I refer to as "indirect communication." It is also known, in the field of psychodynamic family therapy as "splitting. "Splitting,... what is that?"

Splitting is an attempt on the part of one person to make another, third individual, look wrong, bad, guilty. In this case  my brother was doing the splitting. He was complaining about me to our uncle. In doing so, my brother was causing me to look really bad or negative. However, my uncle was also splitting by carrying the message back to me outside of my brother's awareness. I knew him well enough to be aware of the fact that he enjoyed making my brother look bad at every opportunity.

Splitting can happen anywhere including at work, among groups of friends and, of course, within families. It is a pathological form of communication because the person who is doing the splitting is attempting to create havoc by portraying another person as "all bad." Here is an example of splitting occurring at an outpatient mental health clinic I worked at for many years:

Case:

So, splitting is a primitive defense mechanism. We all have and use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves in the face of danger. The problem of splitting is that it is a very unhealthy form of self defense that does nothing to help the individual interact in ways that are healthy. It is unhealthy because people are neither all good nor all bad but a combination of both.

It is important that people see others in of "shades of gray" rather than "black and white." my uncle had a lot of difficulty seeing people in shades of gray. I remember, going back to my earliest childhood, that he tended to portray others as idealized or evil. Whatever happened in his childhood prevented him from having a more accurate view of people. That problems destroyed most of his relationships throughout his life.

It is important to remember that, in the process of splitting, the other person may be viewed as unrealistically perfect, ideal and good. At the outset of romantic relationships there may be a short, but healthy, period of viewing the romantic partner in totally idealized terms. In this scenario, splitting plays a health role in starting what could become a long term relationship. However, the idealization of the romantic partner gives way to a more realistic picture of the other as the two people come to know and understand one another in ways that are more realistic. During this period of the deepening of the relationship, two people realize that their partner is just a normal human being, comprised of strengths and weaknesses.

Splitting is often used by governments during times of war. In this, the enemy is portrayed as the paragon of all that is evil. After the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center, there was a strong tendency on the part of many Americans, to view all Arabs and Muslims as totally evil, violent, murderous and blood thirsty. Those of us who knew Muslims in the community were well aware that this portrayal was totally false. These people held nothing in common with the tiny minority of radical Muslims lead by Osama bin Laden.

One of the most destructive forms of splitting is in the form of racism. Of course, the racist is the hateful individual who views the members of another race as all evil. In this, the race to which they belong is thought of as perfect and ideal while the other as less than human. Racism has existed not only here, in the United States, but in nations worldwide. Hitler is the most is a prime example of splitting. Jews, Russians, East Europeans and other groups were defined as animals and good for nothing except either elimination or slavery. Ethnic cleansing is a more recent example of splitting.

However, it is in the daily lives of many people that splitting most often takes place.

There is the often quoted biblical reminder that "he who is without sin should cast the first stone." The meaning of the saying is that none of us are without sin because we are human and, therefore, imperfect.

What are your experiences with the defence mechanism of splitting? In what ways have you found yourself splitting" In what ways have you been the victim of splitting?

Allan N. Schwartz, PhD