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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

through experience, not merely corrective experience as an adult but, above all, through a reliving of his early fear of his beloved mother's contempt and his subsequent feelings of indignation and sadness. Mere words, however skilled the interpretation, will leave the split from which he suffers unchanged or even deepened. One can therefore hardly free a patient from the cruelty of his introjects by showing him how the absurdity, exploitation, and perversity of society causes our neuroses and perversions, however true this may be. Freud's patient Dora became sick because of society's sexual hypocrisy, which she was unable to see through. Things we can see through do not make us sick; they may arouse our indignation, anger, sadness, or feelings of impotence. What makes us sick are those things we cannot see through, society's constraints that we have absorbed through our mother's eyes —eyes and an attitude from which no reading or learning can free us. To put it another way: our patients are intelligent, they read in newspapers and books about the absurdity of the armaments race, about exploitation through capitalism, diplomatic insincerity, the arrogance and manipulation of power, submission of the weak and the impotence of individuals—and they have thought about these subjects. What they do not see, because they cannot see it, is the absurdities of their own mothers at the time when they still were tiny children. One cannot remember one's parents' attitudes then, because one was a part of them, but in analysis this early interaction can be recalled and parental constraints are thus more easily disclosed. Political action can be fed by the unconscious anger of children who have been so misused, imprisoned, exploited, cramped, and drilled. This anger can be partially discharged in fighting our institutions, without having to give 100
up the idealization of one's own mother, as one knew her in one's childhood. The old dependency can then be shifted to a new object. If, however, disillusionment and the resultant mourning can be lived through in analysis, then social and political disengagement do not usually follow, but the patient's actions are freed from the compulsion to repeat. The inner necessity to constantly build up new illusions and denials, in order to avoid the experience of our own reality, disappears once this reality has been faced and experienced. We then realize that all our lives we have feared and struggled to ward off something that really cannot happen any longer: it has already happened, happened at the very beginning of our lives while we were completely dependent. The situation is similar in regard to creativity. Here the prerequisite is the work of mourning—not a neurosis, although people often think it is the latter—and many artists believe that analysis (the mother?) would "take away" their creativity. Let us assume that an analyst tries to talk a patient out of his guilt feelings by tracing his strict superego back to those of society's norms that serve particular capitalist interests. This interpretation is not false. "Society" not only suppresses instinctual wishes but also (and above all) it suppresses particular feelings (for instance, anger) and narcissistic needs (for esteem, mirroring, respect), whose admissibility in adults and fulfillment in children would lead to individual autonomy and emotional strength, and thus would not be consonant with the interests of those in power. However, this oppression and this forcing of submission do not only begin in the office, factory, or political party; they begin in the very first weeks of an infant's life. Afterward they are internalized and repressed and are then, 101
Page 3:
The Drama of the Gifted Child
Page 6 and 7:
A previous version of chapter 1 app
Page 9 and 10:
Vantage Point 1990 Almost ten years
Page 11 and 12:
Although, understandably enough, I
Page 13 and 14:
Preface We live in a culture that e
Page 15 and 16:
of child abuse. Had just one person
Page 17:
ecognizing the absurdity of what th
Page 20 and 21:
ification. On top of all this, the
Page 22 and 23:
them), if one cannot love oneself a
Page 25:
The Drama of the Gifted Child
Page 28 and 29:
yet, for many people the truth is s
Page 30 and 31:
ing, general attitudes, these peopl
Page 32 and 33:
• The most appropriate objects fo
Page 34 and 35:
that were free of conflict. Usually
Page 36 and 37:
would be a denial of the empirical
Page 38 and 39:
terest. The parents have found in t
Page 40 and 41:
that he killed a child thirty years
Page 42 and 43:
there is most acting out. The patie
Page 44 and 45:
had not been able to give her child
Page 46 and 47:
The Psychoanalyst's Situation It is
Page 48 and 49:
e found beyond the deep ambivalence
Page 50 and 51:
may be his secret delusion, a secre
Page 52 and 53:
tention as our patients usually do,
Page 54 and 55:
Chapter 2 Depression and Grandiosit
Page 56 and 57:
iotic phase) but also after the gra
Page 58 and 59:
conditions), and the child could de
Page 60 and 61:
If the child's demands become too g
Page 62 and 63:
ceptional capacity for suffering. P
Page 64 and 65:
neighborhood. They therefore made s
Page 66 and 67:
is not allowed to be what he really
Page 68 and 69:
3. Continuous performance of outsta
Page 70 and 71:
an absolutely essential adaptation
Page 72 and 73:
eader's letter in which the tragic
Page 74 and 75: neither the grandiose nor the depre
Page 76 and 77: can be experienced, insight and ass
Page 78 and 79: (holding) empathic environment. Win
Page 80 and 81: to formulate connections that the p
Page 82 and 83: strate to the patient that "his hop
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
Page 90 and 91: finished his ice cream, he gave the
Page 92 and 93: een caught at night outside the loc
Page 94 and 95: children are aware of this situatio
Page 96 and 97: about his own childhood, which he d
Page 98 and 99: ment of their children. What are we
Page 100 and 101: If we want to avoid the unconscious
Page 102 and 103: ference feelings and his own childi
Page 104 and 105: • The hope that with this birth t
Page 106 and 107: self—to show himself to the world
Page 108 and 109: PERPETUATION OF CONTEMPT IN PERVERS
Page 110 and 111: horrified eyes, and this clearly em
Page 112 and 113: pulses, for he does not allow the c
Page 114 and 115: dramas, nor pangs of conscience whe
Page 116 and 117: "the others," classify, group, and
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 126 and 127: ecause of their very nature, inacce
Page 128 and 129: course of analysis it can then be s
Page 130 and 131: flicts had absolutely no effect, th
Page 132 and 133: not so clever and quick (for instan
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
show all

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

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?