Idealization and Guilt -- Two Sides of the Same Coin

In my blog I have talked about the many people I have idealized: Leonard Bernstein, Robert S. Strauss, Esq., Sigmund Freud, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler -- the list is virtually endless.

I have also talked about the fact that I struggle with intense unconscious guilt feelings.

http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2010/01/object-relations-secret-and.html

Idealization and guilt. I suppose to most laymen the two psychological qualities seem unrelated. To the astute psychoanalyst, however, it will be clear that idealization and guilt can be inextricably linked in an individual. Idealization can be seen as a derivative of the infant's earliest pleasurable sensations in relation to the mother; whereas guilt can be a derivative of the infant's earliest feelings of coercion and frustration in relation to the mother. The late Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., a renowned psychoanalyst, and a psychiatric consultatant for the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, would have been aware of the relationship between idealization and guilt.
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[I]ntrojection of and identification with aspects of the parent occur as part of the process of separation. At each point where the child relinquishes ties to the object and takes a further step in separation and differentiation, he seeks to hold onto the parent by taking an image of her inside. Normally, at rapprochement, there is a gradual process of introjection that extends over a considerable period of time. At first, very ambivalent feelings are still present toward the object (though these are less intense than in the previous period when "good" and "bad" images and feelings could not be tolerated in juxtaposition at all). It is only gradually, by a continuing process of bringing together the two sides of the ambivalent feelings, that an emotionally stable intrapsychic representation of the object is achieved. The internalizations of the parent contribute to the establishment of impulse control mechanisms. The two sets of feelings toward the introject become the source of two parallel lines of development of superego precursors. The loved and loving aspect of the object is idealized and combined with ideal self-images to form the "ego-ideal." The precipitates of coercive interactions become the nucleus for the authoritative and punishing side of the introject, known as the "superego precursor."

Where a separation is sudden . . . an abrupt defensive internalization occurs prematurely, without the gradual process of bringing together and neutralization of the two sides of the ambivalent feelings.

The two sides of the introject thus internalized (ego-ideal and superego precursor) had not been adequately moderated through gradual rapprochement cycles. The result was an ego-ideal with excessive primitive idealization and a superego precursor with excessive sadistic harshness.

Freeman, D.M.A., Foulks, E.F., Freeman, P.A. "Ghost Sickness and Superego Development in the Kiowa Apache Male," at 134-135. In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, vol. 7, Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., contributing editor (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976).