Prestage versus defensive splitting and the borderline personality: A Rorschach analysis.

This paper reviews theoretical contributions by Kernberg (1975) and by Stolorow and Lachmann (1980) regarding defensive modes of splitting and suggests possible Rorschach manifestations for a variety of levels of defensive organization among borderline patients. Defensive operations vary among patients with different levels of severity of borderline psychopathology. Specifically, it is proposed that some borderline patients rely on splitting as an active attempt to mitigate the experience of intense ambivalence conflicts toward others, as described by Kernberg; another group of borderline patients is seen as having pathology that revolves around a weakly integrated representational world, poor self-object differentiation, and prestage developmental levels of defense, as described by Stolorow and Lachmann. The Rorschach is a valuable diagnostic tool in distinguishing between psychopathology involving defenses against structural conflict and psychopathology based on an arrest in development at the level of prestage defensive operations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)