Amidst stabs at humor, this paper highlights the costs of over-idealizations in psychoanalysis: stifling free discussion and complexity and reinforcing existing tendencies toward rigid hierarchies and insider/outsider dynamics. Instead, it calls for a dose of irreverence and skepticism. Various motivations for excessive reverence are explored, including feelings of belonging and inclusion, security through identification with idealized objects, and even concrete incentives such as institutional positions and referrals. Certain rhetorical strategies used by advocates of the venerated are described. The paper also glosses several contemporary ideas that have become fashionable in such a way as to cloud some of their most significant nuances, including “reverie,” “the third,” and “the enigmatic signifier.” Links to the problems of idolatry in current national and global politics matters are noted.