Idealization

Idealization, as it emerges across these two occurrences, names a psychic operation in which a love-object is elevated beyond its empirical, contingent particularity and invested with qualities of perfection — perfect love, perfect truth, perfect protection — that properly belong to the register of the Thing (das Ding) rather than to any actual other. In the first occurrence (the Freudian frame), idealization is theorized as structurally continuous with transference-love and with the temporary usurpation of the superego's seat by the beloved: the beloved is installed in the place of the Ego Ideal, which is itself the structural heir of primary narcissism. This means that idealization is not merely a cognitive error but a libidinal and identificatory operation — a recathexis of narcissistic completeness projected outward, replaying the erotic repetition compulsion's search for the infantile fantasy of perfect union. The idealization inevitably collapses because no empirical object can sustain the burden of standing in for the lost Thing; what Lacan calls the "honey-glow" must dissolve, returning the subject to its constitutive lack.

The second occurrence (the Ruti/Lacanian frame) introduces a crucial internal differentiation: not all idealizations are epistemically equivalent or ethically equivalent. There is a distinction between idealizations that "lovingly illuminate neglected aspects of the other's being" — a sublimatory gesture that reveals latent dimensions of the other's singularity, functioning as a kind of truth-disclosure — and idealizations that arise "solely from the crevices of our fantasy life," i.e., purely narcissistic projections that collapse the gap between the beloved and the Thing. The first type holds the imaginary and the real of the other in productive tension; the second forecloses that gap and installs a fantasmatic double in the place of the singular other. Idealization thus sits at the intersection of sublimation, narcissism, and the Ego Ideal: it can be either a mode of loving revelation or a mode of defensive distortion, depending on whether it preserves or abolishes the alterity of the other.

In the Freudian-inflected source (penguin-modern-classics-sigmund-freud-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-and-other-wr), idealization is positioned as the affective mechanism of falling in love understood as erotic repetition compulsion. It is the moment when the subject re-enacts the infantile fantasy of perfect union by installing the beloved in the place of the Ego Ideal — temporarily borrowing the superego's authority for the beloved. This connects idealization directly to the canonical concept of the Ego Ideal (the narcissistic demand for perfection the subject cannot satisfy in itself) and to Narcissism (the libidinal economy that underlies both the Ego Ideal's formation and the object-choice that reproduces it). Identification is also implicated: the lover partially identifies with the beloved as an ideal object, following the Freudian mechanism by which the ego takes the object into itself as a model.

In the post-Lacanian source (psychoanalytic-interventions-lacan-jacques-lacan-jacques-ruti-mari-the-singulari), idealization is re-evaluated in relation to the canonical concepts of Sublimation/Sublime and Singularity. Here, idealization that "lovingly illuminates neglected aspects of the other's being" approximates the Lacanian operation of sublimation that raises the object to the dignity of the Thing without collapsing the gap between them — it is a truth-bearing gesture that discloses the other's singularity rather than dissolving it. This contrasts with the purely fantasy-driven idealization, which is indexed to the canonical Fantasy ($◇a): rather than encountering the other as singular, the subject projects its own fantasmatic coordinates onto the other. Desire, too, is at stake: an idealization that preserves the other's singularity can sustain desire (keeping the gap open), whereas a narcissistic idealization that papers over the other's alterity re-enacts the closure that desire structurally resists. Idealization is thus positioned in this corpus as a concept that runs along the seam between productive sublimation and defensive narcissistic fantasy.

The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal WithinMari Ruti · 2012 (p.198)

there is a significant difference between idealizations that lovingly illuminate neglected aspects of the other's being and others that arise solely from the crevices of our fantasy life

The quote is theoretically loaded because it introduces an internal typology within idealization, splitting it along the axis of the other's being versus the subject's fantasy life — a distinction that precisely maps the Lacanian difference between sublimation (which holds the gap between object and Thing, disclosing the other's singularity) and narcissistic projection (which fills that gap with the subject's own fantasmatic content, as indexed by "crevices of our fantasy life"). The phrase "neglected aspects of the other's being" implies that authentic idealization is an act of perception — a discovery of latent singularity — rather than a pure imposition, and this is what makes it a potential truth-bearing gesture rather than a mere distortion.