When couples who have idealized one another and their marriage divorce, they often engage in a battle about who is the “winner” and who the “loser” who must carry all the shame.
Category: Defense Mechanisms
The most prominent psychological defense mechanisms, including repression, denial, idealization, splitting and projection. This is the category for you.
Of Puppies and Parenting
A degree of parental hostility and resentment toward infants is normal though not usually acknowledged. This article looks at ways we may unconsciously give voice to those feelings, or split them off and direct them elsewhere.
A Hiking Meditation
Personal observations on the actual moment when a defensive maneuver occurs, in order to evade pain, as well some reflections on the nature and value of the spiritual experience.
Why Empathy Fails
In order to empathize with another person, you have to recognize that he or she actually exists apart from and without specific reference to you. Our ability to tolerate separateness largely determines how well we are able to empathize with others.
Defense Mechanisms V: Idealization
Idealization reflects a drive to escape from an internal experience felt to be unbearable and to connect with something perfect. This defense mechanism may take aim at another person, an actual experience or one’s own self.