Personality Disorders Support Group
Personality disorders form a class of mental disorders that are characterized by long-lasting rigid patterns of thought and behaviour. Personality disorders are seen by the American Psychiatric Association as an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it.
My husband's family has a history of mental problems and now my daughter is being seen. What is splitting?
I was "hero worshiping" my former principal. When he used information from our friendship to force me into a forced resignation, I had see him as all good still or all bad. I chose to see him as all good which means I was all bad. I put myself in the "dungeon" so my black and white world would stay balance. When I did this I was splitting-black and white. A person or thing has to be all good or all bad.
The first reply was excellent wikipedia will explain it even better. I just thought an example would be nice.
Hero worshiping is something else BPD's do. My principal had stood up for me against the admin. After that I thought he was the most wonderful person on the planet. I wasn't attracted to him physically -although he was attractive, but he was plain and simple a hero-a Superman.
Tamara
"Splitting: The Black-and-White world of the Borderline
The world of a borderline, like that of a child, is split into heroes and villains. A child emotionally, the borderline cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile another's good and bad qualities into a constant coherent understand of that person. At any particular moment, one is either "good" or "evil"; there is no in-between, no gray area. Nuances and shadings are grasped with great difficulty, if at all. Lovers and mates, mothers and fathers, siblings, friends, and psycho-therapists may be idolized one day, totally devalued and dismissed the next.
When the idealized person finally disappoints (as we all do, sooner or later), the borderline must drastically restructure his one-dimensional conceptualization. Either the idol is banished to the dungeon, or the borderline banishes himself in order to preserve the "all-good" image of the other person.
This type of behavior, called "splitting" is the primary defense mechanism employed by the borderline. Technically defined, splitting is the rigid separation of positive and negative thoughts and feelings about oneself and others, that is, the inability to synthesize these feelings. Normal persons are ambivalent and can experience two contradictory feeling states at one time; borderlines characteristically shift back and forth, entirely unaware of one feeling state while in another.
Splitting creates an escape hatch from anxiety: The borderline typically experiences a close friend or relation (call him "Joe) as two separate people at different times. One day, she can admire "Good Joe" without reservation, perceiving him as completely good; his negative qualities do not exist; they have been purged and attributed to "Bad Joe." Other days, she can guiltlessly and totally despise "Bad Joe" and rage at his badness without self-reproach - for now his positive traits do not exist; he fully deserves the rage.
Intended to shield the borderline from a barrage of contradictory feelings and images - and from the anxiety of trying to reconcile those images - the splitting mechanism often achieves quite the opposite effect: The frays in the personality fabric become full-fledged rips; the sense of his own identity and the identities of others shifts even more dramatically and frequently"
Sorry if that was too long and if there are any spelling or typographical errors those are my fault - not the books :) Hope this helped :)