From the author: I am re-reading this article three years after it was written and I understand that I was able to describe a very important mechanism of growing up... It is difficult to part with illusions. Castles in the air are stronger than reinforced concrete. Igor Karpov Broken from When hooked, the fish always seems more caught. Kobo Abe Statement of the problem: Good contact with reality is a necessary condition for mental health. This thesis has already become an axiom. However, this condition is very difficult to determine. This concerns both the concept of contact and the concept of reality. What is good contact and how good is it? What are the criteria for good contact? The situation is no easier with the second concept of this pair - reality. What is reality? What is she like? Does objective reality exist at all and how objective is it? In our article we will not consider all these problematic issues, but will focus only on one of the phenomena that interests us from this area - idealization. The concept of image falls into the focus of my consideration in this case. The image is a “product” of perception-consciousness (a subjective image of the objective world). An image is always a complex combination of objective and subjective, material and ideal. It contains something from the external world - a perceived, conscious object and the internal world - the personality of the perceiver-consciousness himself. In the case of idealization, we are dealing with a shift in the focus of contact from objective reality (the perceived object) to subjective reality - the personality of the perceiver. In this case, the object of the external world is distorted due to investment in the personality image of the perceiver. In the case of idealization, an object is projectively endowed with some really non-existent positive qualities. As a result of this, the subject - the perceiver - comes into contact for the most part with an “invested”, idealized image of the object, while contact with the real object in this case seems very problematic. My area of ​​interest in this article is primarily interpersonal contact, more precisely contact with significant others , close people. Violations of this kind of contact are most often encountered in psychotherapeutic practice. One of the reasons for the possible difficulties of contact with a loved one is the phenomenon of idealization of this loved one, which we have already identified. What’s wrong with idealization, you ask? After all, by perceiving another person as better than he really is, we give him a chance to become different, better! The difficulty is that in this kind of perception we do not see the other person as such, as he is - different, different, and we do not accept his otherness. This lack of vision and non-acceptance is where the cause of problematic relationships lies. Without noticing and not accepting the other as he is, we inevitably try to change, improve, perfect him. We thereby give him the following message: “You are not what you should be! Become different and then I will love you!” In this kind of attitude towards another, an attitude towards the perceiver himself is inevitably visible, learned by him, as a rule, from his close, significant people, most often his parents. The presence of such a “corrective attitude” gives rise to many negative emotions in both partners. A person prone to idealization shows dissatisfaction, claims, resentment towards his partner, and he, in turn, feels irritation, guilt, shame... It is not surprising that there is no need to talk about closeness, intimacy in this kind of relationship. How does the idealization mindset manifest itself? Let us consider the most typical manifestations of such an attitude. They are as follows:• dividing people into good and bad, and the world into black and white. The other person is perceived undifferentiated. When describing others, such people give them monosyllabic characteristics. The characteristics of the world tend to be polarized - either or. The world is perceived as polar, devoid of shades.• the presence of a moralistic attitude towards others and towards the world. In the judgments of such peopleIt is easy to see the tendency towards evaluation; in their speech there are many evaluative words towards others. Similar attitudes (mostly negative) can be found in relation to the world; • non-acceptance of the world and others. Another person needs improvement, correction, increased demands and claims are placed on him. The world is also not ideal. If it is not possible to change him (although some succeed, all revolutionaries are idealists), then they are offended by him; • disappointment, blaming others and the World. Other people and the world are not ideal, in others there is “a lot of hypocrisy, meanness...”, and “the world is far from perfect”; • consumer position in relation to others and to the world. Another – must (be different, give, change...). There may be an attitude of positive expectation towards the world (something pleasant, unexpected should happen - winning the lottery, an inheritance, just a “freebie”). In a situation of disappointment with the world, there is an attitude of negative expectation - “you won’t get anything good from the world”; How to detect the phenomenon of idealization in close relationships? All of the above can be found in close relationships. In addition, we can identify a number of specific criteria for idealization in this kind of relationship. Here they are:• relationships in a couple are vertical. If we are talking about marital relations, then such marriages are complementary or complementary in role positions. Various types of complementarity are possible: “Father-Daughter”, “Mother-Son” (see in more detail the article “Complementary marriages” https://www.b17.ru/article/5943/?prt=3041); • The pair is dominated "children's needs". Most often they are as follows: in acceptance, in unconditional love, recognition and attention, in care. The partner is required to satisfy, first of all, these very needs; • In a couple, there are difficulties with “adult needs” - closeness, intimacy. The presence of “childish needs” in a relationship in a couple is not an indicator of the immaturity of this relationship; rather, such an indicator will be the absence of “adult needs” in a couple; • One of the partners has a noticeably predominant attitude of “taking.” Since the balance in the “take-give” relationship is disrupted, partnerships become impossible; • The predominance of negative emotions in the relationship: resentment, irritation, anger, guilt, shame. In general, partners will be characterized by infantility and emotional immaturity. Example from practice. The client - let's call her Olga - cannot forgive her husband for abandoning her during maternity leave (he did not pay enough attention to her and the child, he went out and drank). Olga has a lot of resentment and complaints against her husband - despite the fact that over the past three years he has been trying in every possible way to “atone” for his guilt - she cannot forgive him and “is unlikely to ever forgive him.” In the couple, according to the client, there is no close, trusting relationship, there is no intimacy, including difficulties with sex. According to Olga, the husband is to blame for everything, who must somehow change, become different - more attentive, caring, courageous, sensitive... He should earn more, spend more time with her and the child, pay less attention to his parents... A lot of dissatisfaction Olga also reveals her attitude towards her husband’s relatives, her work, her superiors and, in general, towards “...a world that is unfair to her.” The position of duty in relation to her – her husband, his relatives, and the World – is clearly visible. One's own contributions to relationships and one's own responsibility are denied. Life, in her conviction, can change when others change, but Olga herself should not change: “What do I have to do with this?” How is this formed normally? Idealization of the object of attachment is a natural and necessary process in the development of a child. Parental figures are initially idealized by him. And it’s not surprising - mom and dad are perceived by the baby as omnipotent wizards who know and can do everything for the child. This is very important, since the child still has so much to learn, and for this, significant objects must have unquestionable authority. Another important function of parentsis also a function of mitigating the child's experience of meeting reality. The child is not yet able to resist it (reality) and the parents are a kind of buffer, creating for him a safe, largely artificial, “sanatorium” niche of residence. But this should not always remain so. The child grows up and as he grows up he inevitably encounters the real world, other objects of this world, and this will inevitably lead him to disappointment in his parents and the world - de-idealization. Wise (often not from reading books on raising children, but from nature) parents do not interfere with this process. Yes, this doesn’t require much - not trying to be ideal parents, people, just being “good enough parents” (Winicott’s term) and ordinary people. A child, interacting with such parents, inevitably faces the facts of their non-ideality, and they, in turn, they also help him meet the non-ideal world, protecting him (the child) less and less from the real world as he grows up, organizing “meetings” with him in the form of gradually transferring to the child more and more responsibility. The process of a child’s disappointment in his parents – de-idealization – is a condition for “meeting” them as living, human, non-ideal objects. Since all this happens slowly and gradually, such a meeting is painless for the child. The child, as a result of such vaccination with reality, gradually acquires an inoculation from reality. As he grows up, he develops a more or less adequate picture of reality, which is still not devoid of subjectivity and individuality. This is a natural process during which the child normally develops good contact with reality and its objects. In what cases is de-idealization impossible? Most often, de-idealization becomes impossible or problematic for the following reasons: • Parents were ideal and remained ideal. Because of this, the child is not able to “overthrow them from the throne”; he remains very strongly attached to them. A frequent accompaniment of such relationships is a strong sense of guilt and debt in the child towards his parents. Sometimes de-idealization is impossible in relation to one of the parents - the more impeccable one. Usually these are pairs - “daughter - father” and “son - mother”. In the first case (daddy's daughter), we are dealing with the daughter's strong attachment to her father, which for her may be fraught with her inability to meet a worthy (more worthy than her daddy) man. In the end, the daughter always remains faithful to the only man - her father. Even after getting married, she puts her father first, and then her husband. Loyalty to her father is already manifested in the fact that she does not take her husband’s surname upon marriage, thereby emphasizing that she is “her father’s woman.” A similar picture emerges in the case of the “son-mother” attachment. In the case described above, idealization applies only to a significant other, while the world can be perceived quite adequately; • The parents passed away early. The child in this case does not have time to complete the process of de-idealization that has begun. This is a tragic scenario. In the event of the death of a parent/parent, the process of de-idealization is abruptly interrupted, and the child has virtually no chance of destroying the ideal image of the parent. More often this occurs in the case of the loss of one of the parents, then his image forever remains ideal in the child’s mind. In this case, already in adulthood, very high demands are placed on the potential partner; they are trying to “fit” him into the image of an ideal parent that exists in the mind. For a child, this is a traumatic development of events - the world is perceived by him as unfair, cruel, and the future partner will be burdened with parental functions of stabilizing the world that are unusual for him. • The parents changed very dramatically. Due to such unexpected changes, the child was unable to adapt to this turn of events. Most often this occurs due to some crisis situations in the family, for example, the birth of the next child,serious illness of a parent, etc. For example, in the case of the birth of another child, the situation for the first child changes dramatically. His parents no longer pay him as much attention as before and stop protecting him from the world. A new, unusual, uncomfortable world and parents who have changed, sharply and unexpectedly become “bad” “burst” into the established, familiar life of the child, destroying his old picture of the world and he, due to these circumstances, has to grow up quickly. Not every child can survive such a shock; for some children, the images of the world and their parents become split into “good” and “bad,” which underlies a polar perception of reality. A similar picture arises in the case of a sharp de-idealization of one of the parents , for example, in a situation of divorce, when the mother devalues ​​the child’s father. In this case, the image of the father also turns out to be split into “bad” and “good” and then in subsequent adult life a constant search for a “good” father is possible.• Parents protected the child from the world in every possible way. During his development, the child came into contact with an artificially created world , a kind of world-reserve. In such a situation, he had no contact with the real world, and the image of the world he formed turns out to be far from the real world. It is not difficult to imagine what shocks can await a person in the event of an encounter with reality! What is common to all variants of disruption of the de-idealization process is that the child develops a separation from reality, he prefers not to encounter the real world. His image or picture of the world and the picture of another person become greatly distorted, which significantly complicates his process of contact with the world and with others, where “meeting” as such becomes simply impossible. The result of such a distorted picture of the world and the picture of another person is various kinds of problems in relationships with another person and with the world. An example from practice. A vivid illustration of the disruption of the process of de-idealization and, as a result, the formation of an ideal attitude towards the world is the story of a client - let's call her Marina. In her life history there are several causes and factors underlying the described phenomenon. Marina, at the age of 8, lost her father, to whom she was strongly attached. Marina speaks about her father with great love and admiration. After the death of her father, the mother changed dramatically; according to the client, it was as if she had been replaced: she began to drink, bring drunken groups into the house, completely abandoned the children, began to treat them cruelly, and beat them. Marina had to grow up quickly. Her recently prosperous life, full of love, acceptance and admiration from her father, suddenly turned into a nightmare. All the responsibilities around the house and raising her younger brother fell on her children's shoulders. Marina sought therapy for problems with sleep; she was tormented by nightmares. In her life, Marina surrounded herself with a large number of men, whose main qualities are devotion to her and reliability. She can't break up with any of her exes and keeps them to herself. Each of them, according to her, is ready to rush to her at her first request. But none of them, in her opinion, are suitable for her as a future spouse - in no one she can find both reliability and sincerity. At 30 years old, Marina looks like a teenager and feels the same way. In therapeutic contact, she regresses to an even earlier age - she complains about the world being unfair to her, cries a lot, looks at the therapist with eyes full of prayer and tears. From the first moments of contact, the therapist is idealized, giving him many advances as a specialist and as a person. Therapeutic tasks In the therapy of clients prone to idealization, the following strategic areas of work can be distinguished: • overcoming infantilism; • accepting responsibility; • organizing a meeting with reality. Overcoming infantilism Picture of the world a person prone to idealization is in many ways “childish.” Such an adult is not able to solve developmental problems,