idealization

[ ahy-dee-uh-luh-zey-shuh n ]

/ aɪˌdi ə ləˈzeɪ ʃən /

the act or process of idealizing something.

Psychoanalysis. a mental mechanism, operating consciously or unconsciously, in which one person overestimates an admired attribute of another.

Origin of idealization

First recorded in 1790–1800; idealize + -ation

But there is a messy middle territory between demonization and idealization.

The 2014 Novel of the Year |Nathaniel Rich |December 29, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
The irony is that the idealization of Earp as a good guy with a gun, an unswerving servant of law and order, is a myth.

The Wyatt Earp Myth: America’s Most Famous Vigilante Wasn’t |Andrew C. Isenberg |July 21, 2013 |DAILY BEAST
Admittedly, a lot of undeserved cultural authority will have to erode before this idealization can materialize.

5 Ways to Fix Book Publishing |Anis Shivani |July 12, 2013 |DAILY BEAST
The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to idealization represents the people fairly.

Essays on the Greek Romances |Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

Some idealization there is, by the general confession of unprejudiced men.

The Cradle of the Christ |Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Why should such artists have sought to create an abstract Beauty by the idealization of forms?

Rodin: The Man and his Art |Judith Cladel
"No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of idealization you've wrapped around him," Fyfe observed patiently.

Big Timber |Bertrand W. Sinclair
The actuality of the imagery is in fact irrelevant, just as history is in the idealization of human events.

Heart of Man |George Edward Woodberry

idealization

/ (aɪˌdɪəlaɪˈzeɪʃən) /

the representation of something as ideal

a conception of something that dwells on its advantages and ignores its deficiencies

a general theoretical account of natural phenomena that ignores features that are difficult to accommodate within a theory