Splitting and Projection

Splitting is one of the central defense mechanisms in borderline personality disorder. It explains why those affected often perceive their environment in extreme categories — either as completely good or completely evil.

What Is Projection?

Projection means not seeing one’s own aspects in oneself, but instead transferring them onto another person and combating them there. For the person with borderline, “combating” often means annihilation.

Projection also means that one’s own imago (inner image) is projected onto the other person.

The Splitting Mechanism

Basic Understanding

Splitting is in itself nothing unusual — every child splits in early developmental phases. The difference: In borderline disorder, this primitive form of defense persists and is actively employed.

Active vs. Passive Splitting

The person with borderline is subject to active splitting. This means:

• They do not do this unconsciously, but consciously
• They do not only split between “good and evil”
• But also between absent and present

Developmental Psychology Background

The splitting mechanism is an early and primitive way of coping with psychological stress. This defense mechanism is normally superseded by the next higher form — repression.

Developmental Arrest

If the child remains stuck at a developmental stage (here: the relationship to people), its defense mechanisms also remain arrested. The consequence: This person experiences pure chaos in interpersonal relationships.

Temporal Classification

• Splitting occurs chronologically before repression
• Splitting means flight
• It is deployed against an internal “drive danger” (ID)
• But only when this is treated as if it were an external danger signal

This is why the person with borderline is constantly ready to react with panic attacks as soon as their protective mechanisms are attacked — or they perceive it as such.

Why Splitting Instead of Repression?

Energy Efficiency

Since splitting requires less “counter-cathexis energy” than repression, it is easier for the person with borderline to resort to this mechanism — especially since they have not developed the next higher mechanism.

The Critical Disadvantage

Repression and splitting are both protective mechanisms of the EGO. The disadvantage of splitting is that — in contrast to repression — the split-off influences (energies) remain permanently present and are not resolved.

Practical Example

After an argument, “everything was fine again and water under the bridge” — yet the next time the topic comes up, the person with borderline reacts with the same intensity as before.

The Shift of the Object Image

Here also lies a reason for the shift of the object image (the partner) from idealization to devaluation.

The person with borderline experiences such moments as if they were placed outside themselves — that is, ego-syntonic (ego-alien):

• They see themselves like a second figure over whom they have no influence
• All the more, they can feel genuinely sorry when the “other one, the other I” has disappeared
• The person with borderline is not lying here — they truly and genuinely feel this pain
• They cannot explain it
• We can say: They experienced it as if they were in the wrong film

Tools for Maintaining the Split

To maintain the characteristic splitting, certain tools are required:

1. Idealization — Elevating the other person to a perfect object
2. Projection — Transferring one’s own aspects onto others
3. Projective identification — Identifying with the projected image
4. Omnipotence and devaluation — Extreme self-overestimation or depreciation

Idealization

Idealization is a necessary component of human development — especially the image of parents. This process is important for the formation of the ideal EGO.

Childhood Memory

Remember your mother: Was she not large, overpowering, loving, tender, angry? Throughout all that time, you were powerless, and to withstand this pressure, you too split (“good mommy / bad mommy”).

The Difference from the Person with Borderline

Over time, healthy people learn that they no longer need to do this, because the mother was present — they could move away and come close again.

Michel’s Separation Process - The disrupted separation process in borderline development

For the person with borderline, the mother conveyed the exact opposite:

“I am good when you are here / I am bad when you move away. Come here — and in that moment: Go away!”

An ambivalent behavior of the mother is sufficient here.

Parallel to Separation

The ex-partner of a borderline relationship does the same thing as the little child with borderline once did: They idealize the partner, even though this person is causing them such terrible pain. A protective mechanism of the soul.

The Child and Aggression

As a child, it often happens that the parents are idealized and the child blames itself for “not being loved.” Here all three disorders come into play:

• Borderline
• Narcissist
• Eating disorder

The Central Mechanism

The child projects its aggression onto the loved object but must simultaneously idealize it in order to protect it from destruction by the aggression.

The EGO as Buffer Zone

The EGO acts as a buffer zone to neutralize energies.

Left: In an integrated psyche, the EGO mediates between ID and SUPER-EGO. Right: In borderline splitting, the EGO is fragmented — the drive forces of the ID shoot through unchecked.

When the Buffer Zone Is Missing

If in later life there is no complex EGO, it cannot neutralize these energies — and what must happen, happens: The energies collide unchecked.

If in this case the idealized object is not available, auto-aggression — self-injury — occurs very quickly.

Projective Identification

The person with borderline sees their counterpart as an attacker when they devalue them. They perceive them only in partial aspects, not as a whole person. In that moment, they do not know that this person can also be good.

To protect themselves, they apply projective identification:

• They introject (internalize) the hated and feared object
• Comparable to “Stockholm Syndrome”

The Mechanism of Annihilation

1. The person with borderline projects “their” guilt onto the other
2. To be able to do this, they must identify with the other (projective identification)
3. They thus become the other
4. Only now can they combat “their” bad aspects in the other
5. Combating means for them: annihilating
6. They thus annihilate “their” bad aspects within themselves
7. But they annihilate the other in the process, because they are no longer “themselves” but the other

Put simply: They annihilate aspects that they attribute to the other but that exist only within themselves. Since this does not work (the other does not actually have these aspects — they are only imaginary), the other person is annihilated.

The Projector-Screen Analogy

You as the Screen

Imagine: You are a screen, the person with borderline is the projector.

• The projector has a bad film inside and projects it onto the screen (you)
• The projector is annoyed by the poor quality and blames the screen
• The screen says: “That’s not me”
• The projector does not care
• The projector does not think to change the film (it is the childhood — impossible)
• So it works on the screen until it matches the projected film
• That the screen is now in tatters is beside the point
• Now it fits, says the projector, and keeps running its film
• But the screen is alive and changes
• So the projector must readjust
• Normally by adjusting its lens — not here
• The screen is “set up” again
• And when it is worn out, a new one is bought

Projective Identification

The person with borderline takes over the EGO of the other (because they do not have one) — seamlessly. They become the other.

Since you too are subject to projection, they become the perfect screen.

Up to a certain degree this works, and the person with borderline allows it (they are seeking the merger after all).

But: They are also a projector — now it gets complicated.

They have now become a Pro-Screen (projector and screen simultaneously).

That does not work — and so the vicious cycle begins.

The Borderline Dilemma

• You adjust your lens nicely, as is proper
• The problem: The screen does what it wants
• Sometimes it is perfectly white, sometimes it is black
• Once they have become the projector again and set up the screen, they can approach again
• Which for them means “devouring, becoming one” — and simultaneously triggers fear
• And they become the screen again in the other’s projection

Now the vicious cycle begins — the borderline dilemma.

The Leap Behavior in Relationships

The leap or splitting behavior is particularly evident in intimate relationships.

The Normal Relationship Range

In the normal relationship range, it is entirely normal (since no relationship is static) that partners:

• Sometimes love each other more, sometimes less
• Experience very happy times
• Also have tensions now and then

Nevertheless, partners perceive the other as a whole person. They move within a normal relationship-emotional spectrum.

The Borderline Relationship Range

The leap behavior of borderline personality disorder compared to the normal relationship range

The Extreme

The situation is entirely different in a borderline relationship. The normal range is non-existent and is skipped over — in one direction as in the other.

Range 1 / 1a: Idealization

• Exaggerated admiration
• Completed symbiosis
• “You are my god”
• Splitting into “good,” “white”

Range 3 / 3a: Devaluation

• Sudden devaluation
• “You were my god”
• Splitting into “evil,” “black”
• Relationship termination possible

The Dynamics of Leaping

• From Range 1/1a, the borderline personality abruptly leaps to Range 3 (devaluation)
• Intrapsychically, it is usually not possible to leap directly from 3 to 1
• They must go via 3a to 1 and from there to 1a
• From 1a to 3a often marks a relationship termination

The Perspective of the Person with Borderline

In the Idealization

• Your actions are perceived as protective
• You become the unassailable god

In the Leap to Devaluation

• Your actions become manipulation
• You become the attacker

In the Devaluation

• The person with borderline can no longer see 1 and 1a
• But: massive longing for 1a
• This creates frustration, tension, rage
• They must return (immediate drive gratification) to 1a
• They demand immediate symbiosis from the partner

The Problem of Missing Empathy

Empathy Deficit

When the person with borderline is in 3a, they will typically wound so deeply that the partner first needs to process and cannot forgive immediately.

No person with borderline accepts this. Due to the lack of empathy, they cannot comprehend how they have hurt the partner.

Typical situation:

Partner: “I can’t switch gears that fast, let me calm down first, I’ll go for a 3-hour walk.”

Person with borderline: “If you leave now, I’ll be gone when you come back.”

The Inner Experience

• The person with borderline also feels completely torn apart by this alternation
• However, they project the blame for their behavior onto the partner
• In Range 1a: Omnipotence (sense of all-powerfulness)
• In Range 3a: Self-devaluation, self-injury, infidelity, drug/alcohol abuse, attacks of hatred

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Further Reading

To fully understand splitting, it is also recommended to read about the psychodynamic model, which explains the underlying structures of ID, EGO, and SUPER-EGO.