Dear Christina;

You wrote earlier: “When I was 3-4, I still remember, that I was thinking I had 2 mother, that were identical, but one was the good, loving and caring one, and another that was distant, angry and cold to me. And I believed that my actions would result on which mother would come each time”-

– what you described is known in psychology as “spitting”, as in splitting (dividing, separating) good from bad. This is my understanding of the term and the dynamic around it:

(1) The child does not experience the self (the child) and the object (the mother) as two different, separate entities. The  boundaries between the self and the object are not there yet.

(2) The child can not perceive the possibility that one person can be sometimes good (“the good, loving and caring one”) and at other times, bad (“distant, angry and cold”). The child perceives a person to be either good or bad, not both. Therefore, the child splits her mother into two mothers, just as you did.

(3) the child cannot endure the fear that comes with believing that she has no control, and there is nothing she can do to determine which mother she experiences in her life, so she believes instead that she has control, that there is a lot she can do to determine which mother she will have in her life  (“I believed that my actions would result on which mother would come each time”).

As a result of normal, healthy development, the child learns to separate the self  from the object. As the child matures and becomes an adult, getting involved with other people, she is able to separate the self from the other, and therefore, to understand what the self is responsible for,  and what the other is responsible for.

But when a child has suffered ongoing and unresolved mistreatment by her mother, the separation does not happen adequately. When the now adult woman experiences an abusive boyfriend who  is sometimes affectionate, she splits him into two people: the good boyfriend and a bad boyfriend. She then believes that her actions can determine which boyfriend she gets to experience. She splits not only the boyfriend but herself, trying to be the good girlfriend, believing that any imperfection in her good girlfriend role is an indication that she is a bad girlfriend. And so, every time she expresses anger at him, she believes she is bad and therefore has just invited the bad boyfriend into her experience.  She then tries to be perfect again, caught in a trap.

* By the way, his is the dynamic that happens in the case of an adult woman fitting the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)- she splits the self and the other into good and bad people, being trapped in the never ending agony of trying to accomplish the impossible: (a) to be all-good, all the time, never feel anger, never express anger, never make a mistake of any kind, be always loving, always patient, etc., (b) to invite the good boyfriend into her life, when in reality her boyfriend is just one guy: an abusive boyfriend who is sometimes affectionate, a bad person who is sometimes good.

The BPD woman gets enraged every time she fails at (b) and terribly ashamed and guilty every time she fails at (a), going between rage and shame & guilt again and again.

anita