Quotes from Robert W. Firestone

love threatens an individual's defenses and source of internal gratification and leaves the person feeling vulnerable. Individuals generally react negatively or angrily to being chosen, to being seen as lovable, or to being preferred over others. Personal

realizing it, most people become deadened to their emotions. Early in their lives they turn their backs on themselves, their real desires and wants, and substitute self-nourishing habits and fantasies that only serve to deaden them. They

The author sees resistance as the holding on to an imaginary connection to others, due to the dread of re-experiencing one's sense of aloneness and helplessness. Ultimately, resistance functions in order to protect the individual from experiencing anxiety states that arise from the threats to the neurotic resolution of the basic conflict—the conflict between dependency on inner fantasy for gratification versus a desire for real gratification in the interpersonal environment.

As we look around at people, what they're doing with their children, with each other, with their wives, with their husbands, we see that most of their behavior is directed toward maintaining illusions and bonds.

toward my children, but I know that was

Psychological defenses that protected people from suffering emotional pain and anxiety when they were children later play destructive limiting roles in their adult lives. An individual's defense system acts to keep him or her insulated, mechanical, and removed from the deepest personal experiences.

the tension introduced by covering up the absence of love further injures the child. Because they cannot bear to know that they are rejecting of their children, many parents systematically cut off the children's opportunity to develop and cure themselves of their pain.

For emotionally mature individuals, on the other hand, a mutual commitment that expresses a desire to be associated with another person throughout life can be a positive expression of deep feeling rather than an attempt to find "ultimate" security.