Splitting [Spaltung]

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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Splitting [in German

Spaltung

] is a key psychoanalytic concept in the work of Melanie Klein and her followers, building upon certain recognitions in Freud. It is related to the terms Projection and Introjection and refers to the infant.s defensive response to anxiety which divides whole objects (such as the mother.s body) into good and bad part-objects (e.g. the good breast, the bad breast) which are then treated as if they were not part of an original whole. This early prototype of the good and bad (the helpful and gratifying versus the annihilating and persecutory) then becomes a prototypical division upon which all later divisions are built.

A common example of splitting in literature is the recurrence of good and bad mothers in folk tales, the good mother usually being dead (unless

204 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Splitting [Spaltung]". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1617, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1617 Splitting [Spaltung] 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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