World’s Greatest Dad – No You’re Not

The video below cleverly captures the difference between Idealization and Sublimation. For the Best Man the closing comment made by the Groom is patently absurd, and he’s shocked when people react negatively to this obvious truth being pointed out. From his perspective, the room is full of deluded individuals caught up in the insane notion that they are in the presence of a beauty unlike any other.

They think a goddess stands in their midst.

We could, of course, replicate this logic in the face of claims made by parents that their newborn is the most beautiful in the world, or in response to the child who buys their mum a “World’s Best Mother” mug. In each of these examples someone is making a monumental claim about some poor existing individual. A claim that is obviously false.

It is true that we often idealize people in the way that the Best Man assumes the Groom is doing at the wedding. Take the example of parents who can’t imagine their child doing anything wrong. If their child receives a bad grade, or is told off in school, they get irate and complain that their innocent child is being persecuted. While this might occasionally be true, any parent who can’t imagine their child being anything but an angel, is caught up in a form of idealization. Something that isn’t good for them or their child. Idealization can also be seen in the way that some people are addicted to the “honeymoon period” of relationships. Always beginning a new relationship with a sense that they have found the One, then breaking things off when something doesn’t live up to the hype.

It might seem that the only alternative to idealization is a bland world where parents talk about their child being reasonably attractive compared to other infants, and children buy cards that state, “You’re roughly average in your parenting skills.” But there is also the stance that Freud called “sublimation.” This is where some particular thing/person/cause takes on an absolute value for us, not in wanton ignorance of his/her/its imperfection, but in the very acceptance and even celebration of those imperfections.

In religious terms, if the fundamentalist can be described as one who idealizes their particular religion, then the New Atheist often comes across as the antithesis – utterly bemused at someone investing absolute value into a particular, contingent, historical event.

But the act of sublimation takes a step beyond this binary. It is manifest in the individual who confronts in a particular, contingent, historical event, something of infinite depth and density.

In romantic terms, to idealize a lover is to photoshop every part of them so that they become some reflection of our ideal. An act that does violence to the other, prevents us from relating to them in a meaningful way, and obstructs a healthy relationship.

But the alternative to this act of photoshopping isn’t found in making do with someone who fits our broad categories of likes, dislikes and hobbies. To love involves proclaiming that the one you are with is the most wonderful, beautiful, smart, funny and thoughtful individual in the world… precisely because of their quirky, often bizarre, individuality. In more philosophical language, it is an affirmation of the Absolute that doesn’t wipe away the Particular, but rather that finds the Absolute in the very affirmation of a Particular in its very particularity.