very interesting to consider re Stef. Also the transference theory is applicable, especially given the nature of the medium and of Stef's methods for invoking something like transference from people. The difference is that "Freud’s objective as a therapist was to help his patients dismantle their idealized image of him." Contrast Stef, for example, who does not permit himself to be viewed as "another suffering, striving mortal."



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23edmundson.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Here's an excerpt from the article, "Who's Your Daddy":

Quote:

Probably the best way to understand Freud’s take on authority is to consider the mode of therapy that he settled on midway through his career. We might call it “transference therapy.” Over time, Freud came to see that his patients were transferring feelings and hopes from other phases of their lives onto him. Frequently they sought from him what they’d sought from their parents when they were children. They wanted perfect love, and even more fervently, it seems, they wanted perfect truth. They became obsessed with Freud as what Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalytic theorist, liked to call “the subject who is supposed to know.” Patients saw Freud as an all-knowing figure who had the wisdom to solve all their problems and make them genuinely happy and whole. Freud’s objective as a therapist was to help his patients dismantle their idealized image of him. He taught them to see how the love they demanded from him was love that they had once demanded (and of course never received) from fathers and mothers and other figures of authority. Over time, the patients might come to view the doctor — Freud — as another suffering, striving mortal, not unlike themselves. The man sitting at the foot of the couch had to be revealed as neither a Merlin nor a Gandalf, but as a rather short, bespectacled fellow who smoked too many cigars and had a deep fondness for his dog Jo-Fi, the chow who sat beside him while he worked and to whom he occasionally addressed stray remarks. Once the patient could do that much, he was in a better position to treat other important figures in his life realistically. He’d be less prone to assault them with demands, to ask them for everything.

Really nifty stuff that does a good synopsis of the method and modality of Freud's technique in one easy-to-bite package.

I'd recently come to reexamine Freud's ideas about the idealized parents, and idealized self (superego), as they seem relevant to the case of me (who else?).

The idealized, perfect parental figures get subsumed into more mature models in the developmental model, but the infant/toddler stage of idealization is a real and distinct part of the process of ego solidification development of the 'self', at least in the model.

I've been thinking about this as a few unthought wishes have bubbled to the surface for me in therapy. Wishes are interesting things. Wishes and fear and self-esteem all intertwine. I wish my parents were capable of admitting their bad treatment of me, capable of admitting it and taking responsibility for it. I wish I could trust them enough to take comfort in their support. Those two wishes came up for me and seem relevant to this discussion about idealization.

Somehow its possible to hold onto idealized images instead of (to some degree) subsuming the wishes in light of the evidence. Somehow trauma plays a role in this process. And since the idealized relationship is impossible to achieve with the real person, sometimes the real person is rejected in order to hold onto the idealized image in some fashion.

Now, it gets weirder still.

Because its plainly obvious that the real person is not the idealized person, except in shape and role, the idealized version becomes a wish.

Thats not quite right, but I think it bears some invitation to the discussion above r/e Stef.

When the wish is transferred to another (freud, or stef), and it soon becomes clear that this new other isn't behaving perfectly in an idealized manner, attempts are made to cajole and control, or reject the other for not being perfect.

In some cases the object of transference may react badly to these impossible demands and not point out that they are impossible. Because they themselves have the unprocessed wish to become close to the idealized parent (held, seen, loved perfectly). Rather than face the unreality of their own wish they attempt and feel compelled to be the perfect one ("I am the special one!") for another.

Just a possibility along the Freudian lines. I don't go in for Freud too much actually, but there is something about this idealized other that rings true. Wishes and the fear that one may find out its just a wish, just leftover idealization from an early state of seemingly perfect relation (which was often worse than just not perfect by far).

I think the role of the parent in getting the child beyond the idealized state is to sort of 'ease them down'. That is a wild guess as I've not read this part of developmental theory according to freud (who didn't bother much with what would be a good thing to do, but how bad things happen and how to undo them a bit).

If the child's unrealistic demands of the very real parent trigger anxiety in the parent (we can see why they would be anxious because of their own poor transitions from idealization). The anxiety inevitably gets turned into some attack on the object of anxiety: the child. So rather than nurturing the child towards letting go of false fantasies with the essential empathy, the anxiety of the situation causes the parent to act poorly: attack, reject, abandon, etc.. you know the drill.

I think, this is the point where the child, rather than easing out of idealization, become firmly identified with it: anxiously attached to the threatened ideal. Just when they were ready to start letting it go and to see the complexities of healthy relational life as possible, they are betrayed. The betrayal locks them into a fundamental infantility (is that a word?) with regards to certain KEY relationships they have and will reform over and over again during their lives. Well, I hope part of this isn't true. It seems beyond cruel that the emotional identity should be so constructed......

This sadly makes it seem that psychoanalysis is a prerequisite to parenting, and that otherwise the chain of anxiety is doomed to repeat itself nearly perfectly every generation. Hrm. I don't think thats the case, but there is something to it Freud old boy, there is something to it.....