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

ecause of their very nature, inaccessible to argument.
Nothing is changed in the character of submission or dependency,
when it is only their object that is changed.
Therapeutic effects (in the form of temporary improvement)
may be achieved if a strict superego can be replaced
by the analyst's more tolerant one. The aim of analysis,
however, is not to correct the patient's fate, but to enable
him to confront both his own fate and his mourning over
it. The patient has to discover the parents of his early years
in the transference, and within himself, and must become
consciously aware of his parents' unconscious manipulation
and unintended contempt, so that he can free himself
from them. So long as he has to make do with a tolerant
substitute superego, borrowed from his analyst, his contemptuous
introject will remain unchanged, and hidden in
his unconscious, despite all his better conscious knowledge
and intentions. Although this contemptuous introject will
show itself in the patient's human relationships and will
torment him, it will be inaccessible to any working
through. The contents of the unconscious, as Freud said,
remain unchanged and timeless. Change can only begin as
these contents become conscious.
THE LONELINESS OF THE CONTEMPTUOUS
The contempt shown by narcissistically disturbed patients
(to which Kernberg points with much emphasis,
1970) may have various forerunners in their life history.
These may have been, for instance, "the stupid little brothers
and sisters," or the uneducated parents who don't understand
anything—but the function all these expressions of
contempt have in common is the defense against unwanted
feelings. Contempt for younger siblings often hides envy
of them, just as contempt for the parents often helps to
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