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

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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 102
ward off the pain of being unable to idealize them. Contempt also may serve as a defense against other feelings, and it will lose its point when it fails as a shield—for instance, against shame over one's unsuccessful courting of the parent of the opposite sex; or against the feeling of inadequacy in rivalry with the same-sex parent; and above all against narcissistic rage that the object is not completely available. So long as one despises the other person and overvalues one's own achievements ("he can't do what I can do"), one does not have to mourn the fact that love is not forthcoming without achievement. Nevertheless, avoiding this mourning means that one remains at bottom the one who is despised. For I have to despise everything in myself that is not wonderful, good, and clever. Thus I perpetuate intrapsychically the loneliness of childhood: I despise weakness, impotence, uncertainty—in short, the child in myself and in others. The patient seldom directly expresses his contempt for the analyst at the beginning of treatment. At first his scorn is consciously directed at other people. He thinks, for example: "I don't need any childish feelings, they are alright for my younger brothers and sisters, who do not have my judgment. Anyway, it is only sentimental stuff, ridiculous. I am grown-up, I can think and act, I can make changes in things around me, I don't need to feel helpless any more, or dependent. If I am afraid, I can do something about it or try to understand it intellectually. My intelligence is my most reliable companion." Well, all that sounds pretty good. But the analysand comes to analysis because he feels lonely, despite or even because of his clear superiority, and because he suffers from difficulties in making contacts, or perhaps he comes because he suffers from compulsions or perversions. In the 103
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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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3. Continuous performance of outsta
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an absolutely essential adaptation
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eader's letter in which the tragic
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neither the grandiose nor the depre
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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
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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 128 and 129: course of analysis it can then be s
Page 130 and 131: flicts had absolutely no effect, th
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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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The Drama of the Gifted Child (The Search for the True Self)

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