Psychological splitting is one of our primary defense mechanisms, a normal and healthy function of the individual psyche that occurs in every human being. On the one hand, it offers us protection until we are strong and ready enough to encounter and integrate those parts of our self, good and bad, that at first feel foreign to the ego. On the other hand, splitting functions more deeply, transcending our individual psyches by serving collective and transpersonal purposes. Psyche is not just on the inside, but is the universal mind in which we all swim together. In this sense, psyche is fractal, and we are each a diamond whose facets catch the light of communal relation in a kaleidoscopic network of interactions. We play different roles for one another, not just due to individual projections, but as part of a larger group gestalt, a broader process of psyche coming to know itself better as each individual becomes more integrated through working their relationships.

More than just a defense mechanism, psychological splitting is a way that you hold a piece of me until I am ready to recognize it as myself, and vice versa. In our closest relationships, our friends and partners often carry traits that we have trouble accepting as our own. By being in these relationships, we can slowly drink in those seemingly foreign traits. Thus, splitting in not pathological, but a way of integrating Self at a pace that we can handle. It is a form of amnesis, or forgetting, that is to our benefit. Just as we cannot see all our past lives less we be overwhelmed by their weight and unable to engage cleanly in the present, so too are we unable to see all the parts of ourselves right away. We must gradually become that which we already are potentially. We do this by interacting with people and our environment, by slowly reclaiming those parts of our Self that we initially, often for our own good, split off from ourselves. Splitting relates to the Saturn-Pluto complex in the sky presently. We can look at the birth chart to help us to see the unique ways in which each of us is prone to splitting. By identifying and working with these personal archetypal themes, we are aided on our soul journey toward becoming our fullest selves.

Sung to you by the lovely Travis DiRuzza.