Basic Split, The
The dividing of reality into the perception of good and bad. An Acupuncture Emotional System problem, it is associated with the Bladder meridian.
Timeline: Early 1980s on.
Commentary: The Basic Split is endemic to much of human culture. Both historically and in the modern world, politics, warfare, the legal system, religion, and culture more generally has so often been predicated on the dualistic distinction of a good “us” versus a bad “them.”
Unsurprisingly for a phenomenon so fundamental, the roots of the Basic Split are deep in early childhood and the maternal relationship. Diamond’s work builds specifically on that of child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein who suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy results in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad, a process which begins with the infant projecting this onto their mother’s breast, so creating a “bad breast” and a “good breast.”
The solution to the Basic Split is to learn to suspend judgement and embrace reality as it is. This relates to other ideas Diamond uses in his approach, particularly the Buddhist concept of Thusness, the enlightened acceptance of the state of things as they are, and the belief that there is no not-God.
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