#idealized image

Here, the artist exaggerated and idealized her appearance, depicting herself with an extraordinarily long, slender neck; vivid blue eyes; and sharpened features. She portrayed herself wearing black gloves and a flat-brimmed hat trimmed with a bunch of grapes, all motifs that recurred with some frequency in her paintings and acted as symbols of her presence. Such inclusions helped shape her individual variant of Surrealism, which she felt was based in realism. “Surrealism is meant for me,” she remarked, “because I am a pretty realistic person but don’t like all I see. So I dream that it is changed. Then I change it to the way I want it. It is almost always pretty real. Only mystery and fantasy have been added. All foolishness has been taken out. It becomes my own dream.”

We all know those people who are clearly in need of help yet obstinately refuse to seek or accept it. This ranges from being highly skeptical of the efficacy of therapy to refusing to listen to the points of view of friends and loved ones. Despite the psychic conflict, despite the emotional and psychological hardship, they keep on with the same dysfunctional behaviors. The key to understanding these people is to realize that they’ve cultivated an idealized image of themselves for a long time now and unconsciously believe that they’ll fall apart completely if they don’t guard this idealized image from outside interference. They fancy themselves as wise beings, as enlightened people, as almost all knowing, all powerful. That idealized image, a distorted image of Self but one that feels genuine and real, would start to crumble under the pressure of first admitting to emotional and psychological turmoil and second ceding power to the helper. Like we said these types of people will be adamant that therapy will be of no use to them although most of them have never gone to a therapist. The truth is that the skepticism is usually a rationalization meant to protect them from the true fear, which is the prospect of ceding their power and control to some Other and discovering that they’re not the all knowing, all wise, enlightened beings they fancy themselves to be. Their distressed relationships, general malaise, inability to produce meaningful work, and other mental health symptoms makes it obvious to everyone else in their lives that they’re struggling people who are in desperate need of help but they can’t see this themselves. They continue on with the same obstinate refusal to get help or change anything about themselves while projecting all of their psychic conflict onto those around them, by constantly giving advice or criticizing the intimates in their lives, which of course puts further strain on these already distressed relationships. Sooner or later those around them get fed up with the hypocrisy, get fed up of listening to a constant stream of advice and criticism from people who aren’t happy or healthy themselves. For any meaningful change to occur the idealized image must be addressed and overcome, must be replaced by an image of Self grounded in reality, an image that celebrates desirable attributes and qualities but also recognizes deficiencies, an image that admits to being a flawed human being rather than a godlike figure. Because a flawed human being can receive help and knowledge and can decide to change for the better while a godlike figure cannot since the unspoken premise is that there’s no aspect of life or behavior in need of any modification, that enlightenment has already been achieved and it’s everybody else who needs to change. But people who really have become enlightened don’t try to force others to change and they don’t criticize, they encourage. People who really have become enlightened know how hard the journey is, because they’ve already done the hard work of changing themselves, and this experience fills them with patience, compassion, and the wisdom that they’re not godlike figures but flawed human beings who are wrong sometimes and make mistakes sometimes. The truly enlightened person is open, will ask for and receive help, will listen to and consider differing worldviews, and does realize that human growth and change are lifelong processes. The person plagued by the idealized image of enlightenment is closed, will not ask for or receive help, will not listen to or consider differing worldviews, and believes further growth and change are unnecessary since perfection has already been attained.

Many people come to therapy because intimates in their lives have let them down. They expected perfectly reasonable things out of their partners, parents, friends, or colleagues and got something less instead. These intimates failed to keep their side of the bargain, failed to meet emotional and psychological wants and needs. But when we dig below the surface what we often find is the people who feel wronged had fanciful, distorted images of the intimates in their lives to begin with. They never saw the real humans in front of them but rather characters they wanted to see, what we might call idealized versions. These people never could have lived up to all of those emotional and psychological wants and needs for long because those wants and needs were themselves irrational, rooted not in healthy, mature personhood but in neurotic trends. The irony then in these cases is that while responsibility is placed squarely on the shoulders of others for failing to live up to seemingly reasonable expectations the true responsibility lies with Self for failing to develop into full personhood where others can be seen more or less as they are rather than seen through distorted lenses. The types of frustrated people we’re talking about here, unless they change, will spend their lives flitting from one relationship to the next, where at the very beginning of the relationship everything is perfect and the other person is idealized to the point of almost godlike traits and abilities but by the end of the relationship that same person is demonized to the point of almost satanlike traits. The real person was never either of those things, wasn’t godlike to begin with or satanlike to end with. It was the distorted image of that person that changed over time, where at first he or she was the long searched for answer to irrational emotional and psychological needs and later he or she proved to be nothing more than another fraud. The real work is not simply to choose partners or friends more wisely but to spend time and effort sorting out exactly what those personal, private irrational emotional and psychological wants and needs are, how and where they originated, and whether they’re indicative of a healthy, mature person capable of healthy, mature relationships. The work starts and ends with Self, because only when those privately held neurotic trends are worked out can distorted images of others be replaced by accurate appraisals of others.