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

eloved father's room so that he could have in his possession
something that belonged to his father. Guilt feelings,
fear, and despair torment him in his loneliness and are replaced
at last by the deepest humiliation and shame when
his "wicked deed" is discovered. The strength of this portrayal
leads us to surmise that it concerns a real episode
from Hesse's own childhood. This surmise becomes certainty,
thanks to a note made by his mother on November
11, 1889: "Hermann's theft of figs discovered."
From the entries in his mother's diary and from the extensive
exchange of letters between both parents and various
members of the family, which have been available since
1966, it is possible to guess at the small boy's painful path.
Hesse, like so many gifted children, was so difficult for his
parents to bear, not despite but because of his inner riches.
Often a child's very gifts (his great intensity of feeling,
depth of experience, curiosity, intelligence, quickness—and
his ability to be critical) will confront his parents with
conflicts that they have long sought to keep at bay with
rules and regulations. These regulations must then be rescued
at the cost of the child's development. All this can
lead to the apparently paradoxical situation when parents
who are proud of their gifted child and who even admire
him are forced by their own distress to reject, suppress, or
even destroy what is best, because truest, in that child. Two
of Hesse's mother's observations may illustrate how this
work of destruction can be combined with loving care:
1. (1881): "Hermann is going to nursery school, his violent
temperament causes us much distress." (1966, p. 10)
The child was three years old.
2. (1884): "Things are going better with Hermann, whose
education causes us so much distress and trouble. From
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