Splitting as a Symptom of Internal Considering

[H-KQGE]

I just want to say something that on the face of it might sound a bit ridiculous. I've been using a number of the techniques elaborated on this page especially, for a long time now. I took some time to re-read the posts as it sounded wrong in terms of my situation. My problem of the emotional centre is that of numbness. I have trust issues yet i feel contradictory in the way i deal with people (since childhood) because of their responses to me. Different people have spoken well of me consistently to others when i'm not around which gets back to me & makes me wonder considering the inconsistent behaviour of these individuals. But the same has been true with teachers, families of friends etc. Yet in terms of projective identification i've almost always been seen in a very good light (given that people always say something behind others backs) which throws me a bit now.

Normally when people expressed their internal considerations (of course not known as in the past) i would distance myself where possible & if not, i would play devil's advocate which judging by the consistency of the responses to it would give a calming effect, or so it seemed. But in recent times the flipside of P.Identification is only clear & consistent in my family - as it's always been. My grandmother (along with her cognitive dissonance in line with P.I) & my mother have always been this way, one sees me as all good until i poke her sacred cow then she splits, the other sees me as all bad then extols my virtues to the other. Since my immediate family are all like this in varying degrees (thus constantly splitting & projecting contributing to their "mental illnesses" now) they have been the most difficult to manoeuvre around rather than all else that i don't seem to have a problem with. (again am uncomfortable around even small groups, yet able to get along well - on the surface)

I used to introspect often which started making me have some kind of sly thoughts about how better i am than "these people" especially my family, & i didn't like that since i knew that wasn't the case & i just wanted to not be like them or make the same glaringly obvious mistakes as them. (like accusing people of things that they do worse, alienating with self-righteous talk/behaviour or my favourite put-down of my mother to everyone including myself of how better she was than everyone, how she wouldn't be understood as her brain works faster than everyone else & so on)
So limited awareness & will got me through that stage pretty quick (am condensing as this is very very long account) & devising methods that allowed me to analyse people's responses to my words & actions (analysis of my responses is relatively new) did also.
Doing the work rams home what I've kept at arms length for ages about just how desensitized i was & still am to a degree (especially to violence) though this numbness has been fading for about a year now. My guess is that being born into a family of predominately psychopathic, pathologically narcissistic authoritarians (it's still difficult to take seeing your whole family described almost word-for-word time & again) will give you at least emotional (pseudo?) inertia, self-loathing issues. But utilizing techniques such as recapitulation has allowed me to see the effects of abuse & trauma of my family to each other not just myself, in terms of diet & health issues (adding to their "mental illnesses") constant splitting & paramoralisms (they're Catholics with mish-mashing of random beliefs that compound their shaky-at-best positions) etc. My concern is that those methods that helped then, also contributed to incremental stifling of my emotions since there's never been anyone to express the suppressed/repressed jumble of stuff "down there" to.

How many others doing the work are not in the position to be able to "metabolize" these processes to any discerning individuals? I am currently confused as to why i am hardly getting angry at things i would expect to. I mean a few months ago i would feel anger - heat rising & flowing through me, although i would temper this strongly (with a family like mine expressions of being wronged by "loving caring godly people" who themselves are always slighted, in youth would see you punished in every way, so discipline was a must) whilst still being courteous, now it's gone. Speaking to obnoxious doctors about blood tests? nothing. Scatter-brain nurse at blood donation centre not understanding simple colloquialism & taking an age to deal with 2-3 questions? gone. And the same for colleagues at work, i'm now even faking anger at my grandfather (an unbelievable true psychopath!) when he continuously "does his thing", help!
I keep telling myself (for the past 3-4 months) that it's because i can't be bothered with the B.S. anymore & that I've "simply" run out of energy for it all. I haven't a clue what's going on here!

 

[happyliza]

Thank you for your salient points Mariama.

TBH, I haven't read the whole thread yet, but a large part of it. I just wanted to respond to you, happyliza, because you mentioned introspection. If I remember correctly: Timothy Wilson writes in 'The Adaptive Unconscious' that introspection isn't as good as we think it is. What does help is a network. He also speaks of inference which is another way of looking at our behaviour through the eyes of others. The way people respond to us tells us something about us, which is more objective than introspection. (Hope I am correct here. :D)

I have noted your advice about introspection plus I have made extensive notes about all the new information - a better still - the more understanding way everything has been explained. By writing the important points it has helped the penny to finally drop - a big eureka for me.

I agree about the best mirror is from those who are objective on our forum. Many times I use the opportunity to 'pour my heart out for the first time' however forget to ask for the MIRROR! I think I have fragments of myself all over the forum but not in any useful place ie the swamp!

Have you thought of bodywork? I am thinking of doing this, since there is so much still present in my body. I would recommend Peter Levine's 'In an Unspoken Voice'. There is a thread on the forum about his book and I think it is worth the read. Especially, because you said this in your next post:

I have read up on some pints that have been posted but do not understand this in depth so will follow your advice and read the thread - which I noticed you that opened it. Looking forward to trying it out.

Not only did you have to deal with psychopaths, you also lost (custody of) your children. I can't even imagine what that must be like, happyliza, and I am really sorry to hear this.
Trauma gets frozen/stored in the body, if we can't find a way to work through it. You must also have suffered a trauma after the separation from your kids. OSIT.

Yes i agree about trauma being stuck in the body and I have stiffness and painful joints, inflammation and muscle pains because of this - which keeps me on edge all the time - naturally. So apart from diet and EE it is a good thing to follow up on so thank you for this pointer.

The children were not taken away from me - the courts were totally on my side - even ex had to admit I was a brilliant mum - so I was given custody, care and control however he chipped away at them on their home visits to him - which I didnt wish to stop ....but in hindsight the kids lost out because of it and had a one-sided pessimistic, racist view on life and how to use others.

Maybe your kids pick up on something in you while you are with them. Maybe you should stop trying so hard to be light-hearted. They are probably old enough to understand that this is very rough on you. Why not tell them that you have a lump in your throat and that you freeze and don't know what to say. That's not bizarre at all, you only see them twice a year. You have to get to know each other again and build up a new kind of relationship. And if they don't want to listen you could write down your thoughts and what you would like to tell them and keep your journal (and tell them that you have this journal that is for them), until the moment comes when one of them may ask for it.

Yes I agree this must be obviously so to them. Now I have good advice to follow from everyone here so will begin to put this into practice. I also agree with Laura that hypnotherapy may well be good for reaching deep seated trauma that needs to be accessed.
Thank you everyone for the superb advice and guidance. BTW - in advance - anything I post I would ALWAYS wish to have a mirror on. We don't know what we don't know.

 

[Buddy]

I am currently confused as to why i am hardly getting angry at things i would expect to.
[...]
I keep telling myself (for the past 3-4 months) that it's because i can't be bothered with the B.S. anymore & that I've "simply" run out of energy for it all. I haven't a clue what's going on here!

Behaviorally, it can probably be usefully said that our general inhibitory systems are stronger than our excitatory systems. IOW, from childhood on I wasn't taught how to be "Buddy" so much as I had to bounce off a few walls consisting of "not this" and "not that" and "no, no, no" until I sort of "fell into" an acceptable role.

Maybe the "heat" of you're awakening emotions reached a threshold that triggered a similarly limiting shut-down sequence? Self-loathing might make a good trigger for that, since the shut down would be self-defensive, preempting a self-destructive impulse.

If that is possible and close to what happened, then maybe an answer is to go more slowly, taking it easy with yourself while you experience safer ways to remember and metabolize potentially harmful emotions. Also, a network might help, or a "best friend" or professional cognitive therapist could be an option for some scenarios, if nothing else, and I'm not implying anything here, just noting available tools.

 

[furryfrog]

I now understand what internal considering is because of this thread. Thanks everyone.

When I want to work on "not" internal considering, an easy way for me is to hop in my car and go for a drive here in Vancouver, especially during rush hour. Spending time with my twin brother is also good practice.

From this thread, I can now identify stuff as internal considering, where as before I just put it into the "buffer" category.

 

[truth seeker]

Thanks for taking the time to post the above, Laura -- the tendency to split (see things in black and white) is something that I'd like to work on more, and this thread provides a fresh perspective to start from.

Absolutely. I'd also like to add my thanks to Laura and everyone who contributed.

 

[Laura]

Another short observation that is probably already obvious, but bears repeating:

A person in the grips of "splitting" or serious internal considering, will naturally become false, sly, manipulative, etc. This can create interesting dynamics depending on the individuals involved.

Person One gets upset and splitting is triggered. That person then engages in powerful projective identification and begins to be covertly aggressive or passively aggressive. This then drives Person Two to behave in some irrational or upset manner which then confirms to Person One that they were "right all along".

Now, here's the rub. When you are presented with a situation and one person has a reputation for being over-emotional and out of control a lot of the time, and the other person has a reputation for being always rational and cool and accurate - both of the individuals exhibit these characteristics pretty consistently, even in their writing and actions - so, the cool and rational person is the one who is believed when they assess and pronounce on another person or situation, right?

For example, we had a particular situation last year when a certain forum member was categorized as pretty much evil all the way around - using a loose term, but you know what I mean.

To my mind, that was just too swift and "done up brown" a judgment and so I wanted to find out what the deal was. The judged individual was invited to visit with us for a bit and after only a very short few days, it was realized that said person simply had a physiological handicap of sorts that was possibly due to genetics. It was, in fact, trying to find a way to help this person that we came across all the research on the ketogenic diet.

What is MOST interesting about this situation is that the person who made the judgment STILL insists "I was right about so-and-so - that SOMEthing was wrong." That misses the whole situation by a mile and is a clear example of black and white thinking. Just knowing something is wrong is only the first step. Figuring out, accurately, WHAT is wrong is the 90% perspiration/networking part.

And that is the problem with black and white thinking: a person gets categorized as either all bad or all good depending on how they make the categorizer FEEL. So, person one feels bad and therefore, person two has to be all bad. And then, person one will undertake to convince others of this with all the wiles of the crafty subconscious, all the while creating narratives in their conscious mind as to why this is necessary, rational, correct and so forth. The longer and more vehemently the categorizing person clings to their judgment, no matter what evidence comes along to show that they made an error, the deeper you can suspect their fundamental personality disorder to be. And I use the term "personality disorder" here as just a disordered personality, not in the technical, diagnostic sense.

Some people NEED to corner the market on being RIGHT in order to feel secure and, possibly, empowered. This is purely and simply the emotions running the intellect, system 1 making the decisions and system 2 being forced to serve as counsel for the defense of the rightness. This then leads to manipulation, deception, pretense and hypocrisy, being two-faced, as it were.

Of course, it could be said that a person practicing External Considering employs similar modes of action. To that I would say that you have to exclude manipulation and hypocrisy because the methods and most importantly, the motives are quite different. Behaving a certain way because it makes life easier for others and self - in the same breath - must always be weighted on the side of making life easier for the OTHERS even at great inconvenience to the self if needed.

 

[Gimpy]

For example, we had a particular situation last year when a certain forum member was categorized as pretty much evil all the way around - using a loose term, but you know what I mean.

To my mind, that was just too swift and "done up brown" a judgment and so I wanted to find out what the deal was. The judged individual was invited to visit with us for a bit and after only a very short few days, it was realized that said person simply had a physiological handicap of sorts that was possibly due to genetics. It was, in fact, trying to find a way to help this person that we came across all the research on the ketogenic diet.

What is MOST interesting about this situation is that the person who made the judgment STILL insists "I was right about so-and-so - that SOMEthing was wrong." That misses the whole situation by a mile and is a clear example of black and white thinking. Just knowing something is wrong is only the first step. Figuring out, accurately, WHAT is wrong is the 90% perspiration/networking part.

This is why meeting people in person is important.

Words on a screen are never enough, even when those words are years long.

Its something I keep in mind, because so much interaction these days is done online, and that can never replace 'quality time'.

 

[istina]

Thanks for taking the time to post the above, Laura -- the tendency to split (see things in black and white) is something that I'd like to work on more, and this thread provides a fresh perspective to start from.

Absolutely. I'd also like to add my thanks to Laura and everyone who contributed.

And I also want to thank you Laura and everyone very, very much on this topic! I will study it again and again...

 

[Buddy]

I feel like the idea of Projective identification is something I've been looking for - at least as it relates to examples of "smaller and milder versions in our daily lives".

When applied to myself, I seem to notice two parts: a conceptual boundary that encloses or separates me from others - an arbitrary dividing line, really - yet somehow capable of holding on to emotional discomfort like a balloon "holds" air. When I think of this conceptual me as captured within a boundary I don't have to draw, then I can feel the discomfort as my own. IOW, it's like being incapable of projecting onto someone else because there's no conceptual identity here to project from. So, I have to deal with it as my own.

Also interestingly, self in its capacity as 'self AND others' seems to restore projective identification to a beneficial function: perhaps as a "basis of more mature psychological processes like empathy and intuition."

Does any of this make sense? Am I just rephrasing something most everybody already knows?

 

[Sunflower]

Some people NEED to corner the market on being RIGHT in order to feel secure and, possibly, empowered. This is purely and simply the emotions running the intellect, system 1 making the decisions and system 2 being forced to serve as counsel for the defense of the rightness. This then leads to manipulation, deception, pretense and hypocrisy, being two-faced, as it were.

I have experienced this. But in my case I think it is empowerment. They are never wrong and won't admit it. The pretense and hypocrisy is unbelievable. Thank you, Laura for clarifying this for me and now I'm gaining insight on how to deal with it.

 

[H-KQGE]

I am currently confused as to why i am hardly getting angry at things i would expect to.
[...]
I keep telling myself (for the past 3-4 months) that it's because i can't be bothered with the B.S. anymore & that I've "simply" run out of energy for it all. I haven't a clue what's going on here!

Behaviorally, it can probably be usefully said that our general inhibitory systems are stronger than our excitatory systems. IOW, from childhood on I wasn't taught how to be "Buddy" so much as I had to bounce off a few walls consisting of "not this" and "not that" and "no, no, no" until I sort of "fell into" an acceptable role.

Maybe the "heat" of you're awakening emotions reached a threshold that triggered a similarly limiting shut-down sequence? Self-loathing might make a good trigger for that, since the shut down would be self-defensive, preempting a self-destructive impulse.

If that is possible and close to what happened, then maybe an answer is to go more slowly, taking it easy with yourself while you experience safer ways to remember and metabolize potentially harmful emotions. Also, a network might help, or a "best friend" or professional cognitive therapist could be an option for some scenarios, if nothing else, and I'm not implying anything here, just noting available tools.

Thanks for your your reply. I took some time to think back over numerous encounters from the last 18 months, which seem to cover the period of implementing techniques against P.I.(it just ain't me & I've often seen this coming a mile off so the times that i must have done it would've been small, probably mostly through my 1st autoimmune reactions 11 years ago) & i couldn't find any. I wasn't sure i understood what you were saying, but the part about a threshold & heat was probably what i was trying to say. Splitting i think, has been the real issue for me & I'm now testing specifically for it in daily interactions to see if i genuinely have progressed by utilizing knowledge from this forum, in the past with a large dollop of awareness & a sprinkling of emotional intelligence. (& more faithful intuition)
I always give people credit no matter what they've done, if they deserve it & always try to move on quickly from any perceived slight so as to mitigate the growing sense of heat- extreme annoyance, frustration etc. (actually anger, now i think of it, is pretty rare since i could never express it with relatives without fear of big-time reprisal, hence my depression lasting into adulthood from repressed feelings) friends would really express their shock when i would get angry in their presence, noting that i never get angry (might mean i need a lot more emotional therapy!) & that "it's always the quiet ones" when i refused to put up with any nonsense from people. I have a high tolerance for abusive behaviour towards me (or rather, have had) which would i imagine, contribute to the repressed stuff & creep toward (types of) people-specific triggers. The point in relation to your advice is that i move really slow all the time so that's not an issue. This might be another though

I feel like the idea of Projective identification is something I've been looking for - at least as it relates to examples of "smaller and milder versions in our daily lives".

When applied to myself, I seem to notice two parts: a conceptual boundary that encloses or separates me from others - an arbitrary dividing line, really - yet somehow capable of holding on to emotional discomfort like a balloon "holds" air. When I think of this conceptual me as captured within a boundary I don't have to draw, then I can feel the discomfort as my own. IOW, it's like being incapable of projecting onto someone else because there's no conceptual identity here to project from. So, I have to deal with it as my own.

Also interestingly, self in its capacity as 'self AND others' seems to restore projective identification to a beneficial function: perhaps as a "basis of more mature psychological processes like empathy and intuition."

Does any of this make sense? Am I just rephrasing something most everybody already knows?

I think I've held on to the perception of being slighted emotionally for too long & kidded myself possibly, into thinking that I've been cleaning up my psyche when it may have been festering. As Carlise said (previous page) it's a case of feeling rather than thinking & my intellectual centre is (too?) well developed & has been taking control since forever so i might be in for a shock in the not-to-distant future with my emotional state going haywire. Another point (from Carlise) is that I've always been too serious which means that i must've been splitting like mad around so many people who seem to think "life's all about fun/money" & so on. As i know that i need to be honest with those in the work (or preparing for it as a lot of people seem to be, myself included) i can say that i am sincere when speaking about putting a lot of these things to practice for a while before i had the specific reference points of being able to name/describe them as is being done now. Thanks to Laura for another great set of examples. Anyone feel free to point out any inconsistencies or whatever.

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

I read the whole thread. I was thinking that I have only a friend to work inner considering/division, someone interested in actual psychology (luckily also beginning a therapy with a professional in cognitive psychology). I will read the thread about Timothy Wilson's work.
Thank you very much to Laura and all who have enriched these issues.

 

[obyvatel]

[quote author=Buddy]
Also interestingly, self in its capacity as 'self AND others' seems to restore projective identification to a beneficial function: perhaps as a "basis of more mature psychological processes like empathy and intuition."

Does any of this make sense? Am I just rephrasing something most everybody already knows?

[/quote]

Klein's model of projective identification has been taken and extended by others to such an extent that it has become quite confusing. Projective identification in its extended form has become ubiquitous in the sense that any type of interaction can be viewed as projective identification. It seems that from such an all-encompassing view of projective identification one can say that empathy is also included in it. I am not an expert in psychoanalytics but this idea (empathy is part of projective identification) does not seem right to me.

At a general level, I look at empathy as objective and "other-centric" - seeing the other as they are. Projection (of which projective identification is a specialized case) is subjective and "self-centric" where the other becomes a carrier of one's unrecognized and disowned material.

One basic question that can come up is this - when we infer something wrongly about another person's state, is it due to projection? Jungian analyst Marie Von Franz says

[quote author=ML Von Franz]
The difference between projection and common error is that an error can be corrected, without difficulty, by better information and then dissolve like a morning fog in the sunlight. In the case of a projection, on the other hand, the subject doing the projecting defends himself, in most cases strenuously, against correction, or, if he accepts correction, he then falls into a depression. He consequently appears to be diminished or disillusioned, because the psychic energy that was invested in the projection has not flowed back to the subject but has been cut off.
[/quote]

More on this later in this post.


The first state of projection and projective identification is understood as an unintentional and unconscious transfer of subjective psychic elements into a phantasy object or as Jung called it "object-imago". In case of projective identification, Klein called this object imago as being formed by the split between "good" and "bad" and treated it as the "paranoid schizhoid position" formed as a defense mechanism to protect the infantile ego from anxiety of annihilation produced from the death instinct.

In the second step, this phantasy material or object image lands (projection -> projectile) on something else or the "other". Jung gave the analogy of hanging a coat on a hook; the hook receives and holds the coat (phantasy material). For the infant, this receiver can be the mother's breast as Klein pointed out. In religious contexts, the receiver of the phantasy material could be an image of a religious figure (possibly charged up from the collective projection of people cutting across barriers of time and space). In interpersonal contexts, the receiver could a person in real life who has some characteristics, however minimal, similar to the image that is being projected. Von Franz illustrates the last point

[quote author=ML Von Franz]
He (an authoritarian projector who experienced his father as tyrannical) will scarcely be able to hang his image of the tyrant onto a gentle, modest worm of a man. If, however, he has to deal with someone who shows even a relatively slight manifestation of self-assertiveness or power, the image of the tyrant lying dormant in him will immediately attach itself to the other person. The projection has taken place; the projector is utterly convinced that he has to deal with a tyrant.
[/quote]


In the third step, and this is perhaps characteristic of projective identification rather than garden variety projection at least in degree of intensity if not in basic quality, the projector induces behavior in the receiver that matches the material that was projected. This is the "self-fulfilling" nature of projective identification where in the above example, the receiver of the "tyrant" image is made to behave like an actual tyrant at least temporarily, something that he would not have done in the absence of the projected material. A back-and-forth interchange ensues and is called transference and counter-transference in psychological literature. At the end of such an exchange, an otherwise psychologically healthy projectee is left wondering "what in the world happened that made me do or say the things I did". The projectee can then easily go down the path of creating narratives to explain what happened - and if he is of the type who takes more responsibility than is warranted by the situation, he would blame himself and get angry at himself for acting in a way that goes against the principles he has set up for himself.

In the case of an interaction between an infant and the mother, the infant projects the unbearable "bad" impulses to the mother in Klein's model. The "good" mother modifies her behavior in cue in a way that the anxiety of the infant is reduced and a feeling of safety or "good" returns. The "bad" mother can be unresponsive or inattentive or be unable to contain the impulses appropriately within her and actually behave in a way that amplifies the original anxiety. The particular way that the mother is "bad" influences the development of the child sometimes well into adulthood. Pat Ogden's work that I cited earlier in this thread has examples illustrating this point in the form of classifying attachment styles.


Coming back to the adult case of projective identification, the third stage can have few different outcomes. One outcome is similar to the infant-mother model. If the therapist or projectee can act as a container holding the "unbearable" material and return it to the projector in a manageable form, healing can take place. At the other extreme end of the spectrum lies an aggressive invasion and infection of the projectee's mind - which is referred to in "Unholy Hungers" as a form of psychic vampirism.

The first outcome which has a beneficial impact reminds us of empathy. It is not the projective identification that results in empathy. Rather, it is the ability of the recipient of the projection to contain it and deal with it appropriately, maintaining a healthy degree of psychological separation from the projector and the projected material while recognizing the latter for what it is that can constitute empathy. Or so it seems to me.

Coming back to
[quote author=ML Von Franz]
In the case of a projection, on the other hand, the subject doing the projecting defends himself, in most cases strenuously, against correction, or, if he accepts correction, he then falls into a depression. He consequently appears to be diminished or disillusioned, because the psychic energy that was invested in the projection has not flowed back to the subject but has been cut off.
[/quote]

The adamant, sometimes violent defense that is observed is a characteristic of the splitting and the intensity of this defense perhaps characterizes the degree of pathology and indicates the possibility of healing and recovery in an inverse way. This is the "paranoid-schizhoid" position which could either be due to an inherited defect or weakness in the instinctive substratum or trauma at a very early stage of development.

The acceptance of correction (real acceptance, not lip service for the sake of appearances) and resulting depression indicates a different dynamic. Klein treats the depressive state as a product of a stronger, more integrated ego structure. Here the splits are not so intensely "black-and-white", and there is a realization that the self and the other can contain both good and bad parts.

[quote author=Klein]
When the infant feels that his destructive impulses and phantasies are directed against the complete person of his loved object, guilt arises in full strength and, together with it, the overriding urge to repair, preserve or revive the loved injured object.
[/quote]

This desire to make reparations driven by a depressive anxiety (I have injured a loved one who may die and never return) is different from the persecutory anxiety observed in the paranoid-schizhoid position. However, in Klein's model, it is possible to move back and forth between these two states. If the depressive anxiety becomes strong enough to overwhelm the ego structure, then it is possible to regress to the paranoid-schizhoid position.

 

[Laura]

Since I'm sort of collecting examples here (and hope that ya'll will contribute other possible examples), there's a particular type of personality that works this way when splitting/internal considering takes hold:

First, they have rapid and overwhelming emotional reactions to whatever the trigger is, and start out from a state of being emotionally worked up. Then, the more this type thinks while in that state, the more s/he freaks out the self, so to say. And the more convinced s/he is that s/he is RIGHT about whatever.

The sad thing is that the more this person continues to "think", the more inaccurate, outlandish, irrational, out of proportion and out of context the thoughts become. This sort of person can drive themselves to do many things that are damaging to others but, in the long run, mostly to themselves.

 

[Aithin Tusa Fein]

Guilty your honor. lol. I will also admit that, personally, even though when I am in that state of emotional thinking and I only recall facts that support my current view, when presented with other facts or logic, etc., as frustrating as it is at the time, it does act as a breaking mechanism, like the breaks on a car so to speak, to the direction and momentum of my view. But, it does not necessarily release the build-up of emotional energy in my head, if that makes any sense.