one thing that generalizes some part of this is the following lemma I learned in functional analysis. Let $(V,\langle -,-\rangle)$ be a real Hilbert space and let $s:V \times V \to \Bbb R$ be a bounded bilinear form in the sense that $|s(v,w)| \leq C \|v\|\|w\|$ for some $C$ independent of $v$ and $w$, then there is a unique bounded operator $A:V \to V$ such that $s(v,w)=\langle v,Aw\rangle$
If $s$ is actually an inner product, then we get that $A$ is orthogonal and positive definite