Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

November 21, 1977. BRAINWASHING, LOVE, PASSIONATE BELIEF: A STUDY OF IDEALIZATION. Alan J. Eisnitz, M.D.

Dr. Eisnitz suggested that idealization plays several roles in brainwashing, love, and passionate belief. In the state of loving, the love object is idealized. With passionate belief, a particular cause or ideal affirms idealized values. In brainwashing, victims are pressured to accept ideals which may be antithetical to their own. These phenomena underscore the value of studying the development of idealization within the process of ego development and maturation. The foundations of the process of idealization are established during the preoedipal and oedipal phases, but the process undergoes a revival during adolescence, with subsequent reoccurrences during later steps in individual development. When the oedipus complex is not successfully resolved, the necessary identifications cannot occur, and external object relations must be available to a large extent to stabilize the cathexis of the self-representation. Just as object relations progress from the requirement for actual gratification by the object to the object's presence as a potential gratifier and, finally, to the acceptance of the object's absence, so, too, in the earlier stages of idealization, the ideals must be closely connected with the actual object or self qualities, although later ideals may become more abstract and depersonified. During periods of stress, however, these paths of development may be reversed, and the actual presence of an idealized external object may again become necessary. New ideals may then replace previously internalized values.

Stressing self-representation as the keystone in these developmental processes, Dr. Eisnitz noted that serious conflicts threaten the stability of the self-representation, and defensive measures involving the reappearance or strengthening of a neurotic symptom, or the revival of narcissistic features in object relationships, may follow. Thi