From this perspective, the common experience of the fading of romance over time may have less to do with the inevitable undercutting of idealization … - Stephen A. Mitchell
" "From this perspective, the common experience of the fading of romance over time may have less to do with the inevitable undercutting of idealization by reality and familiarity than with the increasing danger of allowing oneself episodic, passionate idealization in a relationship that one depends on for security and predictability. Intense excitement about another is a dangerous business; it often is much safer to surrender to it with a person one cannot possibly spend much time with or will never see again. Sustaining desire for something important from someone important is the central danger of emotional life. What is so dangerous about desiring someone you have is that you can lose him or her. Desire for someone unknown and unobtainable operates as a defense against desire for someone known and obtainable, therefore capable of being lost.
English
Collect this quote
About Stephen A. Mitchell
Stephen A. Mitchell (July 23, 1946 – December 21, 2000) was a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst whose writings helped to clarify many disparate psychoanalytic theories and theoreticians.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Stephen A. Mitchell
One of the most profound and universal realizations of later childhood, a realization that probably is never totally integrated, is the discovery that one's parents are not necessarily representative of the human species, that one has grown up in an idiosyncratically structured family with its own peculiarities and dramas.
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
If the deepest, most fundamental levels of the analysand's pathology are to be reached, the relationship with the analyst becomes the vehicle for the establishment and articulation of bad-object relations. The analyst cannot enter the analysand's world in any form other than as a familiar (that is, "bad," or less than gratifying, object). This is true even though there often are elaborate resistances to the experience of the transference. Otherwise the analysis does not touch the analysand deeply, offers no promise, no hope for connection and transformation.
Loading...