Concept
Idealization
The mental exaltation of an object, or of the self, which is then felt to be perfect although its nature is unchanged. Freud (1914) set it apart from sublimation: idealization acts on the object, sublimation on the drive. Klein made it an early defence that keeps an all-good object apart from a persecuting one.
Development
1914
introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud speaks of an idealization of the drive in the perversions in 1905. In 1914 he defines idealization as a process acting on the object, possible with ego-libido as with object-libido, as in the sexual overvaluation of the loved object, and he ties it to the forming of the ego ideal.
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905);On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914)
1946
developed by Melanie Klein
Klein makes idealization one of the earliest defences of the paranoid-schizoid position. Tied to splitting, it exaggerates the good aspects of the breast as a safeguard against fear of the persecuting breast.
In Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms (1946)
Relations
- 1914 introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud speaks of an idealization of the drive in the perversions in 1905. In 1914 he defines idealization as a process acting on the object, possible with ego-libido as with object-libido, as in the sexual overvaluation of the loved object, and he ties it to the forming of the ego ideal.
- 1914 diverged into Sublimation
Freud separates the two: sublimation turns the drive toward a non-sexual aim, while idealization exalts the object without changing it. The ego ideal demands sublimation but cannot enforce it, so a lofty ideal is no proof that sublimation has succeeded.
- 1946 developed by Melanie Klein
Klein makes idealization one of the earliest defences of the paranoid-schizoid position. Tied to splitting, it exaggerates the good aspects of the breast as a safeguard against fear of the persecuting breast.
Works
- 1905
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Freud's three essays, published by Deuticke in 1905, deal with the sexual aberrations, with infantile sexuality and with the transformations of puberty. Together they argue that the sexual drive is present from infancy, that it is made up of component drives bound to erotogenic zones, and that it reaches its adult genital form only through a course of development. Later editions added an account of the pregenital organisations of the libido.
- 1914
On Narcissism: An Introduction
Freud's 1914 essay, published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, treats narcissism as a normal state of the libido. It sets the libido invested in the ego against the libido invested in objects, and primary narcissism against secondary narcissism. It contrasts two types of object-choice, the anaclitic and the narcissistic, introduces the concept of the ego ideal, and separates sublimation, which concerns the drive, from idealization, which concerns the object.
- 1946
Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms
First published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1946 and reprinted, revised, in Developments in Psycho-Analysis (1952), this paper is Melanie Klein's account of the months that precede the depressive position she had described in the 1930s. In this earliest phase the infant's anxiety is predominantly persecutory and its defences predominantly schizoid; Klein names it the paranoid position, adding the term schizoid, which she takes from Ronald Fairbairn, and from 1952 calls it the paranoid-schizoid position. She holds that an ego capable of anxiety, defence and object relations exists from birth but lacks cohesion, and that its primary anxiety is a fear of annihilation arising from the death instinct within, which it deflects outward and then meets as persecution. Its chief defence is splitting: the object, at first the breast, is divided into a good and a bad one, and since the ego cannot split the object without being split itself, the same division runs through the self, sustained by idealisation, denial and omnipotent phantasies of annihilating what is bad. Klein here describes projective identification, the phantasy of forcing split-off parts of the self into the mother in order to harm, possess and control her, so that she comes to be felt as those parts; good parts of the self are projected too, which is necessary for good object relations but, in excess, depletes the ego. The paper traces how these mechanisms colour schizoid object relations and the transference, with their detachment and splitting-off of feeling, and argues that when persecutory anxiety and splitting are too strong the depressive position cannot be worked through, so that the fixation points of schizophrenia lie in this first position and are bound up with those of manic-depressive illness. Klein discusses Fairbairn's work at length, accepting much of his account of schizoid phenomena while objecting to his neglect of anxiety, aggression and the death instinct.
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References
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality1905Evidence for a relation
- On Narcissism: An Introduction1914Evidence for a relation
- Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms1946Evidence for a relation