Idealization and Mourning in Love Relationships

Normal and Pathological Spectra

Bibliographic Data

ID9230901
AuthorsCésar Garza‐Guerrero (0000-0001-7944-1949, corresponding author), César Garza-Guerrero
Year2000
Volume69
Issue1
Pages121-150
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Psychoanalytic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-2828 • E-ISSN: 2167-4086
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/j.2167-4086.2000.tb00557.x
PMID10729945
OpenAlexW2154052206
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited14

Prior to the last two decades, psychoanalytic literature focused on the psychopathology of sexual life, rather than on an integrated overview of love relationships. Only in the last twenty-five years has its scope been expanded to include the psychodynamics and phenomenology of love relationships per se. Nevertheless, a selective, critical review of the literature indicates that little attention has been paid to a) the interrelation of narcissism, self-esteem, and love relationships; b) the role of the ego-ideal and idealizations in the capacity for falling in love and sustaining love relationships; and c) the faculty for, and/or impediments to, transcending intrapsychic self-boundaries in mature love relationships. In this paper, a brief exposition of the ego-ideal developmental sequences and their integration into the superego as a differentiated structure serves as an introduction to the proposal of a developmental continuum of mechanisms of idealization and their respective nodal transmutations throughout the life cycle. This developmental continuum may contribute to the ongoing elucidation of the aforementioned problems. This referential frame is ultimately applied to the exploration of categorical and dimensional pathological variations of idealization and mourning in love relationships and in different levels of personality organization: neurotic, borderline, and narcissistic structures. A clinical vignette illustrates some of the correspondence criteria between this frame of reference and its clinical applications

Developmental psychology · Id, ego and super-ego · Idealization · Narcissism · Narcissistic personality disorder · Personality · Personality disorders · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychodynamics · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology · Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

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