ABSTRACT
The confusion is compounded by the use of the verb to idealise and the noun idealisation. Most clinicians refer to illusory defensive idealisations, but others write of parents idealising their children when admiring and affirming their achievements. Developmental maturative ideals are envisagements of reaching realistic stages of further development with the help of caregivers who facilitate and take an interest in the individual's achievements. Aspirations to attain their envisaged maturational ideals and/or defensive idealisations of the future guide and shape a person's incentives and intentions. Maturative homeostatic ideals are essentially the careseeking ideals of achieving self-reliant ways of satisfying hunger and thirst, requirements for shelter and rest, and of coping with one's own anxieties, all of which restore the capacity to be exploratory. States of defensive idealisation arise from experiences of rejection, abandonment or impingement, many of which are too painful to be kept in the individual's conscious mind.
