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

a silly child." I asked: "Would you think it ridiculous if you
saw a child who had to tell his troubles to a wall because
there was no one else available?" The despairing sobbing
that followed my question gave the patient access to a
part of her former reality that was pervaded by boundless
loneliness. It freed her at the same time from her agonizing,
destructive, and compulsively repeated feelings of
shame. The following day this patient brought her first
poem, which she had written that night.
Only much later could she risk repeating this experience
with "a wall" with me and not only with subsidiary transference
figures. For a time this woman, who was normally
capable of expressing herself so clearly, described everything
in such an extraordinarily complicated and precipitate
way that I had no chance of understanding it all, probably
much like her parents earlier. She went through moments
of sudden hate and narcissistic rage, reproaching me
with indifference and lack of understanding. My patient
now could hardly recognize me any more, although I had
not changed. In this way she rediscovered with me her
own childhood. A child, too, can never grasp the fact that
the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about
his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some
circumstances has no more feeling than a wall for his hidden
inner world. This young woman's vehement reproaches
that now were directed against me finally released her from
her compulsion to repeat, which had consisted of constantly
seeking a partner who had no understanding for
her or of arranging such a constellation, so that she would
then feel helplessly dependent on him. The fascination of
such tormenting relationships is part of the compulsion
constantly to reenact one's earliest disappointments with
the parents.
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