The Drama of the Gifted Child (The Search for the True Self)

If we want to avoid the unconscious seduction and
discrimination against the child, we must first gain a conscious
awareness of these dangers. Only if we become sensitive
to the fine and subtle ways in which a child may suffer
humiliation can we hope to develop the respect for him
that a child needs from the very first day of his life onward,
if he is to develop emotionally. There are various ways to
reach this sensitivity. We may, for instance, observe children
who are strangers to us and attempt to feel empathy for
them in their situation—or we might try to develop empathy
for our own fate. For us as analysts, there is also the
possibility of following our analysand into his past—if we
accept that his feelings will tell us a true story that so far
no one else knows.
Introjected Contempt in the Mirror of Psychoanalysis
DAMAGED SELF-ARTICULATION IN
THE COMPULSION TO REPEAT
If we want to do more than provide patients with intellectual
insight, or—as may be necessary in some psychotherapies—merely
to strengthen their defense mechanisms
—then we shall have to embark on a new voyage of discovery
with each patient. What we so discover will not be
a distant land but one that does not yet exist and will only
begin to do so in the course of its discovery and settlement.
It is a fascinating experience to accompany a patient on this
journey—so long as we do not try to enter this new land
with concepts that are familiar to us, perhaps in order to
avoid our own fear of what is unknown and not yet un-
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