Understanding the Background of Personality Disorders and the Influence of Early Experiences with Parents to their View of God

Early relationship is very significant in developing a healthy personality. What a child experience during first three years of life can have a lifelong impact. Early relationships not only act as a template of the brain, but also mold and shape the child’s ability for future relationships with others. Early relationship also becomes the determinant of normal or pathological splitting. Splitting is universal and not all splitting cause a pathology. Maternal-availability is essential during first three years of life. Normal splitting can happen when good-enough mother on some occasion is unavailable or unable to attend to the infant and meet his needs. The child can tolerate the good-enough mother’s unavailability at certain times because he or she is in ‘holding environment’ that makes the child feel secure, protected, and not excessively frustrated. Pathological splitting can happen when the infant receives excessively unsatisfying, frustrating and abusive experience. Severe splitting makes one to see everything in terms of black and white. He or she is not able to accept bad and good at the same time or cannot accept paradoxical qualities in others. A normal person can accept this paradoxical quality, but a personality disorder person cannot accept this paradoxical quality. Finally, early relationships influence one’s relationship to God, how he or she sees God and experience God. Three studies have found that early relationship with parents, whether secure or insecure relationships can influence how one sees God and relates to God (Gravitt, 2011; Pehr Granqvist, 2007; Rosalinda Cassibba, 2013). One who has a secure attachment with his or her parent, tend to trust God and has a secure relationship with God as well. As a therapist, it is essential that we provide a secure base for our patients or clients. Psychodynamic therapy is the kind of therapy that proved to help patients with Personality Disorders. Successful treatment should not only relieve symptoms but also make intrapsychic change by providing patients with a relationship that enables them to resolve the splitting of their ego.


INTRODUCTION
A personality disorder is known to be a long-lasting and long-standing disorder.Many people think that a personality disorder is a kind of disorder that is far away from normal family, and one will not get it if there is no genetic or heredity factor.Actually, one can have a personality disorder since childhood without knowing it or realizing that he or she has it and it continues until adulthood.Personality disorder is a kind of disorder that one can still function daily but having problems or maladaptive traits in many areas, like cognition, affect, interpersonal, dan impulse control.Children will learn and absorb everything from their parents and it will amazingly stay and affect with them throughout life.Kirwan explains that early learning as children is more powerful than later learning as adults (Kirwan, 1984, p. 163).What a child experience during first three years of life is very significant to development of normal or abnormal personality.
Why the first three years of life?Margareth Mahler said that the development of normal children during the first three years of life gave us a breakthrough in understanding the personality disorders.(Masterson, 2005, p. 4).
There are three stages of child development.The first stage is the Autistic which happen during childbirth to two months.The second stage is the Symbiotic which happen from three months to eighteen months.The last stage is the Separation/Individuation which happen during eighteen months and thirty-six months (three years).This last stage is divided into four subphases, namely: The Differentiation subphase, The Practicing subphase, The Rapprochment subphase, and Object Constancy subphase.A child must form a healthy symbiotic relationship with the mother to be able to separate from the mother on the next stage.Success in separating himself from the mother enables the child to experience healthy separation or individuation then provide a base for healthy personality.Beattie quoted that Masterson found a child's struggles for separation during the rapprochement subphase is the key to the formation of a personality disorder.(Masterson, 2005, p. 40).For examples, if a mother or a caregiver do not approve, support the child's attempts to have control and autonomy of himself, then a pathological development happens; a healthy and separate self is not formed and later an abnormal personality starts to develop.It is affirmed that we can actually see the personality disorders features and label a child with the disorder before age 3 and continues to be consolidated throughout adolescence (Masterson & Lieberman, 2004, p. 29).From Mahler's stages, we can see the importance of the first three years of an infant in development of personality disorder.
Parents or caregivers, especially mothers, need to be aware that early relationships with children are very important.Why mothers?Mother is the significant figure, a major source of the environmental stimulation who mediates the early physical environment that a child experiences.(Schore, 2016, p. 7).Early relationships with mothers will influence the child's personality and therefore will influence the future of the child as well.Masterson quoted that Winnicot (1956) and others have emphasized the importance of maternal availability in developing a normal and healthy personality.(Masterson, 2005, p. 41).Understanding mother's unavailability is very important to understand many adolescent behavioral problems and personality disorders.Furthermore, Masterson even predicts that what kind of attachment one has with the mother (secure, insecure, or disorganized) has an impact on later adult emotional functioning" (Masterson, 2005, p. 41).Early relationship will influence the socioemotional development of the child.
We can see that early relationship have long-lasting impact on the child, but question is how does the early environment influence?How is the process?Infant's early interactions with the environment through mother will produce long lasting imprinting experiences.These early interactions will shape the structure of the brain that are Theological Journal Kerugma Vol 6, No. 2, October 2023 Copyright © 2023 e-ISSN 2622-1039, p-ISSN 2621-8038 65 responsible for the future socioemotional functioning of the child (Schore, 2016, p. 62).It gives us the sense that whatever the infant experiences during this early relationship forms and develops structures and templates of basic personality.Schore even stated that this first relationship of infant with the mother not only acts as a template, but also molds the infant's capacity to enter into later emotional relationships permanently (Schore, 2016, p. 3).What Schore point out is very essential because many parents or primary caregivers are not aware that the child's early relationship acts as a template of the brain, thus permanently shapes the child's ability for future relationships with others.Child's early relationship with the mother provides and structures the template of the brain and affects or influence the child.Furthermore, if the child experiences trauma, abuse and other negative experiences, it will shape the structure of the brain and will affect the infant negatively.Cozolino wrote that early trauma with mother or caregiver can result in complex reactions and tends to resist any changes (Cozolino, 2013, p. 165).This experience with mother or other significant figure is internalized and so provides the building blocks of psychic structure (Scharff J. D., 1998, p. 41).Early relationships are really the key since it gives template and provides building blocks for the future relationship.
Early relationship also becomes the determinant of normal/healthy or abnormal/pathological.From object relations theory, we know is that everyone is splitting, whether he or she is normal or abnormal.In his 1940 paper, Fairbairn wrote that the process of splitting of the ego can happen in normal development and pathology (Scharff D. E., 1996, p. 50).Splitting of the self to various degrees is found not only in pathology: splitting is universal (Scharff J. S., 2005, p. 4).So, our question is the difference between normal splitting and abnormal splitting?What contribute to normal and abnormal splitting?What's the difference between the normal and the abnormal splitting?In general term, we only know about the severity of splitting and how the individual functions; if the splitting is severe enough to make one unable to function normally, then one is considered having a personality disorder.For example, severe splitting makes one to see everything in terms of black and white.He or she is not able to accept bad and good at the same time in others.This severe 'splitting' can be a problem in building a normal relationship.
In psychology or specifically the object relations terms, there is a certain way to differentiate between the normal and the abnormal splitting.Splitting happens to every infant in various degrees.And not all splitting cause a pathology.Splitting can happen in normal daily experience when the needs of the infant are not met.Splitting can also happen when the infant receives excessively unsatisfying, frustrating and abusive experience.The infant will split the bad object into two bad objects (exciting object and rejecting object) and one good object (ideal object).Then the individual internalizes them.(Glickauf-Hughes & Wells, 1997, pp. 24-25).
The negative experiences like trauma or abuse will definitely split the ego of the infants.This splitting can be very severe that leads to multiple splits.When the parents are actually bad and abusive or persecutory, the need for splitting is undeniable and it leads to multiple splits in the self (Scharff J. S., 2005, p. 8).In Fairbairn's theoretical principles, he mentioned that in healthy development, the central ego remains dominant over the splitting egos or subsidiary egos (i.e., the libidinal ego, the antilibidinal ego), whereas in pathology the subsidiary egos can be dominant, especially when the patient is regressed (Glickauf-Hughes & Wells, 1997, pp. 26-27).When the central ego remains dominant that means the central ego or central self is in command (Scharff J. S., 2005, p. 16).This means that the child's primary relationship is with real other people and the central ego remains dominant and the central ego relates to the ideal object.This ideal object, namely the good-enough object, is parental figure or object that is quite comfortably arousing (not smothering or overexciting) and limit-setting (not rejecting) qualities (Scharff J. S., 2005, p. 15).When a child experiences a normal experience, there is no need to repress the experience since it is not painful or shaming.
Theological Journal Kerugma Vol 6, No. 2, October 2023 Copyright © 2023 e-ISSN 2622-1039, p-ISSN 2621-8038 66 On the other hand, when the experience is not normal, either abusive, traumatic, or such a painful experience, then the child will need to repress the experience, put it in unconsciousness and the splitting ego becomes dominant and is in command.This 'not normal' experience with frustrating or abusive parents can cause abnormal splitting.
James Grotstein stated that abnormal splitting can emerge from infantile mental catastrophe, disappointment, dissolution, and despair (Scharff D. E., 1996, p. 461).So, we now know that when the central ego remains dominant, means that the person can relate to others in reality and consciousness, instead of unconsciousness.The individual can accept and unify the paradoxical qualities.The individual can tolerate anxiety or stress because he or she trust the mother and feel secure about her.
Normal splitting can happen when good-enough mother on some occasion is unavailable or unable to attend to the infant.Winnicott explain how this condition happen, he wrote: "…the good-enough mother provides an optimal (although not perfect) amount of consistency, responsiveness, nurturing, and comfort for the infant who is wholly dependent on her.Thus, when the infant cries, the good-enough mother is intensely attuned to the infant's nonverbal behaviors for clues about what the infant needs.Through trial and error, she eventually soothes or gratifies the infant.In the future, she recognizes what the infant needs from remembering what his or her particular nonverbal behaviors generally meant in the past.On some occasions the mother is too tired to attend to the infant, unavailable or unable to determine what the infant needs.Winnicott believes that these disappointing times are nonproblematic as long as the mother meets the child's needs with sufficient regularity" (Glickauf-Hughes & Wells, 1997, pp. 10-11) What Winnicott explained, clarify the situation where 'good enough mother' is not able to be responsive at certain times and splitting can happen but that does not have to be very problematic to the child.However, there are inevitable cases where a child considers the parents as bad and represses the experience.This does not mean that the parent is actually treating a child badly.It is just simply inevitable that the parents cannot be there every moment and cannot always understand the child correctly, or that they sometimes overstimulate the child's needs while trying to satisfy them.Still this experience is considered normal.This splitting too, is not causing a pathological personality development.Scharff said that there are always some aspects of parenting that the child feels as intolerably bad, and represses the experience as a rejecting or exciting object along with the antilibidinal and libidinal ego respectively" (Scharff J. S., 2005, p. 8).
So, there are conditions when the child might feel the parents as intolerably bad, and cause splitting to happen.But a child can tolerate the good-enough mother's unavailability at certain times because he or she is in 'holding environment.'Every healthy infant needs a 'holding environment' to feel secure, protected, and not excessively frustrated.Even though Fairbairn admits that "total parental availability is impossible," he does not consider that "infantile dependence is, by its very nature, ungratifiable" (Glickauf-Hughes & Wells, 1997, p. 27).That's why the term used is not 'perfect mothers' but 'good-enough mothers' to show that we are not looking for 'all good or always good,' but optimal consistency to intensely attune to infants' needs.No one is perfect, no one is able to consistently be 'good' and never make mistakes; mother or other significant caregiver might be making mistakes and considered 'bad' for some reasons.A normal person can accept this paradoxical quality, but a personality disorder person cannot accept this paradoxical quality.
In addition, there is a difference between people with personality disorders and those without personality disorders which is that people with personality disorders do not have whole object relations.They cannot integrate the bad and the good side of people, therefore not whole (Masterson & Lieberman, 2004, p. 24).That's why people with personality disorders are having difficulty to see themselves and others as a 'whole' person.They tend to