**🔼 Up:** [[❍ Defence Mechanisms]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #DefenceMechanism > **🌱 Planted:** Wed 22 January 2025 --- Splitting is a [[❍ Defence Mechanisms|Psychological Defence Mechanism]] where we tend to see situations, people or even ourselves in extremes—like all good or all bad—also known as "black and white thinking". It’s our mind's way of simplifying overwhelming or complex emotions when the grey and nuanced areas in between feel too hard to handle or process. It was first described as a defence mechanism by [[Melanie Klein]] as part of her work on [[Our sense of self unfolds intersubjectively, not separately|Object Relations Theory]]. Klein explained that splitting begins in early infancy when a baby can’t yet understand that a parent or caregiver can be both loving and frustrating at the same time. To cope with this confusion, the baby splits the caregiver into two parts—the nurturing and comforting “good object”, and the unresponsive or neglectful “bad object.” A good example of splitting might be to think back to a time where someone you care about did something that really hurt your feelings, and this made you upset or angry. You might have felt like they were the worst person ever and it might have also been difficult to remember the times they were loving, caring or supporting in that same moment. Another example I'm sure many people have experienced, myself included, is where you're in a relationship with someone and you break up due to fundamental issues or incompatibilities. After a while, you start to miss them. When you then look back on that person and the relationship, all you can see is all of the good, and none of the bad. This happens because splitting as a defence prevents the integration of "good" and "bad" object memories into a single whole object which allows one to see another's goodness even when they're being rejected or getting frustrated by them (known as "object constancy"). --- **➡️ Next:** [[Splitting can come with us into adulthood]] --- **\*️⃣️ Expand:** ️ - Splitting plays a key role in [[❍ Object Relations]] which highlights how our sense of self, personality and interactions with others are influenced by our early relationships in infancy. - Splitting fundamentally drives [[Projection is the act of pushing unacceptable emotions onto someone else|Projection]] and [[Projective Identification compels others to take on projected emotions|Projective Identification]], where the person who is projecting is unable to accept or integrate the unacceptable or disowned ("bad") Parts of themselves, so they instead project it outward onto others.