Idealization and devaluation

Introduction
When an individual is unable to integrate difficult feelings, specific defences are mobilised to regulate these unbearable feelings. The defence that helps in this process is called splitting. Splitting is the tendency to view events or people as either all bad or all good. When viewing people as ‘all good’, you are said to be using the defence mechanism idealization: a mental mechanism in which the person attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities to the self or others. The counterpart of idealization is devaluation: attributing exaggerated negative qualities to the self or others.

In child development idealization and devaluation are quite normal. Being raised in a healthy environment the child learns how to deal with reality. Being an adult and using idealization and devaluation as the only way to protect the feeling of the self is pathologic.

Freud
The term idealization first appeared in connection with Freud’s definition of narcissism. Freud’s vision was that all human infants pass through a phase of primary narcissism in which they assume they are the centre of their universe. To obtain the parents' love the child comes to do what he thinks the parents value. Internalising these values the child forms an ego ideal. This ego ideal contains rules for good behaviour and standards of excellence toward which the ego has to strive. When the child cannot bear ambivalence between the real self and the ego ideal and defences are used too often, it is called pathologic. Freud called this situation secondary narcissism, because the ego itself is idealized. Idealization of others besides the self was explained both in drive theory as well as in object-relation theory. From the viewpoint of libidinal drives, idealization of other people is a "flowing-over" of narcissistic libido onto the object; from the viewpoint of self-object relations, the object representations (like that of the caregivers) were made more beautiful than they really were.

Kohut
An extension of Freud’s theory of narcissism came when Heinz Kohut presented the so-called "self-object transferences" of idealization and mirroring. To Kohut, idealization in childhood is a healthy mechanism. If the parents fail to provide appropriate opportunities for idealization (healthy narcissism) and mirroring (how to cope with reality), the child does not develop beyond a developmental stage in which he sees himself as grandiose but in which he also remains dependent on others to provide his self-esteem. Kohut stated that, with narcissistic patients, idealization of the self and the therapist should be allowed during therapy and then very gradually will diminish as a result of unavoidable optimal frustration.

Kernberg
Otto Kernberg provided the most extensive discussion of idealization, both in its defensive and adaptive aspects. He conceptualised idealization as involving a denial of unwanted characteristics of an object, then enhancing the object by projecting one’s own libido or omnipotence on it. He proposed a developmental line with on one end of the continuum a normal form of idealization and on the other end a pathological form. In the latter, the individual has a problem with object constancy and sees others as all good or all bad, thus bolstering idealization and devaluation. At this stage idealization is associated with borderline pathology. At the upper pole of the continuum idealization is said to be a necessary precursor for feelings of mature love.