The Double Nature of Splitting1

(Accepted for publication 17 December 2014)

“The ego can be split”, Freud wrote in 1932, on account of its composite nature which brings together diverse identifications. Following the metaphor of the crystal, the ego always breaks along its predetermined lines of structure. But for Freud such splitting is reversible: “…the ego splits itself during a number of its functions - temporarily at least. Its parts can come together again afterwards” (1933[1932], p. 58). At that time Freud stressed that what characterizes the ego is “a tendency to synthesis in its contents, to a combination and unification in its mental processes” (p. 76); further on he writes that the ego's task “is to bring the claims and demands [of its three masters] into harmony with one other” and adds: “if the ego is hard pressed, it reacts by generating anxiety” (p. 77). It is in order to avoid this anxiety, whose intensity can be variable but sometimes catastrophic, that the ego employs defensive processes which causes splits within it.

In 1938, in his article on splitting, Freud (1940[1938]) takes stock of the alterations in the ego's synthetic function: what he finds both disconcerting and yet thoroughly familiar is not so much the phenomenon of splitting as the failure of the “synthetic nature of the processes of the ego” which we thought we could “take for granted”; “but,” he continues, “we are clearly at fault in this. The synthetic function of the ego, though it is of such extraordinary importance, is subject to particular conditions and is liable to a whole number of disturbances” (p. 276). And this time, Freud says: “the rift in the ego never heals but increases as time goes on” (p. 276). An essential question is thus already raised: is the splitting of the ego reducible or not? In an attempt to give the outlines of an answer to this question, it is necessary first to make it more complex: between the text of 1932 and that of 1938, there is a difference pertaining to the nature of splitting.