ABSTRACT
The process of splitting is the infant's way of dealing with the formless anxiety that originates with the very meaning of life itself, a life vulnerable to annihilation. In phantasy the infant splits the primal object, the breast, which is the source of all of his or her experiences of satisfaction and frustration, into 'good' and 'bad' in order to maintain the breast's good, nurturing, satisfying qualities. The infant's ego, which is fragile at best, needs the containing capacity of the mother or the person caring for the infant. The child's persecutory fear, perhaps derived from or reinforced by the hot milk, was an expression of the annihilation anxiety. Splitting off the bad parts became necessary as the fragile ego attempted to reduce danger in order to maintain some wholeness. Idealization is where the good experiences of the infant are associated with an ideal object, which is phantasized as being very valuable, desired and well identified with.
