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

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pulses, for he does not allow the childish fear and confusion to come out as they were originally felt and will only speak to his patient on an adult level. One might, in fact, think of it as discrimination, as a devaluation of the childlike, when an analyst emphasizes that, for him, of course, his patients are always adults and not children—as if being a child were something to be ashamed of, and not something valuable that we lose later on. Occasionally one hears similar remarks about sickness, when an analyst is eager to consider his patients as healthy as possible, or warns them against "dangerous regression"— as if sickness were not sometimes the only possible way of expressing the true self. The people who come to us have, after all, been trying all their lives to be as adult and healthy (normal) as possible. They experience it as a great, inner liberation when they discover this socially conditioned straitjacket of child-rejection and "normalcy"-worship within themselves and can give it up. A person who suffers under his perversion bears within himself his mother's rejection, and thus he flaunts his perversion, in order to get others to reject him, too, all the time—so reexternalizing the rejecting mother. For this reason he feels compelled to do things that his circle and society disapprove of and despise. If society were suddenly to honor his form of perversion (as may happen in certain circles), he would have to change his compulsion, but it would not free him. What he needs is not permission to use one or another fetish, but the disgusted and horrified eyes. If he comes to analysis he will look for this in his analyst, too, and will have to use all possible means to provoke him to disgust, horror, and aversion. This provocation is of course a part of the transference, and from the incipient countertransference reactions one can surmise what happened at the beginning of this life. 88
If the analyst can see through to the goals and compulsions behind this provocation, then the whole decayed building collapses and gives way to true, deep, and defenseless mourning. When finally the narcissistic wound itself can be felt, there is no more necessity for all the distortions. This is a clear demonstration of how mistaken the attempt is to show a patient his instinctual conflicts, if he has been trained from earliest childhood on to feel nothing. How can instinctual wishes and conflicts be experienced without feelings? What can orality mean without greed, what anality without defiance and envy, what is the Oedipus complex without feelings of rage, abandonment, jealousy, loneliness, love? It is very striking to see how often pseudoinstinctual acting-out ceases when the patient begins to experience his own feelings and can recognize his true instinctual wishes. The following citation is taken from a report about St. Pauli, Hamburg's red-light district, that appeared in the German magazine Stern (June 8, 1978): "You experience the masculine dream, as seductive as it is absurd, of being coddled by women like a baby and at the same time commanding them like a pascha." This "masculine dream," indeed is not absurd; it arises from the infant's most genuine and legitimate needs. Our world would be very different if the majority of babies had the chance to rule over their mothers like paschas and to be coddled by them, without having to concern themselves with their mothers' needs too early. The reporter asked some of the regular clients what gave them most pleasure in these establishments and summarized their answers as follows: . . . that the girls are available and completely at the customer's disposal, they do not require protestations of love like girlfriends. There are no obligations, psychological 89
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The Drama of the Gifted Child
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A previous version of chapter 1 app
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Vantage Point 1990 Almost ten years
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Although, understandably enough, I
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Preface We live in a culture that e
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of child abuse. Had just one person
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ecognizing the absurdity of what th
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ification. On top of all this, the
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them), if one cannot love oneself a
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The Drama of the Gifted Child
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yet, for many people the truth is s
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ing, general attitudes, these peopl
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• The most appropriate objects fo
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that were free of conflict. Usually
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would be a denial of the empirical
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terest. The parents have found in t
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that he killed a child thirty years
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there is most acting out. The patie
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had not been able to give her child
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The Psychoanalyst's Situation It is
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e found beyond the deep ambivalence
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may be his secret delusion, a secre
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tention as our patients usually do,
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Chapter 2 Depression and Grandiosit
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iotic phase) but also after the gra
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conditions), and the child could de
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If the child's demands become too g
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Page 64 and 65: neighborhood. They therefore made s
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Page 68 and 69: 3. Continuous performance of outsta
Page 70 and 71: an absolutely essential adaptation
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Page 78 and 79: (holding) empathic environment. Win
Page 80 and 81: to formulate connections that the p
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Page 84 and 85: that resist this adaptation. In old
Page 86 and 87: Points of Contact with Some Theorie
Page 88 and 89: Chapter 3 The Vicious Circle of Con
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Page 92 and 93: een caught at night outside the loc
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Page 96 and 97: about his own childhood, which he d
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Page 100 and 101: If we want to avoid the unconscious
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Page 104 and 105: • The hope that with this birth t
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Page 108 and 109: PERPETUATION OF CONTEMPT IN PERVERS
Page 110 and 111: horrified eyes, and this clearly em
Page 114 and 115: dramas, nor pangs of conscience whe
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Page 118 and 119: sexual satisfactions, whereas the c
Page 120 and 121: puberty also had to live out his fa
Page 122 and 123: the 21st of January to the 5th of J
Page 124 and 125: through experience, not merely corr
Page 126 and 127: ecause of their very nature, inacce
Page 128 and 129: course of analysis it can then be s
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Page 134 and 135: that their teacher once had and was
Page 136 and 137: the history of his childhood and th
Page 139 and 140: Works Cited Abraham, K. 1960 (orig.
Page 141 and 142: Index abandonment, 10-14, 79 Abraha
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