As Well as to Psychiatric Diagnostics Related to Perception/Reaction

By Patricia Lefave, intractably Monophrenic

“Splitting” is an extremely common part of dysfunctional thinking/behaviour employed by individuals and  groups engaged in scapegoating and the defence of the dysfunctional status quo. It is also used by psychiatrists to maintain their own belief system used to control the identified patient.

Basically it works by splitting reality itself into two distinct versions of it and then projecting the split onto the target who is being defined as “'crazy” (or weird or unfriendly etc.) and who is said to be 'unaware' of what is going on around him/her (another projection of the splitter) and therefore it is all right to talk about him/her right in his/her presence as if s/he was not really there. It is used to objectify the targeted human being. Once that is done the group can give itself permission to behave towards the target anyway they like since the target is no longer as 'real' a human being as the group doing the projecting of their own traits.

The ongoing experience of it on the receiving end is to be talked about in the third person in one's presence by those who simultaneously deny they do that. Instead, the perception of it is 'diagnosed' as a 'symptom' of the scapegoat rather than a simple statement of truth. Everything said after that has been accomplished as setting the premise of 'diagnosis' is then flipped around one hundred and eighty degrees and pathologized in the  complainant, while simultaneously denied as the group behaviour. It is basically a bait and switch con which goes unrecognized by all involved and is often begun by one or two people but with a group getting caught up in the drama. Then the whole group starts to fabricate a complex new 'reality' often while the 'subject' is forbidden to speak for him/herself or to even complain about the group behaviour which is consistently denied to even exist. Instead, in keeping  with the  ongoing effects of the 'switch,' the complaint  about it is said to be the target's 'fabrication'.

The effect on the targeted individual of course is to be bombarded with non stop contradiction, multiple versions of 'reality', open hostility by some, threats  of 'treatment' for his/her alleged 'perception/reaction' problems, group pressure  and an enforced psychological isolation and silencing.

Though mental illness professionals actually know that this kind of unrelenting stress and chaos can CAUSE a psychotic breakdown, they do NOT recognize it when it is actually happening, and especially not when they are participating in it themselves. That is very good proof of how common this is and how powerful the group phenomenon of splitting and projecting as a defence is as well.

The participants tend to remain deaf and blind to themselves no matter WHAT the target says to them. In fact, generally the more the target tries to get them to listen to reason, the worse it gets. It is a totally surreal experience.

The dysfunctional group needs to end this practice and integrate the full understanding of it into their awareness. Those of you who really want to help the targeted sick one, the one you have 'helped' to make sick, need to accept some help yourselves in order to wake up to the horrifying reality of your own making. Stay tuned for enough pedantic detail to get you there. It seems that the only way the psychiatrized are going to get any real help is if we help ourselves and each other by jolting the 'normal' out of their ongoing delusional self serving dysfunctional trance.

Let's just get you started here with this one. I don't call the police on you because I am a childish moron who is “going to call the police to complain that people are talking about me.” (delivered with a mocking, petulant tone when discussed in my presence)

I call the police to tell them from WHERE I am getting my information about what has been done to me, and who planned it; information which is then DENIED and suppressed by people like you who are mocking me for doing it, who will then no doubt deny the mocking as well, and who fail to see the destructive results of that. What you are denying doing is then denied to me, by the SAME people who started it all in the first place, and redefined as MY paranoid delusions and hallucinated conversations. This denial that you have done anything, or that you know anything, about what I am complaining of, is what earned me my psychiatric label since it is generally believed that reality IS defined by group consensus and 'authority.' You see in the wonderful fantasy world of psychiatry we can never define the group as 'crazy' only the individual who complains about the group behaviour. This is not two DIFFERENT realities. It is the SAME reality being defined in two different ways and that is what 'splitting' is really all about: scapegoating by blaming the victim for his/her perception problems so that NO ONE ELSE can be blamed or forced to see any truth they do not like, especially about themselves.

It is a very simple psychological mechanism, very common in dysfunctional groups, and it is also a very destructive one. You must stop this group thinking and behaviour. The end result of it is frequently death; of the victims and/or the abusers. You must stop perceiving the abuse of individuals as 'entertainment' and you must stop deluding yourselves that it is all right to behave this way as long as the targets don't know they are targets. We KNOW, and we have said so. Wake the hell up to the reality of your own lack of awareness and stop projecting all your shit onto us. The trip 'through the looking glass' isn't some place 'we' go. It is someplace we already ARE. The Mad Hatters are all around us, oblivious to both yourselves and to us as we really ARE. The truth is right under your own noses like “something rotten in Denmark.” Can't you smell the stench? Dig it out before it decomposes completely and disappears.