Posted by lucie lu on October 1, 2008, at 9:13:05
In reply to What lurks underneath idealization?, posted by lucie lu on September 29, 2008, at 18:33:07
Thanks, all. Your posts seemed to reflect such a cross-spectrum that it helped clarify the issue for me. I think my conclusion is that there is something that can be considered idealization that doesn't reflect the real person. I vaguely remember feelings like that early on in therapy, but they blended gradually into more realistic loving feelings later on. These were based on our mutual experiences and my growing sense of who my T is. And perhaps once I started feeling less inconsequential in general, I may have idealized less and been able to experience more reality-based feelings for someone who had helped me so much.
And while I think that many books do differentiate idealization as a separate feeling, it seems to me that the term idealization is sometimes just used as a euphemism for therapeutic love. Sigi, you have a point because I think the feelings do blend together - after all, don't we all tend to idealize to some extent the people that we love?
Thanks for all of your candid and insightful posts.
Lucie
poster:lucie lu
thread:854814
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080920/msgs/855055.html