A few thoughts I had on first listen is that the 'categorial move' involved in splitting leaves out the Kleinian assumption of the early capacity for phantasising from birth. Within the process (as money-kryle, Issacs and other kleinians would point out) it's not phantasising as symbolic function - the object is not represented but rather it is concretely felt to be inside the infant. Hunger as internal pain ect. a concrete experience, splitting then as a way of mitigating in phantasy the anxiety related to bad internal object-related experiences. Kryle's paper cognitive development conceptualizes category groupings and classes as they develop. In this idea of a 'categorical move' it seems you assume splitting is in some way a conscious cognitive maneuver by the infant when it is an unconscious mechanism in order to rid the ego of anxiety. The splitting mechanism is an early unconscious defense not something taking place in an abstracted symbolic sense which is as you say a much higher level of mental functioning. It is a primitive unconscious phantasy that is activated at the point of maximum anxiety or discomfort and not within the tolerable flux states of experience? - but perhaps your objection still remains... I will think further on it.
not sure if this points into the right direction, but i recently read a paper (Remembering a depressive primary object, 2002) in which the authors suggest a memory based approach for the issue of categorization, basically sensory-motor memory in very young infants. The first primitive categories are built from collecting and remembering the stimuli, initially primarily via the body and getting more and more symbolic over time.
Thank you, Mr. Carveth for your work, you are a great inspiration and source of knowledge. you used the hot and cold example to explain the slow stage transitionn, but that also happens with the hunger feeling. I gess the split can work if the child memory works differently havving no past memory, it cannot remeber not being hungry but remember the mother emotional affect?
Very interesting and thought provoking. And I look forward to the day when the developmental psychologists and Kleinian theorists can address this. I always struggled somewhat in a two year Infant Observation to follow Klein's timeline, or at least I saw it, but later than she said I should be seeing it. But what a great research project for someone, and hopefully their starting point might be the work that your colleague did all those years ago.
My immediate thought was to wonder if splitting does need to be seen as a 'complex cognitive capacity'. For sure it develops into such, but my thoughts went to the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist and the 'split' brain hemispheres. He has shown that bicameralism is evident in all animals with a neural network, and that the hemispheres 'experience' reality in two very distinct ways. He also brings research that shows how even single celled organisms with no discernible neural network have the similar function, in that they will move towards 'good' nutrients, and away from 'bad' toxins. Would this ability to be able to divide reality into basic good or bad experiences be a proto-splitting . Maybe it is a fundamental function of neural networks, or even down to a basic cellular level ? p.s. - ie on a basic level it's an unconscious process, a pure reaction to stimuli .
I think what has been called splitting is a different process from simply moving toward and away. We’re talking about a kind of categorization. I don’t think split brain research is commensurate with all good/all bad splitting.
@@doncarveth maybe my bringing up split brain research complicated things unnecessarily. It was more the source of the idea that our ability to divide/split experiences into simple 'categories' is a very basic function that doesn't even require complex neural systems. (My previous single celled organism example utilising a simple Klienien perspective : - nutrients, sustenance, good, move towards= 'good breast'. Toxins, annihilation, bad, move away= 'bad breast') From that basic innate system function, can develop the 'complex cognitive capacity' you describe, which naturally leads to a more developed categorisation and hence the splitting you describe.
@@doncarveth Today in another conversation I came across a field of study new to me ,biosemiotics . A branch of semiotics, which seems to tie up with what I am playing around with here. An immanent meaning making process that leads to complexity. The process by which proto psyche can form.
Some research indicated that infant under one year of age has the capacity to differentiate morally between good and bad objects, which points out to inbuilt moral systems not learned by experience, which doesn't points out towards paranoid position. It means infants aren't self-centred and relates to external reality even before prelinguistic stage (symbolic). Research indicated recently born infants recognise parents voice from others and relaxes to hearing their soothing voice rather than foreign languages.
Seems to me that even bacteria split between good an bad according to their chemical reactions relative to certain conditions . Saying that humans cannot differentiate between good and bad until 18 month sounds a bit peculiar.
Bingo..The entire premise of Klein is that who we are is almost entirely set from day one. The rest is simply expression. I think what you see in these "educated" sorts is an over emphasis on cultural behavior vs the base. Which is fine for what that is but the holistic must be centered on early childhood development onward.
Hello professor, first I gotta say I'm a big fan of yours and your videos on narcissism helped me quit alot to write my dissertation on kohut. However back to this video, certainly experience is dimentional as you stated, but what about affects ? I think the child experiences life through affects and affects seem to be more categorical than dimentional. For example, sure the experience of going through being warm to being cold is dimentional but I don't think it matters and I don't think the child needs to abstract from the situation to understand what is considered to be bad/good. I guess he only needs to know whether the feeling that arises from this is a feeling that he wanna keep on having or a feeling that he needs to avoid and that seems to do the work. But who knows, maybe I'm just stupid 😂
Well, I'm not a professional in the field, but isn't split state already innate? A child crying could be viewed as oriented towards something bad, even if that bad didn't take a form and orientation is not yet clear. The first, simplest orientation, the primary polarization that naturally relate to mother, as she is the one who deals with all complexities. The splitting, as a psychological mechanism, would be ignoring absurdities and reverting to the state of external dependence, the first occasion of active interaction that happens when environment becomes complex, abstracting back to the binary state. That means that it coincides and is a factor of abstraction of experiences.
I have not read the work of Melanie Klein so forgive my ignorance if I'm off-base, but judging by what you've said here I'm inclined to question if this is really unresolved. You suggest Klein's placement of the origin of splitting has been falsified by cognitive research. If something is falsified then what more is there to address? This might be a problem for Kleinian theory from a Poperian perspective on demarcation, but here I would invoke Lakatos. The exact time where splitting begins to occur developmentally is not a "hard-core" proposition.
Don, Daniel Stern cites studies that demonstrate newborn infants (3 weeks old) have the ability to create representations. He calls it amodal perception, perhaps rather like Bion’s alpha function. To me, where there is integration, there will also be splitting. I think splitting is possible from birth. However, I suspect that projecting comes a bit later. First come integrating and splitting. Only when there are stable enough representations, projection is possible. At least, that is what I think.
Well I have my doubts about this. A lot depends on what exactly we mean by splitting, buy integration, etc. The idea of reducing everything to either all good or all bad is a highly abstract act that I doubt infants are capable of.
I think I would need to know more on your view of what splitting is and why it must be complicated. To me it seems not to have to be complicated. An infant forms representations, experiences either pleasure or pain (or neutral) in relation to it and registers that mentally as good or bad. And just because these first experiences in life are so crude and rudimentary, it seems to me likely those experiences have the quality of being all-good and all-bad. With time, the representations grow in complexity, enabling to experience conflicting qualities of one representation. Now, to attribute intentions is a whole other matter. To attribute, to project, qualities and intentions to a representation seems indeed more complicated and not something babies can do. Anyway, these are just my thoughts. I am not sure about all of this, but this is how it remains inside my head for now.
@@ingurzimmermann2024 I think we need to distinguish between a primordial distinction between pleasure and pain which infants and animals are capable of, and what cleans mean by splitting, which is a radical oversimplification of. The dimensional complex gradients of experience into two simple categories, good and bad with nothing in between. This kind of radical simplification involves a degree of abstraction beyond that of animals and infants. It is a complex narrative. In which everything is reduced to one or the other.
Ah yes, so, the abstraction would then be a too complicated a mental process for infants. If I understand correctly, then an infant would first develop dimensional complex gradients of experience and later on oversimplify? I do believe I follow your line thought, but it seems contradictory to me that experiences would first be complex and that later on more simple. I have to give it some more thought, I guess.
When you speak of not only borderline patients splitting, but everyone who is at the narcissistic level doing so, are you talking about DSM borderline or about borderline organization per Kernberg? If the latter, how would you distinguish borderline and narcissistic organization?
Not DSM but personality organization. Anyone functioning in the PS position splits. Narcissism involves a manic defence against badness and inadequacy, a grandiose self as opposed to an inferior one.
@@doncarveth ok so kernberg says that narcissism is a defence against the underlying borderline structure right? But the way you said it makes it sound like the narcissistic is the genus of the species, so to speak. So I was wondering how you meant that, whether you maybe had a different view on this. You said not only borderline patients split, but everyone who is narcissistic. As if that is the larger group.
@@rleclaire87 The problem is that you are not working within the Kleinian model. In PS everyone splits, is narcisstic,, etc. In a sense in PS everyone is borderline.
Very valuable information! I really appreciate it, however as someone with a hard time on concentrating in general, I had a really hard time trying to understand what you said due to all the long pauses and "um"s. Maybe you can consider having a script or something to help you before the video. Anyway, thanks a lot:)
@@doncarveth may I very humbly suggest a video on the therapeutic approach and techniques in general with emphasis on reshaping defenses, particularly splitting? Thank you for your channel.
@@9879SigmundS I think for Melanie Klein there is not much happening before splitting begins. But for many other psychoanalytic writers, it’s a different story. I think you need to look at the literature on autistic defenses, Tustin, Ogden, and others.
Nay its no more complex than understanding basic physics. Ying Yang. Positive and negative. Its the very life force which creates all form. The human mind is Split, literally. Why would we not assume this is for a reason? Thought is based in a dualism. Comparison is the basis of cognitive function. Crazy is when a person loses this state of mind. How can one know anything without a comparison? How would time be possible?
I don’t understand why you think all splitting involves symbolisation. If I am in a warm environment I feel comfortable, but if I’m in a cold environment I feel uncomfortable. These experiences are stored in memory. It makes sense to me that I might cathect the warmth inducing memories and associate them with mental representations of the smell, look, sound of mother during a feed. When she’s not there I might find the pain of hunger gets associated with inner pictures of bad things - whatever form these take at 6 months, later becoming witches, greedy monsters etc. You also talk of Splitting as total. Sometimes it might be - all good in these phantasies, all bad in those phantasies. And crucially Splitting has to be associated with projection, there’s no point in splitting if there aren’t corresponding phantasies of projection. So the badness fills the mnemic images of the mother with bad pictures and bad motivations, and the goodness fills the memories of mother with good images and motivations. But generally it’s possible to split to degrees. Violent projections suggests severe splitting into fragments of memory and the mind itself is close to psychotic. Where there is less powerful projection there is a suggestion that less severe splitting is going on. If we follow that idea along I think we get to Grotstein’s revised idea of beta as not primary. So, like in Winnicott, a primitive Alpha Function exists at birth, there is an innate expectation of a Container for the projections, and it’s only when the early Alpha elements are misinterpreted that they degrade to beta elements and need to be evacuated more powerfully. The evacuation pushes the mind into the condition of splitting. So the projection comes first as a defence and the splitting happens as a result of a mind needing to evacuate. Symbolisation…..? Dunno….
Thank you, Mr. Carveth. You really take the "stinginess" out of the "breast" with all those regural uploads! Much appreciated! Greetings from Greece.
Greetings to you, and thanks
LOL
A few thoughts I had on first listen is that the 'categorial move' involved in splitting leaves out the Kleinian assumption of the early capacity for phantasising from birth. Within the process (as money-kryle, Issacs and other kleinians would point out) it's not phantasising as symbolic function - the object is not represented but rather it is concretely felt to be inside the infant. Hunger as internal pain ect. a concrete experience, splitting then as a way of mitigating in phantasy the anxiety related to bad internal object-related experiences. Kryle's paper cognitive development conceptualizes category groupings and classes as they develop.
In this idea of a 'categorical move' it seems you assume splitting is in some way a conscious cognitive maneuver by the infant when it is an unconscious mechanism in order to rid the ego of anxiety. The splitting mechanism is an early unconscious defense not something taking place in an abstracted symbolic sense which is as you say a much higher level of mental functioning. It is a primitive unconscious phantasy that is activated at the point of maximum anxiety or discomfort and not within the tolerable flux states of experience? - but perhaps your objection still remains... I will think further on it.
Thank you David, food for thought.
not sure if this points into the right direction, but i recently read a paper (Remembering a depressive primary object, 2002) in which the authors suggest a memory based approach for the issue of categorization, basically sensory-motor memory in very young infants. The first primitive categories are built from collecting and remembering the stimuli, initially primarily via the body and getting more and more symbolic over time.
Thank you, Mr. Carveth for your work, you are a great inspiration and source of knowledge. you used the hot and cold example to explain the slow stage transitionn, but that also happens with the hunger feeling. I gess the split can work if the child memory works differently havving no past memory, it cannot remeber not being hungry but remember the mother emotional affect?
Very interesting and thought provoking. And I look forward to the day when the developmental psychologists and Kleinian theorists can address this. I always struggled somewhat in a two year Infant Observation to follow Klein's timeline, or at least I saw it, but later than she said I should be seeing it. But what a great research project for someone, and hopefully their starting point might be the work that your colleague did all those years ago.
Yes, thanks
My immediate thought was to wonder if splitting does need to be seen as a 'complex cognitive capacity'. For sure it develops into such, but my thoughts went to the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist and the 'split' brain hemispheres. He has shown that bicameralism is evident in all animals with a neural network, and that the hemispheres 'experience' reality in two very distinct ways. He also brings research that shows how even single celled organisms with no discernible neural network have the similar function, in that they will move towards 'good' nutrients, and away from 'bad' toxins. Would this ability to be able to divide reality into basic good or bad experiences be a proto-splitting . Maybe it is a fundamental function of neural networks, or even down to a basic cellular level ?
p.s. - ie on a basic level it's an unconscious process, a pure reaction to stimuli .
I think what has been called splitting is a different process from simply moving toward and away. We’re talking about a kind of categorization. I don’t think split brain research is commensurate with all good/all bad splitting.
@@doncarveth maybe my bringing up split brain research complicated things unnecessarily.
It was more the source of the idea that our ability to divide/split experiences into simple 'categories' is a very basic function that doesn't even require complex neural systems.
(My previous single celled organism example utilising a simple Klienien perspective : - nutrients, sustenance, good, move towards= 'good breast'. Toxins, annihilation, bad, move away= 'bad breast') From that basic innate system function, can develop the 'complex cognitive capacity' you describe, which naturally leads to a more developed categorisation and hence the splitting you describe.
@@doncarveth Today in another conversation I came across a field of study new to me ,biosemiotics . A branch of semiotics, which seems to tie up with what I am playing around with here. An immanent meaning making process that leads to complexity. The process by which proto psyche can form.
Some research indicated that infant under one year of age has the capacity to differentiate morally between good and bad objects, which points out to inbuilt moral systems not learned by experience, which doesn't points out towards paranoid position. It means infants aren't self-centred and relates to external reality even before prelinguistic stage (symbolic). Research indicated recently born infants recognise parents voice from others and relaxes to hearing their soothing voice rather than foreign languages.
Yes
'Dimensionality instead of categorically.'
Seems to me that even bacteria split between good an bad according to their chemical reactions relative to certain conditions . Saying that humans cannot differentiate between good and bad until 18 month sounds a bit peculiar.
Bingo..The entire premise of Klein is that who we are is almost entirely set from day one. The rest is simply expression. I think what you see in these "educated" sorts is an over emphasis on cultural behavior vs the base. Which is fine for what that is but the holistic must be centered on early childhood development onward.
X: It's a sunny day. Y: You're an idiot.
Hello professor, first I gotta say I'm a big fan of yours and your videos on narcissism helped me quit alot to write my dissertation on kohut.
However back to this video, certainly experience is dimentional as you stated, but what about affects ? I think the child experiences life through affects and affects seem to be more categorical than dimentional. For example, sure the experience of going through being warm to being cold is dimentional but I don't think it matters and I don't think the child needs to abstract from the situation to understand what is considered to be bad/good. I guess he only needs to know whether the feeling that arises from this is a feeling that he wanna keep on having or a feeling that he needs to avoid and that seems to do the work.
But who knows, maybe I'm just stupid 😂
Not stupid
Well, I'm not a professional in the field, but isn't split state already innate? A child crying could be viewed as oriented towards something bad, even if that bad didn't take a form and orientation is not yet clear.
The first, simplest orientation, the primary polarization that naturally relate to mother, as she is the one who deals with all complexities.
The splitting, as a psychological mechanism, would be ignoring absurdities and reverting to the state of external dependence, the first occasion of active interaction that happens when environment becomes complex, abstracting back to the binary state.
That means that it coincides and is a factor of abstraction of experiences.
Thanks for this.
I have not read the work of Melanie Klein so forgive my ignorance if I'm off-base, but judging by what you've said here I'm inclined to question if this is really unresolved.
You suggest Klein's placement of the origin of splitting has been falsified by cognitive research. If something is falsified then what more is there to address? This might be a problem for Kleinian theory from a Poperian perspective on demarcation, but here I would invoke Lakatos. The exact time where splitting begins to occur developmentally is not a "hard-core" proposition.
OK but it is still a falsifying proposition. I have explained this doesn’t matter much to me because I work with adults.
@@doncarveth You mean the proposition is load bearing in a classical sense?
What is the name of the dissertation that addressed this problem more than 25 years ago
It was written by Charles Levin at concordia University in Montreal
@@doncarveth thank you
Don, Daniel Stern cites studies that demonstrate newborn infants (3 weeks old) have the ability to create representations. He calls it amodal perception, perhaps rather like Bion’s alpha function. To me, where there is integration, there will also be splitting.
I think splitting is possible from birth. However, I suspect that projecting comes a bit later. First come integrating and splitting. Only when there are stable enough representations, projection is possible. At least, that is what I think.
Well I have my doubts about this. A lot depends on what exactly we mean by splitting, buy integration, etc. The idea of reducing everything to either all good or all bad is a highly abstract act that I doubt infants are capable of.
I think I would need to know more on your view of what splitting is and why it must be complicated. To me it seems not to have to be complicated. An infant forms representations, experiences either pleasure or pain (or neutral) in relation to it and registers that mentally as good or bad. And just because these first experiences in life are so crude and rudimentary, it seems to me likely those experiences have the quality of being all-good and all-bad. With time, the representations grow in complexity, enabling to experience conflicting qualities of one representation.
Now, to attribute intentions is a whole other matter. To attribute, to project, qualities and intentions to a representation seems indeed more complicated and not something babies can do.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts. I am not sure about all of this, but this is how it remains inside my head for now.
@@ingurzimmermann2024 I think we need to distinguish between a primordial distinction between pleasure and pain which infants and animals are capable of, and what cleans mean by splitting, which is a radical oversimplification of. The dimensional complex gradients of experience into two simple categories, good and bad with nothing in between. This kind of radical simplification involves a degree of abstraction beyond that of animals and infants. It is a complex narrative. In which everything is reduced to one or the other.
Ah yes, so, the abstraction would then be a too complicated a mental process for infants. If I understand correctly, then an infant would first develop dimensional complex gradients of experience and later on oversimplify? I do believe I follow your line thought, but it seems contradictory to me that experiences would first be complex and that later on more simple. I have to give it some more thought, I guess.
@@ingurzimmermann2024 yes, animals are far seen her than humans because they cannot abstract.
When you speak of not only borderline patients splitting, but everyone who is at the narcissistic level doing so, are you talking about DSM borderline or about borderline organization per Kernberg? If the latter, how would you distinguish borderline and narcissistic organization?
Not DSM but personality organization. Anyone functioning in the PS position splits. Narcissism involves a manic defence against badness and inadequacy, a grandiose self as opposed to an inferior one.
@@doncarveth ok so kernberg says that narcissism is a defence against the underlying borderline structure right? But the way you said it makes it sound like the narcissistic is the genus of the species, so to speak. So I was wondering how you meant that, whether you maybe had a different view on this. You said not only borderline patients split, but everyone who is narcissistic. As if that is the larger group.
@@rleclaire87 The problem is that you are not working within the Kleinian model. In PS everyone splits, is narcisstic,, etc. In a sense in PS everyone is borderline.
Very valuable information! I really appreciate it, however as someone with a hard time on concentrating in general, I had a really hard time trying to understand what you said due to all the long pauses and "um"s. Maybe you can consider having a script or something to help you before the video. Anyway, thanks a lot:)
it looks like a therapy habit, always put 1.75 reproduction speed ;)
I think splitting is not a cognitive process but emotional.
But there is no emotion without cognition, and no cognition without emotion.
@@doncarveth Animals have very strong emotions end not so complex cognition😉 infants too.
Agnieszka N yes but splitting is a cognitive act, fuelled by emotion.
But what if someone did u dirty many time. Then u decide to close the chapter and rather not love him anymore and move on, is this splitting?
Not necessarily, but could be
More a reboot for the next set-up of abuse. Until you understand what went on when you were 1 you are looking at mirrors.
What comes before splitting?
For Melanie Cline, not much.
@@doncarveth may I very humbly suggest a video on the therapeutic approach and techniques in general with emphasis on reshaping defenses, particularly splitting? Thank you for your channel.
@@doncarveth for you, what defenses come before splitting? Or is there a point before which the word “defenses” does not apply?
@@9879SigmundS good idea
@@9879SigmundS I think for Melanie Klein there is not much happening before splitting begins. But for many other psychoanalytic writers, it’s a different story. I think you need to look at the literature on autistic defenses, Tustin, Ogden, and others.
Do you have the name of the Phd thesis you mention in your talk?
Charles Levin, concordia university, Montreal, I think late 1990s
@@doncarveth Thank you!
Nay its no more complex than understanding basic physics. Ying Yang. Positive and negative. Its the very life force which creates all form. The human mind is Split, literally. Why would we not assume this is for a reason? Thought is based in a dualism. Comparison is the basis of cognitive function. Crazy is when a person loses this state of mind. How can one know anything without a comparison? How would time be possible?
Didnt expect to see arsene wenger here
I don’t understand why you think all splitting involves symbolisation. If I am in a warm environment I feel comfortable, but if I’m in a cold environment I feel uncomfortable. These experiences are stored in memory. It makes sense to me that I might cathect the warmth inducing memories and associate them with mental representations of the smell, look, sound of mother during a feed. When she’s not there I might find the pain of hunger gets associated with inner pictures of bad things - whatever form these take at 6 months, later becoming witches, greedy monsters etc.
You also talk of Splitting as total. Sometimes it might be - all good in these phantasies, all bad in those phantasies. And crucially Splitting has to be associated with projection, there’s no point in splitting if there aren’t corresponding phantasies of projection. So the badness fills the mnemic images of the mother with bad pictures and bad motivations, and the goodness fills the memories of mother with good images and motivations.
But generally it’s possible to split to degrees. Violent projections suggests severe splitting into fragments of memory and the mind itself is close to psychotic. Where there is less powerful projection there is a suggestion that less severe splitting is going on.
If we follow that idea along I think we get to Grotstein’s revised idea of beta as not primary. So, like in Winnicott, a primitive Alpha Function exists at birth, there is an innate expectation of a Container for the projections, and it’s only when the early Alpha elements are misinterpreted that they degrade to beta elements and need to be evacuated more powerfully. The evacuation pushes the mind into the condition of splitting. So the projection comes first as a defence and the splitting happens as a result of a mind needing to evacuate.
Symbolisation…..? Dunno….
Thanks, that all sounds plausible, but as you say DUNNO