TRANSKRIBEERI 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:02.960
Welcome everyone.
2
00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:07.040
Today, we're gonna start off with a Psychology of Songs podcast,
3
00:00:07.599 --> 00:00:10.080
and we're gonna be looking at it psychologically. And today's
4
00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:15.039
first song is Alex Warren's breakout hit Ordinary Song, that
5
00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:17.160
has reached millions with its portrait of a love so
6
00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:21.760
intense it turns the every day into something sacred. In Ordinary,
7
00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:24.800
warren sings of a love so profound that ordinary moments
8
00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:28.320
become holy. Lines like You're my holy water and I'm
9
00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:32.439
actual alter use religious imagery to describe something intensely personal.
10
00:00:33.039 --> 00:00:35.600
He does not just love his partner, he worships her.
11
00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:39.799
She becomes a source of salvation, something larger than a person.
12
00:00:40.679 --> 00:00:43.679
This is not very unusual love songs, but Warren's version.
13
00:00:43.479 --> 00:00:44.840
Feels particularly raw.
14
00:00:45.079 --> 00:00:48.840
It captures something universal, the moment when another person stops
15
00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:51.640
being just another face and becomes the center of your
16
00:00:51.799 --> 00:00:53.200
entire emotional world.
17
00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:55.840
That ship from ordinary to sacred is.
18
00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:00.359
Exactly what psychology has a lot to say about. Song
19
00:01:00.439 --> 00:01:03.479
is a nearly textbook illustration of what we call idealization
20
00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:08.159
as a psychological process, and psychology is a theory called
21
00:01:08.680 --> 00:01:12.760
object relations, and one of the concepts is idealization. It
22
00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:16.159
happens when we project our deepest longings onto another person.
23
00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:17.719
They become perfect.
24
00:01:17.959 --> 00:01:20.719
The loved one stops being seen as a flawed, complex
25
00:01:20.799 --> 00:01:24.640
human being. It becomes what some would say an idealized object,
26
00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:27.840
a figure who feels capable of providing everything we have
27
00:01:27.879 --> 00:01:32.799
ever needed. Perfect safety, unconditional love, total atonement. They're a
28
00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:36.560
perfect person. The roots of this process or often an
29
00:01:36.599 --> 00:01:41.680
early attachment, when early caregivers were inconsistent or emotionally unavailable,
30
00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:45.680
The developing mind compensates by constructing an idealized image of
31
00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:49.239
a perfect other, someone who will eventually arrive and give
32
00:01:49.319 --> 00:01:51.120
us what we did not reliably get.
33
00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:52.760
In romantic love.
34
00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:56.239
We sometimes temporarily transfer that internal image onto our partner.
35
00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:58.799
They become the carrier of something that was never really
36
00:01:58.799 --> 00:02:02.200
about them. This is somewhat equivalent to the concept of
37
00:02:02.319 --> 00:02:08.240
cloud nine. Warren captures this fusion beautifully. The ordinary becomes extraordinary,
38
00:02:08.319 --> 00:02:10.960
not because his partner is literally extraordinary, but because she
39
00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.080
has become a vessel for his deepest longing.
40
00:02:13.759 --> 00:02:16.479
And that is what idealization does. It's not really about
41
00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:17.000
the other.
42
00:02:16.840 --> 00:02:19.560
Person, it's what about the other person has come to
43
00:02:19.639 --> 00:02:23.719
represent in the internal world of the original. In this case,
44
00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:27.479
Alex Warren Winnicott would recognize this one.
45
00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:28.159
Of the founders.
46
00:02:29.319 --> 00:02:33.919
Others would recognize that the idealized self object, the specifically
47
00:02:33.919 --> 00:02:36.400
religious language in the song, is worth slowing down on
48
00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:41.680
because it is doing very precise psychological work. Holy water
49
00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:45.719
and alter angels. These are not casual metaphors. This kind
50
00:02:45.719 --> 00:02:49.319
of elevation represents what we call displacement. The singer is
51
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:53.000
taking emotional material, the raw need for connection, for safety,
52
00:02:53.159 --> 00:02:56.599
from meaning, and lifting it into a spiritual plane. Because
53
00:02:56.680 --> 00:03:00.159
human love alone may feel too exposed to precarious, it's
54
00:03:00.159 --> 00:03:03.639
too mortal to hold all that weight. By making his
55
00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:06.879
partner sacred, he does two things simultaneously. He protects the
56
00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:11.240
relationship from the full vulnerability of real intimacy by wrapping
57
00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:14.120
it in something untouchable, and he creates a sense of
58
00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.719
transcendent meaning, a feeling that this love is bigger than
59
00:03:17.800 --> 00:03:22.199
ordinary life, that it matters cosmically. This is why religious
60
00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:25.800
imagery recurs so persistently in love poetry, and love songs
61
00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:26.639
across every.
62
00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:27.159
Culture and era.
63
00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:30.680
The emotional register of love and the emotional register of
64
00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:36.039
religious devotion genuinely overlap. Both involve surrender, awe and the
65
00:03:36.120 --> 00:03:40.039
experience of something larger than the self. The psychology is
66
00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:44.159
doing work in both cases. But here's what idealization always
67
00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:49.159
eventually runs into reality. The idealized object cannot sustain this,
68
00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:52.080
and definitely the partner is a human being. They are
69
00:03:52.159 --> 00:03:55.800
not perfect being. They're an inconsistent, moody, tire limited. They
70
00:03:55.800 --> 00:03:57.560
have needs of their own that have nothing to do
71
00:03:57.639 --> 00:04:00.520
with being on ney One's holy water. When the real
72
00:04:00.639 --> 00:04:04.960
person begins to show through the projected image, sometimes the
73
00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:10.240
disillusionment can be severe, sometimes disproportioned to whatever actually happened.
74
00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:13.840
This is one of the most recognizable patterns and clinical work.
75
00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:18.560
Clients who describe early relationships in nearly worshipful terms, the
76
00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:21.519
intensity of it, the feeling of finally having found the one,
77
00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:25.399
often follow that with an equally intense amount account of collapse,
78
00:04:25.560 --> 00:04:29.439
not because the partner changed, but because the projection became impossible.
79
00:04:29.439 --> 00:04:30.000
To maintain.
80
00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:34.560
Healthy love requires what object relation theories call integration, the
81
00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:38.240
capacity to hold both the idealized and the disappointing aspects
82
00:04:38.279 --> 00:04:41.920
of a person in the same internal image, to love
83
00:04:41.959 --> 00:04:45.639
someone who's genuinely good and also genuinely flawed without needing
84
00:04:45.639 --> 00:04:47.959
them to be either a god or a villain. That
85
00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:52.759
tolerance of ambiguity is a achievement, and it is one
86
00:04:52.759 --> 00:04:58.240
that idealization actively works against. Alex Warren's Ordinary Song is
87
00:04:58.279 --> 00:04:59.879
more than a love song. It is a map of
88
00:04:59.879 --> 00:05:02.199
the the internal world and the grip of idealization, a
89
00:05:02.319 --> 00:05:04.680
portrait of what feels like when another person becomes a
90
00:05:04.759 --> 00:05:09.399
carrier of your deepest longing for something sacred, whole, imperfect
91
00:05:10.279 --> 00:05:13.560
understanding that psychology does not diminish the beauty of the song.
92
00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:14.680
It's a wonderful song.
93
00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:18.600
It makes the beauty make sense, and of course it
94
00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:20.480
resonates with you and millions.
95
00:05:20.079 --> 00:05:21.759
Of people because millions of people have.
96
00:05:21.759 --> 00:05:27.040
Been there in that place where someone ordinary suddenly holds everything. Well,
97
00:05:27.079 --> 00:05:29.720
hope you enjoy the Psychology of songs podcasts. We're gonna
98
00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:32.199
go checking out the top songs for the last several
99
00:05:32.279 --> 00:05:35.240
decades and see what the psychology is behind them and
100
00:05:35.279 --> 00:05:36.800
then relate it to your life.
101
00:05:37.480 --> 00:05:38.240
That's it for now,