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

Although, understandably enough, I feel a desire to
incorporate my fresh insights into the new editions of my
first three books and to rework some passages, I decided
against it in order not to obscure my further development.
Thus I have to refer the reader to my later publications,
in which possible questions and apparent contradictions
are dealt with and clarified in detail. There, too,
the reader will find material to substantiate the statements
contained in this preface.
The fight against the truth is gradually losing significance
now that the new therapeutic possibilities to which
I allude in my most recent books have come into existence.
For each person wishing to end her or his repression,
they offer access to the truth. This puts paid to
psychoanalysis, even if its practitioners are not yet aware
of this because they are still confined within their system
of self-deception. Many of those seeking help are beginning
to look more carefully at their potential "helpers"
and their views, and no longer uncritically subject themselves
to treatment. After many years of analysis, however,
it is very difficult ever to escape from the labyrinth
of self-deception and self-accusation. It took me fifteen
years to accomplish this liberation process: from 1973,
when spontaneous painting allowed me vaguely to sense
the truth, until 1988, when I was finally able to articulate
it completely.
Patients and adepts at psychoanalysis, who in their
circles are cut off almost hermetically from advance in
knowledge, do not know, just as for years I did not know,
that there is already a means of access to one's own
childhood that is not (as is unfortunately very often the
case) dangerous, confusing, haphazard, fragmentary,
and irresponsible, but, on the contrary, comprehensive,
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