Someone you trust forgets an important promise. The disappointment is real. Yet, within minutes, the person who yesterday felt dependable now seems entirely selfish. Past care no longer carries emotional weight. The mind has not calmly reviewed the whole relationship and reached a new conclusion. It has reorganized the person.

Psychologists use the term splitting of the other to describe a defensive process in which another person is experienced as all good or all bad, while contradictory qualities are kept apart. The shift can bring momentary clarity to an emotionally confusing situation. It can also replace a complex person with a simplified image that changes as fear, anger, longing, or disappointment changes (Di Giuseppe & Perry, 2021).

This process is often discussed in relation to borderline personality disorder, but it should not become a casual diagnosis or a way to dismiss legitimate judgment. People sometimes change their minds because new evidence matters. They sometimes discover that a relationship is unsafe. Splitting is a more specific problem: the current emotional image becomes so dominant that the other side of the person is difficult to access, even when it remains factually known.

What Splitting of the Other Means

In psychodynamic theory, the word other refers to another person as represented in the mind. It does not mean that the person is literally an object. Splitting of the other’s image occurs when positive and negative impressions cannot be held together as parts of one coherent representation (Kernberg, 1975).

Di Giuseppe and Perry describe splitting as a defense that changes how a person is held in mind. Positive and negative qualities are not erased; they are kept apart. When one side takes over, the person may seem entirely good or entirely bad. Someone may remember having felt differently yesterday, yet that earlier view carries little emotional weight now (Di Giuseppe & Perry, 2021).

Defense mechanisms are relatively automatic ways of managing internal conflict, threatening emotion, and external stress. Their protective purpose matters. A defense may help a person remain organized when ambivalence feels unbearable. Problems grow when the protection becomes rigid, repeatedly distorts present reality, or prevents repair.

How Splitting Organizes Perception

Close relationships regularly produce mixed experience. The same person can comfort and disappoint us, respect one boundary and miss another, or act generously while remaining limited in important ways. Holding these facts together requires tolerance for uncertainty and for feelings that do not resolve neatly.

Splitting reduces that burden by separating the conflicting images. The good image can be protected from anger, while the bad image can be protected from longing or dependence. Once one image dominates, the relationship feels easier to interpret. The certainty is emotionally useful even when it is incomplete.

Kernberg described splitting as actively keeping apart internal representations of opposite emotional quality. In his account, an idealized all-good image and a threatening all-bad image remain insufficiently integrated. This formulation belongs to object relations theory and should be presented as a clinical model rather than a settled account of every person’s development (Kernberg, 1975).

Predictability and emotional protection

A divided image can make unpredictable relationships feel more manageable. If someone is placed in the good category, dependence may feel safe for a time. If the person is moved into the bad category, withdrawal or attack can feel necessary and self-protective. The mind no longer has to ask how care and injury, reliability and failure, or affection and anger can coexist.

Developmental theories often connect difficulties integrating emotional representations with early relationships that were frightening, inconsistent, or difficult to understand. Cramer treats defenses as developing forms of protection rather than fixed defects, while Fonagy and Target connect early relationships with the development of reflective functioning. These are probabilistic developmental models, not a biography that can be inferred from one episode. Present stress, attachment threat, trauma history, temperament, and current relationships also matter (Cramer, 1991; Fonagy & Target, 1997).

Idealization

Idealization attributes exaggerated positive qualities to another person. The person may seem uniquely understanding, unusually powerful, incapable of selfishness, or able to provide the safety that no one else can offer. Ordinary limitations receive little attention because acknowledging them would disturb the protective image.

Admiration itself is not a defense. We can accurately recognize someone’s strengths and feel grateful for them. Idealization becomes relevant when the positive image is unrealistic, when contrary evidence is repeatedly excluded, or when the person’s perceived perfection is expected to solve emotional problems that require a broader response (Di Giuseppe & Perry, 2021).

Devaluation

Devaluation attributes exaggerated negative qualities to another person. A disappointing friend becomes completely disloyal. A therapist who misunderstands one statement becomes incompetent. A partner who needs space becomes uncaring. The negative judgment may protect against shame, disappointed dependence, grief, or the fear that the relationship matters more than feels safe (Di Giuseppe & Perry, 2021).

The rapid reversal

The most recognizable pattern is the reversal from idealization to devaluation. Kernberg described abrupt shifts in which an external person moves from an all-good compartment to an all-bad one. The earlier image is not necessarily forgotten; it loses emotional authority. What feels true now controls perception and response (Kernberg, 1975).

What Splitting Is Not

Ambivalence and changed judgment

Ambivalence is the capacity to experience conflicting feelings about the same person. A person can love someone and resent them, admire their courage and dislike their rigidity, or feel grateful while deciding that continued contact is unwise. Contemporary relationship research likewise treats ambivalence as the simultaneous activation of constructive and destructive thoughts and responses, not simply as a failure to choose one side (Zoppolat et al., 2024).

Changed judgment is also not necessarily splitting. New information may reveal a pattern that earlier trust had obscured. The question is not whether a conclusion is strongly positive or negative. It is whether the conclusion remains proportionate to the evidence and whether contradictory facts can still be considered.

Recognizing harm and setting boundaries

A pattern of manipulation, coercion, contempt, chronic dishonesty, or violence may justify a strongly negative conclusion and protective distance. Psychological complexity does not require treating every interpretation as equally likely, forgiving an injury, or keeping every relationship. Splitting concerns how evidence is organized in the mind; it does not erase the evidence of harm.

How Splitting Changes a Relationship

The self-reinforcing relationship cycle

One way to understand the relationship pattern is as a self-reinforcing cycle. A perceived rejection may activate fear or anger, and that emotion can organize the image of the other. Evidence consistent with the image becomes vivid, while contradictory evidence becomes difficult to use. The person may then respond to the simplified image through accusation, withdrawal, clinging, abrupt rejection, or a demand for proof of loyalty.

The other person reacts to that response. They may become defensive, distant, angry, or overly reassuring. Their reaction can then appear to confirm the original image. Studies informed by attachment theory and rejection sensitivity do not measure splitting itself, but they demonstrate the broader interpersonal mechanism: expectations influence explanations and behavior, which can contribute to conflict and rejecting partner responses (Collins, 1996; Downey et al., 1998).

When other people join the polarization

This cycle does not make one person solely responsible for everything that happens. Linehan challenged the familiar clinical claim that a patient had split a treatment team. When clinicians polarize, their own communication failures and difficulty integrating perspectives also matter. Her point was that staff members participate in the polarization rather than merely observing it. Couples and care teams can likewise contribute to a polarized interaction, although each person remains responsible for their own conduct (Downey et al., 1998; Linehan, 1993).

Splitting and Related Psychological Processes

Dichotomous thinking

Dichotomous thinking sorts experience into rigid either-or categories and is often discussed among cognitive distortions. It can concern success and failure, right and wrong, safety and danger, or many other judgments. Splitting refers more specifically to separated emotional representations of the self or another person. The two processes can overlap without being identical (Linehan, 1993).

Projection and projective identification

Projection places an unwanted feeling, wish, or impulse onto someone else. In projective identification, the process also enters the relationship: the other person is treated as if the projection were true and may be drawn into responding from that assigned role. Grotstein examined how this pattern can work alongside splitting, but they remain different concepts. Splitting separates good and bad images; projective identification organizes an interaction around what has been projected (Grotstein, 1985).

Splitting and Borderline Personality Disorder

Splitting has a prominent place in theories of borderline personality disorder. DSM-5-TR includes a pattern of intense and unstable relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation among the diagnostic criteria. Its accompanying description notes that a person may quickly shift from idealizing someone to experiencing that person as insufficiently caring, giving, or available (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

That association requires restraint. One polarized judgment does not establish borderline personality disorder. Diagnosis depends on a pervasive pattern, significant impairment, and a broader clinical assessment (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Defense research and developmental accounts also discuss splitting beyond a single diagnosis, so the process should not be treated as exclusive to borderline personality disorder (Cramer, 1991; Di Giuseppe & Perry, 2021).

The label should never be used to invalidate anger, explain away reports of mistreatment, or portray people with borderline personality disorder as intentionally manipulative. A defensive process may influence perception while a real injury has also occurred. Careful assessment keeps both possibilities available.

Moving From Splitting Toward Integration

Integration is the ability to retain a complex representation of another person while emotion is active. It allows someone to think, ‘I am furious about what happened, and I remember that this person has also cared for me.’ It also permits the reverse: ‘I love this person, and love does not erase the harm they caused’ (Kernberg, 1975; Linehan, 1993).

An integrated view is not automatically favorable. It may support repair, firmer boundaries, greater distance, or the end of a relationship. Its advantage is that the response can be based on the pattern, the seriousness of the conduct, the person’s accountability, and the possibility of change rather than on an image that has temporarily consumed every other fact.

Linehan makes this ethical boundary especially clear when discussing abuse. Resolving a black-and-white conflict does not require forgiving an abuser, minimizing the abuse, or giving up one’s integrity to preserve a relationship. Nuance is not surrender. It is the capacity to make a proportionate decision without needing a person to be perfect or monstrous before action becomes justified (Linehan, 1993).

How Therapy Supports Integration

Dialectical behavior therapy

Dialectical behavior therapy approaches polarized thinking through dialectics, mindfulness, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. A dialectical stance looks for truths that appear opposed but can coexist. The goal is not to force a cheerful middle opinion. It is to recognize the limits of an either-or frame and build a response that accounts for more of reality (Linehan, 1993).

Emotional regulation practices aim to reopen space for reflection when emotion has narrowed the available response. Slowing action, describing observable events, and separating a person’s behavior from a total judgment can make a second perspective easier to recover. Mindfulness also helps identify a judgment as a mental event rather than as the complete identity of the person being judged (Linehan, 1993).

Mentalization-based treatment

Mentalization is the capacity to understand behavior in relation to thoughts, feelings, intentions, and uncertainty. Fonagy and Target describe reflective functioning as developing within relationships and becoming uneven or less available in particular interpersonal conditions (Fonagy & Target, 1997). In mentalization-based treatment, therapy works to restore curiosity when certainty takes over: What do I know? What am I inferring? What else might explain this action? What changed in me when the interaction became threatening? (Bateman & Fonagy, 2004).

Within this approach, therapy helps a person keep thinking about minds when emotions run high. The therapist does not presume to know exactly what the patient thinks. Instead, both people slow down, examine misunderstandings, and rebuild a fuller account of what happened within a steady therapeutic relationship.

Psychodynamic approaches

Psychodynamic and transference-focused approaches attend to idealized and devalued images as they appear in the therapeutic relationship. Rather than siding with one image, treatment explores the feelings, expectations, and recurring relationship pattern attached to each. Within this model, the long-term aim is a more coherent view of self and others, with greater capacity to tolerate affection, disappointment, anger, dependence, and separateness together (Kernberg, 1975).

Responding to Splitting in Relationships

When a conversation becomes polarized, arguing about someone’s entire character usually adds heat without restoring complexity. A steadier response begins with the specific event and the feeling it produced. ‘You felt abandoned when I did not call’ acknowledges the experience without requiring agreement with ‘You have never cared about me.’ It can also help to slow the exchange, avoid recruiting allies, and return to observable behavior. A consistent boundary may be more useful than escalating reassurance, while promises of perfect availability create an expectation that no relationship can sustain. Stable treatment frameworks and clear limits can help preserve reflection when relationships become emotionally charged (Bateman & Fonagy, 2004; Linehan, 1993).

The person noticing this pattern in themselves can ask what became inaccessible during the shift. What caring actions are difficult to remember right now? What harmful actions were minimized before the disappointment? Which conclusion fits the whole pattern rather than only the present feeling? These questions are not designed to overrule emotion. They help emotion contribute information without becoming the only evidence.

Professional support may be useful when polarized relationships repeatedly lead to crises, abrupt ruptures, self-harm, aggression, severe instability, or overwhelming distress. Immediate safety takes priority when there is violence, coercion, suicidal intent, or another urgent danger.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

Return to the forgotten promise. The hurt may point to a small mistake, a relationship that needs repair, or a pattern serious enough to require distance. Splitting offers a faster answer: the person is entirely good, until suddenly they are entirely bad. That answer relieves uncertainty, but it also removes the information needed to decide wisely.

Integration restores the missing range. The promise was broken. The disappointment matters. Earlier care also happened. The next step depends on the pattern, the response to harm, and the boundaries required now. Holding those facts together does not weaken judgment. It allows judgment to become proportionate.

Our relationships are safer when people do not have to remain perfect to be loved and do not have to become monsters before we protect ourselves. Between those extremes is the demanding work of seeing clearly: remembering the whole person, respecting the whole impact, and choosing from a reality large enough to contain both.

Associated Concepts

• Defense Mechanisms: automatic psychological processes that manage conflict, stress, and threatening emotion.
• Dichotomous Thinking: rigidly sorting experience into opposing categories with little room for degree or context.
• Emotional Regulation: noticing and influencing emotional responses so behavior can remain responsive to circumstances and goals.
• Projection: attributing an unwanted feeling, wish, or impulse to another person.
• Projective Identification: a relational process in which a projected feeling or role shapes how another person is perceived and may draw that person into a corresponding response.
• Mentalization: understanding behavior in relation to mental states while recognizing that another person’s mind can never be known with complete certainty.

References

American Psychiatric Association (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. ISBN: 9780890425770.
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Bateman, Anthony W.; Fonagy, Peter (2004). Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: Mentalization-Based Treatment. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780198527664.
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Collins, Nancy L. (1996). Working models of attachment: Implications for explanation, emotion, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(4), 810-832. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.4.810.
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Cramer, Phebe (1991). The Development of Defense Mechanisms: Theory, Research, and Assessment. Springer-Verlag. ISBN: 9781461390275.
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Di Giuseppe, Mariagrazia; Perry, John Christopher (2021). The hierarchy of defense mechanisms: Assessing defensive functioning with the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales Q-Sort. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 718440. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718440.
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Downey, Geraldine; Freitas, Antonio L.; Michaelis, Benjamin; Khouri, Hala (1998). The self-fulfilling prophecy in close relationships: Rejection sensitivity and rejection by romantic partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 545-560. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.545.
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Fonagy, Peter; Target, Mary (1997). Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9(4), 679-700. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579497001399.
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Grotstein, James S. (1985). Splitting and Projective Identification. Jason Aronson. ISBN: 9780876687561.
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Kernberg, Otto F. (1975). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. Jason Aronson. ISBN: 9780876682050.
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Linehan, Marsha M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. The Guilford Press. ISBN: 9780898621839.
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Zoppolat, Giulia; Righetti, Francesca; Đurić, Mirna; Balzarini, Rhonda; Slatcher, Richard (2024). It’s complicated: The good and bad of ambivalence in romantic relationships. Emotion, 24(5), 1190-1205. DOI: 10.1037/emo0001340.
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