Negative Idealization and Mental Illness

The underestimation of the enemy’s forces in a war can be a fatal error. To not understand the force of one’s own position, or force within one’s own subjectivity in comparison to the other can be a fatal underestimation. It can also just make you look like a pompous dickhead.

I’m going to outline and argue for the following idea: The synthesis of Self-Interest with Objective Reality as contoured by the limits of our perception and limited available actions is mental health. The process of mental health occurs via the dialectical negation of pathologies.

Idealization typically refers to the distortion of perception in order to fit a positive Ideal. The more I work with clients, the more it becomes apparent in dreams and speech that Idealization in order to make one feel greater in comparison than they are occurs as well. In other words, Negative Idealization.

When we Idealize in a pathological manner, we are distorting reality to fit our perception of something over the Actual thing in a way which doesn’t fit. We don’t just idealize people as better than they are, but as worse as well, in ways which are incorrect by an objective measurement. We may see someone’s motives incorrectly, or see someone as persecutory in a way which they are objectively not being persecutory. This leads to a difficult a priori Truth of sociality which is that in order to be non-pathological, insofar as cognitive distortions of reality are pathological, one must also be able to correctly perceive, or have a relationship with capital T Truth.

The Truth of human perception however is that it never meets this qualification of non-cognitive distortion. Ergo, are we are all pathological unless we can fully only engage with capital T Truth? This itself leads to a neurosis of overthinking which can be emotionally disconcerning.

In other words, we all live with a base pathology of a gap in our ability to perceive Absolute Truth, which is the total living truth of not only objective measure, but of the living social dynamics. The Gap in our perception is doubled in the social by The Gap of a non-objectively correct answer, only mapping of various tendencies.

It is also unlikely everyone will go around calling everyone else Pathological on the grounds that they were not correct in their perception of this thing or that thing, so the Truth of our pathology gets obscured by the truth of social reality, which is to say communication and group norms and preferences.

Communication and norms allow for us to have meaningful exchanges with other people, so they are both Absolutely necessary and Absolutely pathological in character. Groups suck and I need to be a part of them— a sentiment which speaks to the necessity of socializing as well as their a priori pathological character of groups. This pathological character is not based on bad morality, but rather the inability to achieve perfect Absolute God-like perception which would allow for us to not “Idealize,” but rather engage with Reality beyond pathological Idealization which incorrectly perceives Truth.

An idealized celebrity isn’t someone whose flaws we look past. In fact, the more one is idealized, the more one is subject to the microscope. One is more subject to the group process of the perception of Others, the more one is coded by various groups as well as individuals.

The contradiction lies in attempting to engage with Truth, to be non-pathological, despite our limits of perception. By this very pathology of Negative Idealization however, we negate the negation in various ways to reach not only Truth, but a psychological Egoic Self-Interest as well.