Quotes from Robert W. Firestone

Believing the words of one's mate while ignoring the actions can lead to serious distortions of reality.

An honest, unloving father or mother will do far less damage to his or her child than a role-playing, "loving" parent. A rejecting and unloving parent will cause a child pain, but a dishonestly rejecting parent causes the child pain and makes him or her feel "crazy.

In unusual cases they may come to act out criminal activities with an absence of guilt because they believe the world somehow owes them what they missed in childhood. The absence of moral considerations or poorly developed conscience seen in character disorders, delinquent, and criminal individuals follows from this type of victimized thinking:

This type of parent causes the child to become unsure of the ability to think and perceive correctly and ultimately causes the son or daughter to develop symptoms of psychological illness.

When parents cannot bear to know that they are rejecting their children, they systematically cut off the children's opportunity to express themselves. Hiding the truth forces the children to bury their pain, which interferes with the possibility of healing.

Many children do not feel love for their parents either. After they have been damaged in their early years, they tend to have a self-centered, exploitive interest but no real feeling for their parents as people. Because their original affectionate feeling toward their parents was rejected, they become withholding and inward.

A person who comes to depend on self-mothering through fantasy, together with self-nourishing habits and routines, develops an illusion of self-sufficiency, of needing nothing from the outside world in terms of love and care. Paradoxically, the more a person relies on this process, the less able one is to function in society and actually satisfy basic requirements for living.

Indeed, routine biases, stereotypes, and prejudices are all examples of the negative voice toward others. These views tend to be supported by conventional attitudes that are very prevalent in our society and, for this reason, they are very difficult to challenge.

Our embodied and relational minds are the source of our selves, serving to limit and liberate who we become. When any of a combination of challenges to our minds bombards our development, conflicts may arise that bring great suffering and stifle our sense of freedom and connection.

Traditional religion's dogma of selflessness is essentially an externalization of the individual's voice and therefore has a powerful negative influence on behavior. The haranguing voice of the fundamentalist minister castigating sinners and urging them to seek redemption directly resembles the self-critical "voices" of the members of his congregation.

To defend against intrusions into this inner fantasy, the person utilizes three major modes of defense: (1) selection; (2) distortion; and (3) provocation. These defenses are behavioral operations that serve to protect the fantasy bond.

When children imagine themselves as one with their parent to protect against the feelings of hurt, pain, and rejection from that parent, they also incorporate the parental attitudes and behaviors that are causing them distress. In this manifestation of the fantasy bond, children parent themselves in the same destructive ways their parents did.

That is why in adult life, people generally tend to relive rather than live, that is, to repeat the patterns of the past and defend the primary fantasy in the defiance, and avoid the real gamble or real adventure of taking a chance on something new. They are afraid that if they really cry out, if they really ask, if they really scream for help, that it won't come, and they'll be in the same panicky frightened state they were in when they were little.

The purpose of the false self is to defend against pain - not deal with reality

When children are hurt and in pain psychologically, they don't want to be in distress, so when the situation becomes intolerable, they cease to identify with themselves. When they feel the most threatened, they will choose to identify with the person who is the source of their suffering in an attempt to possess that person's strength.

People who are self-denying and selfless have little to offer to others.

it is easier to deal with the devil you know, the price of avoiding primal separation and death anxiety is a partial suicide resolution in which one gives up on life. Peace is purchased at the cost of avoiding spontaneous feelings and encouraging a process of emotional anaesthesia—a trade-off in which primal anxieties are ameliorated by sacrificing the zest for life.

Because of the anxiety inherent in being vulnerable and undefended in a new love relationship, an individual unconsciously attempts to merge and form a unit with the loved one. In forming a bond, the lover is able to alleviate anxiety and attain a false sense of security and safety by sustaining the illusion of being fused. The fantasy of being connected functions as a defense, for whenever this bond is broken, the underlying pain and fear of separation invariably surface.

Indeed, the entire process of neurotic living is directed toward resisting a richer, more fulfilled way of life due to the fear of ultimate loss or separation. Throughout life there is a constant struggle between the drive toward actualizing one's potential and the tendency to be self-denying and self-destructive. A "successful" psychotherapy would be a catalyst for a lifetime process of growing.

Once we know, on a deep level, that we must die, we choose, in various ways, purposely to give up our life in order to dispel the unbearable feelings of helplessness and dread.

Furthermore, the image of parental strength and goodness always occurs in close conjunction with the development of a negative image of self. Patients who hate and blame themselves or perceive themselves as basically unlovable are defending and idealizing their parents.

The main fact of life for me is love or its absence. Whether life is worth living depends for me on whether there is love in life. Without a sense of it, or even the memory…of it, I think I would lose heart completely. (p. vii)

In a defended state, individuals have learned partially to satisfy their own needs, to fulfill their own goals in fantasy. In imagining that they don't need anyone, that they are capable of taking care of themselves through self-parenting behaviors, they must react negatively to events and to people who offer real gratification. They become dishonest when they attempt to deceive themselves and others that they still want real satisfaction, real friendship or relationships.

Thus, maintaining a good image of the parent is mistakenly perceived by the patient as being essential to stability and security; yet, paradoxically, its preservation perpetuates self-hatred.