Scottish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn believed that our search for relationships is the primary drive in the human psyche. Ego (Self) develops through relationships, particularly with primary caregivers (Sills, 2008). We are born whole but the traumas and stresses of infancy cause us to become divided both within ourselves and against ourselves (Gomez, 1997).
As infants, our needs are not always met and this results in intermittent feelings of being unseen or unaccepted. We also experience our primary caregivers as bad or inadequate if we are neglected and this is intolerable – we need them to be all-good and completely loving, responsive and accepting. The ego copes by splitting the object (the primary caregiver) into three parts: the ideal object, the rejecting object and the exciting object. The original ego then organises itself around the internal object representations and splits into three ego territories: the central ego, libidinal ego and anti-libidinal ego (Sills, 2008).
Splitting is an essential survival mechanism. It allows the infant to repress or dissociate from parts of the primary relationship that are difficult, abusive or threatening (Risi, 2021). This reduces anxiety around feeling hostility and resentment, even fear and hate towards someone they are meant to love and trust, enabling the infant to remain attached to the parent and get its needs met (Celani, 1999).