…mily and friends, understanding the brilliant and necessary work of Robert Firestone and most recently, delving into Earnest Becker’s book The Denial of Death, I have come to fully appreciate, and have more compassion for, the horrific truth we as humans face. From the moment we are brought into this world, we instinctively do what we have to in order to survive physically and emotionally. Like the fences we build around our homes and our countrie…
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…hat psychologist and Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships author, Robert Firestone calls a “fantasy bond.” A fantasy bond replaces real acts of love and affection toward your partner with an illusion of connection. In a fantasy bond, a couple may operate as a unit, seeing themselves as safely joined, yet their relating becomes a matter of form and routine. No longer do they show much passion, love or respect for each other. Instead, they relate…
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…o a “Fantasy Bond,” a term developed by psychologist and author Dr. Robert Firestone to describe an illusion of connection created between two people that helps alleviate their individual fears by forging a false sense of connection. A fantasy bond is toxic to a relationship because it replaces real feelings of love and support with a desire to fuse identities and operate as a unit. As the couple relates as a “we” instead of a “you” and “me,” thei…
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…ative approach to differentiation, a four-step process developed by Robert Firestone, Ph.D. involving: 1. Breaking with internalized thought processes, critical attitudes toward self & others. 2. Altering the negative personality traits in oneself that represent an incorporation of aversive traits of one’s parents 3. Identifying/relinquishing patterns of defense formed as an adaptation to painful events in childhood. 4. Developing one’s own values…
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…earn More 3) Fear of Intimacy As my father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone, wrote in his article “You Don’t Want What You Say You Want,” “Most of us profess that we want to find a loving partner, but the experience of real love disrupts fantasies of love that have served as a survival mechanism since early childhood… Pushing away and punishing the beloved acts to preserve one’s negative self-image and reduces anxiety.” Our fears surround…
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…tner. A fantasy bond is a term developed by my father, psychologist Robert Firestone, to describe an imagined connection a person develops to another person, thereby creating an illusion of security or false sense of safety. When individuals do this, they no longer express genuine acts of love; instead they substitute real relating with the form of having a relationship and exist as two isolated people living two separate lives. A fantasy bond hel…
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…rked with experienced a similar emotional reaction when they stopped breastfeeding. Even when their children naturally weaned themselves from the breast, these mothers resisted. One would lure and bribe her son to nurse when he wanted to go out and play with his friends. She was the first to admit that her actions were based on her own fear of her son “not needing her anymore.” When we are misattuned to the developmental stages of our children, ca…
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…reasons, both personal and professional. For one thing, my father, Robert Firestone, has written extensively about the ambivalence inherent in every mother-daughter relationship. His descriptive accounts of the dynamics operating in the mother-daughter bond were published in Compassionate Child-Rearing (1990) and are explained in a chapter in our forthcoming book, co-authored by Joyce Catlett, The Self Under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differe…
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Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. – This book offers a consistently developed set of hypotheses centering around the concept of the “fantasy bond,” an illusion of connection originally formed with the mother/ primary caretaker and later with significant others in the individual’s environment. Based on 28 years of research into the problem of resistance, this book offers a consistently developed set of hypotheses centering around the concept of the “fant…
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