The Mind Forms Cells That Contain Intense Emotional Experience – Potentially Creating an Insidious Coping Mechanism

I. Traumatic Experience Must Be Managed

The psychological distress and psychiatric symptoms resulting from exposure to abuse and trauma, especially during early child development, have been widely documented.^[1] For an insightful review of the consequences of a diverse range of traumas and stressful life events from a world-renowned expert in the field, Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014) ^[2] is an excellent resource. Psychologically, the mind approaches trauma similarly to the way a virus is attacked by the immune system: the unexpected, unpredictable, and unprecedented material that entered the system must be modified in order to be managed; in other words, trauma must be segregated in order to be forgotten.

 

Throughout his career, Feud theorized how the mind negotiates significant stress and trauma^.[3] His discovery of the unconscious conceptualized the psyche as a mental structure precisely organized to adapt to traumatic experience. Heavily influenced by Darwin ^[4], Freud consistently emphasized the applicability of an evolutionary perspective not only to the body, but also the mind. Essentially, Freud argued that the mind is reactive to experience in a way that is inherently self-protective.

 

II. Freud’s Horizontal Construction of the Psyche

For Freud, feeling states and cognitions associated with traumatic events that are able to be tolerated and processed occupy the “conscious” part of the mind. Conversely, for experience that violates usual and comprehensible meaning-making in the psyche (including many types of trauma), such experience is relegated to the “unconscious.”

 

In his modeling, Freud divided these segments of the mind horizontally. The border between the conscious and unconscious regions was managed by the ego’s activation of repression, Freud’s first psychological defense. ^[5] What could be dealt with by the ego entered consciousness, but what was incomprehensible was repressed, i.e., split off and compartmentalized in the unconscious. According to Freud, repression maintained the stability and coherence of the mind. Clinicians and psychotherapists often refer to the phenomenon of triaging distinct aspects of experience into these two regions of the mind as “horizontal splitting.” Early views of therapy were based on the assumption that, despite being sequestered in the basement of the mind, unconscious experience often heavily influences the mind, and generally much more so, than what exists in the conscious realm including volition, choice, thought, and effort.

 

III. The More Recent Vertical Model

More recently, a significant contribution in psychology and psychotherapy has been the proposal that the mind is segmented not only horizontally, but also vertically. ^[6,7] In this model, the mind manages difficult, stressful or traumatic experience by unintentionally creating cells that serve as containers for particular forms of intense emotional experience.  If this was all that occurred, the mind would seem aptly capable of adapting to stress in two directions, affirming yet again the significance of Darwin and Freud’s view of the mind as a well-honed adaptive mechanism.   Yet, what appears to be the case is that vertical splitting may ultimately yield rather unfortunate consequences. This is so because, as these cells of experience solidify, the mind responds by partitioning the personality in a corresponding fashion. This sets up numerous pockets of “being” that match the unforeseen circumstances frequently called upon in the world the person occupies.

 

For example, if a child is physically abused by a parent, a vertical split may emerge that is designed to cope with the juxtaposition of ongoing intense and contradictory experiences to which the child is being exposed. In one compartment, the child is called upon to be, and is, a dutiful, loving son or daughter who seeks the attention and love of the parent. Conversely, in another compartment, the child is frightened, anxious, rageful, and rebellious, increasingly common emotional states the child likely occupies given the victimization he or she is experiencing. These two compartments may evolve into distinct personality styles the child enters and exists: at times being compliant and deferential, at other times being hesitant, resistant, and adversarial.

 

These styles are not to be confused with personality splits (as in severely pathological dissociative disorders). Rather, they are more like the gears of a car’s transmission that the child moves in and out of as he or she navigates daily life experiences. The problem is that the gears may begin to shift too easily and become a kind of crutch relied on when difficult circumstance emerge. Normal daydreaming is an example of an innocuous gear shift, i.e., easily slipping out of the current moment into a fantasy and then re-entering the immediate situation. The capacity to cheat on an exam or on one’s taxes is a more concerning shift in which one’s ethical principles are situationally bypassed. Externalizing one’s own shortcomings and projecting them onto others repeatedly, and without guilt or remorse, can evolve into an unconscious interpersonal strategy characterized by seamless, manipulative turns of accountability.

 

IV. The Loss of Moral Consciousness

If these shifts in one’s personality style become compulsively relied upon, as is often the case, a person loses control of his or her emotional life; how one thinks, feels, and behaves becomes co-opted by the adaptive function vertical splitting affords. Infidelity, addiction, avoidance/withdrawal/procrastination tendencies, and self-sabotage are common dilemmas that can be understood from the perspective of vertical splitting.

 

As an example, for an affair to occur if must first be envisioned and then acted upon. The mind must carve out two mutually exclusive ways of being, each concealing the other, in order to accommodate the distinct realities in which one is simultaneously embedded, i.e., the committed relationship and the affair relationship. A vertical split constitutes the platform which ultimately enables unencumbered fluid movement between these realities, transgressing one scene in order to enter the other, and vice versa, again and again.

 

In this way the mind’s ability to vertically split, once it becomes a compulsion, degrades moral consciousness. ^[8] When the mind does not split vertically, conflict must be resolved, i.e., I am married but I want to have an affair is a predicament that must be solved by making a decision and contending with a singular reality (e.g., I want to have an affair so I must tell my wife what I want and deal with the consequences of this direct, honest communication).

 

If an individual’s mind is prone to vertical splitting, then the moral constraint predicated by a singular reality is interrupted; instead, the singular reality is fractured into two, into a split, which by its very nature bypasses the need for moral fortitude. Multiple realities emerge and are embellished to accommodate what cannot be resolved. The vertical splitter ultimately loses sight of him- or herself because the recognition of “this is not me” (which affirms a “me,” an identity) becomes diluted; with each split, who one is can be anything and nothing at the same time.

 

V. Conclusion

Vertical splitting serves a remarkable adaptive function. But for many individuals who have resorted to patterned vertical splitting as a coping mechanism, the unconscious and compulsive quality of this psychological defense can wreak havoc on their self-esteem and significant relationships. Psychotherapy may help these individuals first identify how vertical splitting is involved in their current life dilemmas. As therapy evolves, the patient and clinician can then devote their efforts to helping the patient extinguish the habitual tendency to vertically split; if this can occur, the convenient multiplicity of realities vertical splitting supports gradually succumbs to the moral demands of a singular reality; this is the pathway for identity to be re-claimed.

 

References

1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/past-trauma-may-haunt-your-future-health
2. https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748
3. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429484575/chapters/10.4324/9780429484575-2
4. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917556-600-review-freuds-debt-to-darwin/
5. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1037/1089-2680.10.1.74
6. https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/splitting-vertical-and-horizontal
7. http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/kohut1978.pdf
8. https://iapsp.org/newsletter/2003/stern.htm

 

 

James Tobin, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist based in Newport Beach, CA. His clinical practice consists of individual, group, and family therapy, with an emphasis on interpersonal patterns and relational dynamics that obstruct one’s access to truth, fulfillment and intimacy. The executive coaching component of Dr. Tobin’s practice focuses on helping executives and teams identify and navigate psychological forces in the workplace.