Living in Black and White: Understanding Splitting Through a Psychodynamic Lens

Have you ever noticed moments when life seems to exist only in extremes? Someone is either completely trustworthy or entirely disappointing. We are either succeeding or failing. Relationships feel all-consuming, or not worth pursuing at all.

Psychodynamic theory suggests that this tendency towards 'black and white' thinking may sometimes reflect a process known as splitting.

Splitting is understood as an unconscious way of protecting ourselves emotionally. Early experiences that feel inconsistent, overwhelming, or frightening can shape how we understand ourselves and others. Separating experiences into categories of 'good' and 'bad' may once have helped us manage emotions that felt too difficult to hold all at once.

It is important to remember that splitting is not something people choose to do. It is often an attempt to cope with feelings that once felt unbearable.

The difficulty arises when this way of understanding the world follows us into adulthood. Relationships can become characterised by extremes: fearing abandonment whilst longing for closeness, idealising others before becoming disappointed by them, or struggling to accept that people can be both caring and flawed. We may even treat ourselves in the same way, seeing ourselves as either wholly capable or entirely inadequate.

Yet life can feel exhausting when lived in such extremes.

Part of emotional development involves learning that conflicting experiences can coexist. Someone can love us and still let us down. We can feel frustrated with those we care about without losing that care altogether. We can recognise both our strengths and our vulnerabilities without defining ourselves by either.

It is also important to recognise that black and white thinking can arise for many different reasons. In neurodiversity, innate differences in information processing may influence how one makes sense of themselves and the world around them, including a greater need for certainty, predictability, and clear distinctions. Whilst this can sometimes resemble what psychodynamic theory describes as splitting, the underlying reasons can be entirely different.

Our experiences are shaped by a combination of temperament, neurobiology, relationships, and life events, and no single theory can fully explain the complexity of being human.

Therapy can provide a space to practise recognising how we see ourselves and others, regardless of how that way of thinking came to be. Within a consistent and compassionate relationship, we may begin to explore the parts of ourselves that long for certainty and the parts that fear disappointment, loss, or vulnerability. Over time, it can become possible to tolerate greater complexity and develop a more compassionate understanding of ourselves and others.

Perhaps growth isn't about becoming a different person. It's about developing the capacity to hold more of our experience at once: the light and the dark, certainty and doubt, love and disappointment. To discover that life has always existed in the grey, and that we can survive there too.

References.

Blass, R.B. (2015). Conceptualizing splitting: on the Different Meanings of Splitting and Their Implications for the Understanding of the Person and the Analytic Process. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 96(1), pp.123–139.                                https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-8315.12326.

Gabbard , G.O. (2016). Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis, Second Edition. [online] Google Books. American Psychiatric Pub.

Klein, M. (1952). The Origins of Transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, [online] 33, pp.433–438.

Marlan, S. (2010). Facing the Shadow. In: Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of C.G. Jung. [online] Open Court Publishing.

Milton, J. (2018). From the Melanie Klein archive: Klein’s Further Thoughts on Loneliness . International Journal of Psychoanalysis, [online] 99(4), pp.929–946. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2018.1476027.

Roth, P. (2001). The paranoid-schizoid Position. In: Kleinian Theory: a Contemporary Perspective. [online] University College London: Whurr Publishers, pp.32–47.

Sechaud, E. (2015). The Double Nature of Splitting . International Journal of Psychoanalysis, [online] 96(1), pp.141–143.                                                    https://doi.org/0002101556;%2010.1111/1745-8315.12325.