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

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sexual satisfactions, whereas the child is always under surveillance.* The first part of Demian, it seems to me, is very evocative and easy to appreciate, even for people from quite different milieu. What makes the later parts of the novel so peculiarly difficult must be in some way related to Hesse's introjection of his parents' and grandparents' emotional values (they were missionary families), which is to be felt in many of his stories, but can perhaps most easily be shown in Demian. Although Sinclair has already had his own experience of cruelty (blackmail by an older boy), this has had no effect and gives him no key to a better understanding of the world. "Wickedness" for him is "depravity" (here is the missionaries' language). It is neither the hate, nor the ambivalence, nor the cruelty that are present in every human being and that Sinclair himself has already experienced, but such trivialities as drinking in a tavern. The little boy Hermann Hesse took over from his parents this particular concept of wickedness as "depravity": it is not rooted in his personality but is like a foreign body. This is why everything in Demian that happens after the appearance of the god Abraxas, who is to "unite the godly and the devilish," is so curiously removed, it no longer touches us. Wickedness here is supposed to be artfully united with goodness. One has the impression that, for the boy, this is something strange, threatening, and above all * In his story "A Child's Heart" Hesse writes: "The adults acted as if the world were perfect and as if they themselves were demigods, we children were nothing but scum. . . . Again and again, after a few days, even after a few hours, something happened that should not have been allowed, something wretched, depressing, and shaming. Again and again, in the midst of the noblest and staunchest decisions and vows, I fell abruptly, inescapably, into sin and wickedness, into ordinary bad habits. Why was it this way? (pp. 7, 8) 94
unknown, from which he nevertheless cannot free himself, because of his emotional cathexis of "depravity," which is already joined to fear and guilt. Once more I was trying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period of devastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil from myself. (pp. 81-82) In the Zurich exhibition (1977) to commemorate the centenary of Hesse's birth, there was a picture with which the little Hermann grew up, since it hung above his bed. In this picture, on the right, we see the "good" road to heaven, full of thorns, difficulties, and suffering. On the left, we see the easy pleasurable road that inevitably leads to hell. Taverns play a prominent part on this road—the devout women probably hoped to keep their husbands and sons away from these wicked places with this threatening representation. These taverns play an important role in Demian, too. This is particularly grotesque because Hesse had no urge at all to get drunk in such taverns, though he certainly did wish to break out of the narrowness of his parental system of values. Every child forms his first image of what is "bad," quite concretely, by what is forbidden—by his parents' prohibitions, taboos and fears. He will have a long way to go until he can free himself from these parental values and discover his own "badness" in himself. He then will no longer regard it as "depraved" and "wicked," because it is instinctual, but as an aspect of life from which no human being can be free at bottom—although the strength of their disavowal may be sufficient for some people to convince themselves that they are. Possibly, Hermann Hesse in his 95
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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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ceptional capacity for suffering. P
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neighborhood. They therefore made s
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is not allowed to be what he really
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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
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Page 120 and 121: puberty also had to live out his fa
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Page 139 and 140: Works Cited Abraham, K. 1960 (orig.
Page 141 and 142: Index abandonment, 10-14, 79 Abraha
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