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Idealization Quotes

Browse 17 quotes about Idealization.

Idealization Quotes

“Idealizing Daddy is grand when you're five; it's crippling when you're twenty-five or thirty-five. For if you still believe in Daddy's miracles, you may not believe that you can make your own dreams come true. Worse, you may not even be able to formulate them without his guidance,”

Growing UpFathersFather Daughter RelationshipIdealizationWomen And Their Fathers
Book:Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life
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“At home that night, I was working on my mythology report when Phoebe called. She was whispering. When she went downstairs to say goodnight to her father, he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the television, but the television wasn't on. If she did not know her father any better, she would have thought he had been crying. 'But my father never cries,' she said. But my father never cries.”

ChildrenGriefFatherhoodIdealization
Book:Walk Two Moons
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“Psychologist Carl Rogers used the word ‘congruence’ when describing this relationship between the idealized self and the real self. Congruence is when the two selves fit harmoniously, when a person’s idealized self is congruent with their actual behavior. However, the idealized self is an often unreachable version of ourselves that we and society create while the real self is the messy, imperfect inner truth. We want to be the idealized version because we believe that society will then regard us positively, so we struggle to maintain a version that does not really fit.”

Self ImageSelf ConceptCongruenceIdealizationCarl Rogers
Book:The Descent of Man
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“It's a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it's paradisaical if she or he loves you back, it's unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves luck, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose.”

TogetherGratitudeTurbulenceApartIdealization
Book:Tibetan Peach Pie
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“The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as on is, not as on wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and there for fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires and extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is, is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be – ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous – the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom.”

FreedomExistenceViolencePerceptionTransformationGreedSelf KnowledgeBeliefsIdealization
Book:The Book of Life
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“... nothing is easier than to distance ourselves from great figures, whether through a negative interpretation or through idealization. Denigration and idealization are twins with the same basic motive: to avoid taking responsibility for the discoveries before us and to avoid taking responsibility for emulating the lives of great individuals. If we find severe flaws in the personality of the "genius," we can look upon him as some kind of genetic freak, closely linked to the madman, whose contributions were almost an incidental offshoot of his weird personality. If we consider the great man a triumphant genius with a basically unflawed personality, we can make small demands upon ourselves since we lack genius and possess flaws. Still another way of dealing with the great man is simply through indifference. One explains his loneliness and suffering through the kind of cliches Reich hated: "A genius is always one hundred years ahead of his time," or, "A genius always meets opposition in his lifetime." The need for distance from greatness is especially intense when we are dealing with persons who make the implicit demand: You must change your life if you are truly to understand what I have discovered.”

ResponsibilityGeniusIdealization
Book:Fury On Earth: A Biography Of Wilhelm Reich
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“When we place someone on a pedestal, we elevate them almost to the status of a god. Our perception of them goes from one extreme to another. This paragon of the ideal either walks on water or is a monster We trust them; then we don’t. They can’t possibly live up to the image we created of them or meet all of the expectations we have because what we want is the fantasy—not the human being donning the costume. We don’t really know the human being behind the fantasy. All the while, we may swear that we love them, but we can’t love someone we don’t see.”

EgoAddictionAddiction And RecoveryIdealization
Book:Grateful to Be Alive: My Road to Recovery fom Addiction
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“I have not seen Bly since the day I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!”

HindsightNaivetyIdealization
Book:The Turn of the Screw
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“...it was only natural that this mutual connection between sea and observer be forged: they were kindred spirits. The same, however, could not be done with the implacable moon: that imperious stalwart, which agitated the currents and spurned its beholder. This aloof satellite was formidable, yet neurotic, and so in spite of its ferocity, its movements were simple to predict, thereby granting this fearsome creature a veil of placidity. Its magnitude of torque was easily outmatched by that forceful heave of fear portending any misalignment with its anticipated schedule of phases. It cycled through these on time and without hesitation, experiencing, all the while, a wide array of emotions in response to the dissatisfied countenance of the Master it served. And yet, these changes in mood remained prosaic and careful, dutiful to its Patron; thusly, betraying nothing of its own resentments or intentionality either to its dismissed observer or to its demanding Patron, divulging nothing even of the influence which it potentially wielded over the Patron Planet, but which, in its lunar insecurity, never reached full expression save for the idle touslings of liquid fur. Perhaps it was diffident or bashful—otherwise, it was simple and had little prevailing ambition. Its motives were immaterial, in fact, for its aspirations were easily eclipsed and often countermanded and so one could not help but anticipate in its withered mien a certain resignation, a retreat to introspection away from the gazes of those who mistook its surrender to deterministic forces as a duty held most solemn. To be sure, it was a specter oft-romanticized by dullard poets and priests who admired it for its calming reserve, its gentle wisdom in juxtaposition with the histrionic impatience of the sea: like a tired guardian and a screaming toddler with primacy afforded counterintuitively to the guardian. What mattered more, in fact, was the subject of its influence: the willful and disobedient medium which spurned that hands that molded it. The moldings were more like jostles really and for a time they felt just and reasonable, but soon they came to confine and until verily there was no movement available that was not otherwise preordained by the will of the master. The accursed moon!”

ControlRomanticismDisillusionmentIdealizationMoon And Sea
Book:Inward and Toward
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