The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external
stressors by compartmentalizing opposite
affect states and failing to integrate
the positive and negative qualities of the self or others into cohesive images.
Because ambivalent affects cannot be experienced simultaneously, more balanced
views and expectations of self or others are excluded from emotional awareness.
Self and object images tend to alternate between polar opposites: exclusively
loving, powerful, worthy, nurturing, and kind--or exclusively bad, hateful,
angry, destructive, rejecting, or worthless.
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