Stuck between Bombs and Love Bombs: How Splitting and Projection Got You Here
In the first part of this video, Sacha Slone talks about how the idealisation phase continues to haunt the targets of narcissistic abuse, after they have been discarded. To oversimplify, targets continue to experience cognitive dissonance after the discard, and thereby recapitulate the intermittent reinforcement that bonds them to their abusers. They are denied any understanding or closure, or else there is just no satisfactory explanation for how they were treated. As a consequence, they can’t reconcile the dream with the nightmare. They can’t reconcile the fact that they were idealised, and the way their abusers behaved during the idealisation phase (the love-bombing, future faking, extremely positive proclamations and promises) with the fact that they were devalued and discarded, and the way their abusers behaved during the devaluation and discard phases (the viciousness, hostility, contempt, indifference). The narcissistic abuser’s abrupt shifts between idealisation and devaluation are instances of splitting. Splitting, in turn, often involves psychological projection.
In this connection, the second part of the video covers splitting and projection, along with projective identification. These are unconscious defense mechanisms that typically underlie narcissistically abusive behaviour. Much narcissistically abusive behaviour can be explained by the assumption that these defense mechanisms are amplified, rigidified, and more regularly employed within the narcissistic abuser, as well as by the fact that the abuser is either unwilling or unable to subject the products of these unconscious processes to timely self-reflection.
I think it is especially important that the mechanism of projective identification is more widely understood, even though it is the more complicated of the three mechanisms discussed. (Projective identification is discussed by Rune Fardal at the end of the video.) If there’s a most helpful defense mechanism to learn about when it comes to explaining narcissistically abusive behaviour (and especially covertly abusive behaviour), then that mechanism is projective identification. The abuses that are explained by projective identification are among the most mind-fucking and crazy-making of the lot. Accordingly, even just knowing that this mechanism exists is a huge help, when it comes to dissolving some of the toxic mess that remains after the discard.
Understanding projective identification is important even for those who’ve not been narcissistically abused. As Fardal points out, abuses that are driven by projective identification are covert and difficult to expose. However, already knowing about projective identification increases the likelihood of exposing the true nature of such abuses. Projective identification, as well as any abuse that it underlies, basically amounts to a form of unconscious blame-shifting. The interpersonal dynamics of projective identification make it difficult to recognise that a person is being emotionally manipulated and abused in this way. Moreover, the widespread failure to understand these dynamics makes victim-blaming far more likely. For this reason, the wider understanding of projective identification is incredibly important. The majority of chronic emotional abusers have cluster B personality disorders (narcissism, psychopathy, borderline personality, or histrionic personality), and projective identification is responsible for so much of the toxic behaviours of these abusers. It follows that much of the abuse that is occurring around us goes unnoticed, or else is misidentified or mischaracterised in a way that condemns and further traumatises the targets of this abuse.