Idealization and its discontents: a reconsideration of the functions and limits of a psychic phenomenon

This study defines and illustrates the connections and differences between an idealizing and capacitating relationship. We first identified the patient's requirements for an idealized object, both to facilitate the reinforcement of a circumscribed but positive sense of herself, and to ward off dysphoric affect states in the domains of core- and intersubjective relatedness. These requirements were then distinguished from her need at a deeper level (the true self) to find a capacitating object to affirm, tolerate, and contain the full range of affects in her lived experience with others. These two sets of requirements have a different feel in the transference; and countertransference responses may be a valuable means of recognizing and distinguishing each as elements of different structures of self-organization.