There are people for whom it is important to psychologically merge with someone, so that “I” and “we” are one and the same. Otherwise, they remain restless and seemingly “incomplete.” If you have a partner, you need to take him completely for yourself. Imagine a man who needs to psychologically merge with someone. If his mother was his whole world, but he still gets married, he will either constantly leave his wife for his mother, without whom he is incomplete, or he will erase his mother from his life and replace her with his wife. That is, a new mother. Imagine that a woman needs to psychologically merge with someone. She meets a man - and this is love-fusion. Then a child is born - she merges with the child and drives the man away. Merger-love does not allow a third person into the relationship. Sometimes people with pronounced symbiotic problems split groups into two camps. This already contains the beginnings of separation, an attempt to have an identity (by dividing all people into “ours” and “not ours”). Imagine, for example, a teenager who is still desperately trying to break the symbiosis and feel separate, but demonstrates protest behavior not with his mother, but with his teachers. "The teachers are bad." - “Mom and I are good.” There is no “I” of this boy as such. Instead, there is some inextricable “mom and I.” Mom is tired of protecting herself and her son from the evil school. – Imagine that you are a psychologist. If you start to sympathize with the boy (yes, the teachers may be wrong), then you will find yourself in the camp in which these “mom and I” are located. If you start to clarify something without showing him clearly that it’s all about the teachers, then for him you will quickly find yourself in the camp of evil teachers against the good unity called “mom and I.” And finally, the most famous processes based on the mechanism of splitting - intergroup processes, “us” and “them”. It is human nature to be biased in favor of one's own. Each nation ascribes good moral qualities to itself, while another nation considers it worse morally. Also, the most diverse peoples of the world will tell you that they have a particularly beautiful and richly expressive language. Not only every nation is biased in favor of itself, but also the family, sometimes the team. Here are two teachers sitting in the auditorium at a show of amateur performances. One says to the other: “It seems like our school has the most beautiful children.” The other one answers her: “And this is so.” Regarding splitting, it should be added that the obsession with dividing into good friends and bad others becomes more acute in situations of intergroup conflicts (and most acutely in situations of war). This is what happens to each of us: At first, mass man (belonging to a united, undifferentiated group) becomes separate through a desperate separation struggle. According to the principle: “I am not You. We are not They.” Next, a person has to reach the next stage of psychological maturation in order to arrive at mature sociality. And this person will be an individual person. He values ​​relationships, but he does not need to merge with someone in symbiosis. He may also highly value his group (including the team, family, people), but he does not need to consider this group to be completely ideal and infallible. There are no such groups, no such families, no such nations. But a mature person is able to see himself as whole (in connection with his qualities, wonderful and not so), and he is now able to see and appreciate his group in its integrity and complexity. Now the person is able to take personal responsibility. Capable of cooperating and having his own opinion, which may or may not coincide with the opinion of the majority. Only, unlike a person with separation issues, confrontations are not valuable in themselves. He already feels separate, and confrontation is a special case when the issue turns out to be fundamental. But even mature people and mature groups sometimes tend to regress. And therefore, when a group is overwhelmed by a single impulse, or when in it.