Complex splitting of self-representations in sexually abused adolescent girls

Abstract

Recent work on psychopathology supports a connection between repeated childhood maltreatment and disturbances in self-definition and -regulation. This study tested the hypothesis that chronic childhood sexual abuse is associated with developmentally complex affective splitting of representations of self-with-others, including both a negativity bias in evaluating core self and a high degree of affective splitting of scripts for self-in-relationships. Sixteen inpatient adolescent girls with affective disorders participated in the Self-in-Relationships Interview to produce and analyze a self-diagram; seven had been victims of prolonged sexual abuse, and nine had not. The results supported the hypothesis, showing two powerful differences in splitting between the groups, (a) The abused girls placed negative characteristics as central to their core self and also produced an unusually large overall number of negatives. The nonabused girls regarded negative characteristics as mostly peripheral in their self-diagram and produced fewer negatives, (b) The abused girls showed a form of complex dissociative coordination calledpolarized qffective splitting, which was not produced by the nonabused group. They also showed slightly higher developmental levels in general than the nonabused group, thus contradicting the traditional view that maltreatment produces splitting through developmental fixation or regression. Psychopathology from abuse arises along a complex, distinctive developmental pathway, not as a result of a delay or failure of development.