Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex doesn’t get much airplay these days but it’s still a highly relevant aspect of family life and psycho-dynamic psychotherapy.
Galleries
When Babies Aren’t Idealized
If your mother doesn’t idealize you when you’re baby, you may spend the rest of your life looking for someone to feel that you’re truly special.
Idealizing Your Baby
Idealizing their baby helps parents cope with the difficulties and deprivations of parenting; more importantly, it conveys a sense of its own “beauty” to the infant, planting the seeds from which authentic self-esteem will later develop.
Self-Consciousness and Performance Anxiety
Extreme self-conscious and performance anxiety (or stage fright) involve the projection of your internal critic into an external audience of observers, each one of them as critical as you are.
The Shame-Based Divorce
When couples who have idealized one another and their marriage divorce, they often engage in a battle about who is the “winner” and who the “loser” who must carry all the shame.