Idealization

One of my colleagues recently told me how dismayed she was that so many of her clients in long-term relationships or marriages seemed to have given up on sex entirely, or had passionless, unsatisfying sex…

Envy is a normal human emotion; when coupled with a basic and profound sense of personal shame, it becomes toxic.

Bipolar and borderline clients who feel hopeless about their capacity for meaningful change often idealize their therapists and unconsciously try to merge with them; this fantasy of merger represents an escape from the damaged self into an alternative ideal self embodied by the therapist, a sort of personal growth by annexation.