Splitting: Ego’s need for good and bad, right and wrong
Splitting is not just a defense mechanism, not simply a glitch in the psyche system; it is a fundamental feature of the ego woven into its formation. Tied intimately to the pleasure principle, splitting is the ego’s way of navigating a world that is both too complex and too overwhelming to grasp in its fullness. In this way, it is both a tool for survival and a limitation that keeps us tethered to a fragmented view of reality.
Splitting is a defense mechanism that emerges when the infant attempts to separate what is experienced as good from what is experienced as bad, in order to protect the ‘good’ object from the ‘bad’ object.
Melanie Klein (Psychoanalyst)
Podcast Discussion: Splitting
But what if this very mechanism, so intrinsic to the human experience, is also the key to unlocking a deeper, more unified understanding of who we are and how we exist in the world? What if the ego’s penchant for division could be transcended, not by denying its existence, but by inquiring into it with curiosity and openness? This is where the Diamond Approach® offers a path—through open-ended inquiry, we are invited to explore the nature of this splitting, not to eliminate it, but to see beyond its boundaries.
Splitting as a Necessary Divide
The ego forms as a fragile, emerging structure in the early stages of life. It seeks safety, certainty, and coherence in a chaotic and unpredictable world. To navigate this complexity, the ego employs splitting—a stark division of experiences, people, and feelings into polarities: good and bad, right and wrong, pleasure and pain. This mechanism is not simply a defense; it is a strategy for survival, a way to make sense of the world when the whole is too much to bear.
At the heart of this splitting lies the pleasure principle, the instinctual drive to seek what is pleasurable and avoid what is painful. Under this principle, the young ego quickly learns to idealize what feels good—love, approval, warmth—while rejecting or devaluing anything that brings discomfort—fear, rejection, uncertainty. Splitting allows the ego to create a map of the world that simplifies the complexity of human experience into binaries that it can manage.
Splitting involves seeing the world in black and white terms, as all-good or all-bad, and results in a fragmented sense of self. It reflects the immature psyche’s inability to integrate positive and negative aspects of the self and others.
Otto Kernberg (Psychoanalyst)
But as we mature, this mechanism—once essential for survival—becomes a barrier to deeper understanding. The world is not so easily divided, and neither are we. The truth of our experience and nature is far more nuanced and interconnected than the ego’s map allows.
The Double-Edged Sword of Pleasure
The pleasure principle drives this splitting, urging the ego to move toward what feels safe and away from what feels threatening. And while this principle serves a critical function in early development, it can also bind us to a shallow understanding of reality. The pursuit of pleasure, when left unchecked, becomes a kind of prison. We become locked into a cycle of seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort, unable to confront the deeper, often uncomfortable truths beneath the surface.
What decides the purpose of life is simply the program of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start.
Sigmund Freud (Founder of Psychoanalysis)
In this way, the pleasure principle and splitting work hand in hand, reinforcing the ego’s need for control, for certainty. But life is not so easily controlled, and the attempt to do so often leads to suffering. By clinging to the pleasurable and rejecting the painful, we limit ourselves to a narrow, fragmented version of reality—one that is disconnected from the deeper, more expansive truths of existence.
Open-Ended Inquiry to Counter Splitting
This is where the Diamond Approach introduces its transformative practice of open-ended inquiry. Unlike traditional methods that seek to resolve or explain away discomfort, inquiry invites us to sit with it and explore it with curiosity and openness. Rather than dividing the world into what we like and fear, inquiry asks us to embrace the whole of our experience, allowing both the pleasurable and the painful to coexist without needing to categorize them.
Through inquiry, we learn to question the very process of splitting itself. What are we dividing? Why are we doing it? And what happens when we let go of the need to divide? In this space of inquiry, the ego’s boundaries begin to soften. The rigid divisions between self and other, good and bad, pleasure and pain, dissolve. We start to see that these opposites are not as separate as they once seemed.
Splitting is a defense against the emotional complexity of life. The ability to integrate both the good and the bad is a sign of emotional maturity and psychological growth.
Donald Winnicott (Psychoanalyst)
This process is not about eradicating the ego or its defenses but about understanding them from a more spacious, integrated perspective. Inquiry opens up the possibility of experiencing life in its full complexity without retreating into the comfort of binary thinking. It allows us to hold onto the existence paradoxes and embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty that the ego once feared.
Discovering Unity in the Dance of Reality
As we engage in open-ended inquiry, we start to see that the world is not divided into neat categories but is a complex, interconnected whole. The boundaries the ego has drawn begin to fade, revealing a deeper truth: that pleasure and pain are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. They are intertwined, part of the same flow of life, and it is only the ego’s need for control—driven by the pleasure principle—keeps them separate.
In the Diamond Approach, this realization leads to a profound shift in how we experience reality. We no longer cling to what is pleasurable or reject what is painful. Instead, we begin to see both as necessary parts of the whole, as integral to the dance of existence. This is not about transcending pleasure and pain but about transcending the ego’s need to split them apart. It is about embracing the fullness of life, with all its beauty and challenges.
The Schizoid Defense: A Deeper Form of Splitting
For some, the schizoid defense creates an even deeper split, one that involves emotional detachment and withdrawal from the world. Like all others, this defense is rooted in the need to protect the self from pain, but it comes at a cost. The more we withdraw from life, the more isolated we are from the richness of human experience.
The truth is that the sense of separateness of ego is a schizoid phenomenon, but it is usually experienced in a mild form. The ego boundaries are a manifestation of the schizoid sector of the personality, of which no ego is devoid.
A.H. Almaas, Pearl Beyond Price
The Diamond Approach’s open-ended inquiry offers a way to gently explore this detachment and question the fear at the heart of the schizoid defense. By bringing curiosity to the very places we have shut off, we can begin to reconnect with the parts of ourselves and the world that we have avoided. Inquiry invites us to open to the vulnerability we have long resisted, to see that the pain we feared is not the enemy but a doorway to a deeper connection.
Beyond Splitting and the Pleasure Principle
In the end, splitting—so profoundly tied to the pleasure principle—is a necessary part of our early development and a barrier to our growth. It is a mechanism that helps us navigate the world when we are young, but it becomes limiting as we mature. The Diamond Approach, through its practice of open-ended inquiry, offers a way to transcend this limitation and move beyond the ego’s need for control and division.
The conscious mind focuses on immediate pleasure, but the deeper layers of the unconscious mind seek wholeness and integration, which often involves enduring discomfort.
Carl Jung (Analytical Psychologist)
Through inquiry, pleasure, and pain, like all opposites, are seen as not truly separate. They are part of the same interconnected whole; the ego’s fear of discomfort keeps them apart. By letting go of the need to split reality into binaries, we open ourselves to a deeper, more integrated life experience. In this life, the boundaries between self and other, pleasure and pain, dissolve into a greater unity.