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

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course of analysis it can then be seen how far this contempt has protected him from his own feelings. Sometimes contemptuous feelings toward the analyst will show up very early in the analysis. But this can only be worked through when the analysand has found the broader basis for his whole world of feeling on which he can then play out and work through his ambivalence. It is then decisive that the analyst should not let himself be provoked into demonstrating his own superiority to the patient. The contempt that Kernberg describes as ubiquitous in grandiose, successful people always includes contempt for their own true selves. For their scorn implies: without these qualities, which I have, a person is completely worthless. That means further: without these achievements, these gifts, I could never be loved, would never have been loved. Thus the small, powerless child, who is helplessly dependent on others, and also the awkward or difficult child will have to suffer contempt. Grandiosity guarantees that the illusion continues: I was loved. Those whose grandiose, false self needs to act out this certainty are often envied or admired by those whose narcissistic disturbance has a primarily depressive structure, whereas the grandiose will despise the depressives. Nevertheless, this is no basis for a typology, since grandiosity and depression express the same underlying problem. Contempt as a rule will cease with the beginning of mourning for the irreversible that cannot be changed. For contempt, too, had in its own way served to deny the reality of the past. It is, after all, less painful to think that the others do not understand because they are too stupid. Then one can make efforts to explain things to them. This is the process, described by Kohut, that takes place when idealization of the self-object fails and the grandiose self has to be cathected. There seems to be a way out, in fantasy at 104
least. Through (one's own) grandiosity, power as such can be salvaged, and so the illusion of being understood ("if only I can express myself properly") can be maintained.* If however this effort is relaxed, one is forced to see how little there was on the other side and how much one had invested oneself. (Cf. p. 82.) One must come to realize that here a general understanding as such is not possible, since each person is individually stamped by his own fate and his own childhood. Many parents, even with the best intentions, cannot always understand their child, since they, too, have been stamped by their experience with their own parents and have grown up in a different generation. It is indeed a great deal when parents can respect their children's feelings even when they cannot understand them. There is no contempt in saying, "it was not possible"—it is a reconciliatory recognition that is hard to achieve. A detailed example may illustrate this. A patient who had sought a second analysis because of tormenting obsessions repeatedly dreamed that he was on a lookout tower that stood in a swampy area, at the edge of a town dear to him. From there he had a lovely view, but he felt sad and deserted. There was an elevator in the tower, and in the dream there were all kinds of difficulties over entrance tickets and obstacles on the way to this tower. In reality, the town had no such tower, but it belonged unequivocally to the patient's dream landscape, and he knew it well. The phallic meaning of this dream had been considered in his previous analysis, and it was certainly not wrong to see this aspect, though it was obviously not sufficient, since the dream recurred later with the same feelings of being deserted. Interpretation of instinctual con- * Devastating examples of this process are the works of Van Gogh and of the Swiss painter Max Gubler, who so wonderfully and so unsuccessfully courted the favor of their mothers with all the means at their disposal. 105
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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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can be experienced, insight and ass
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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 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 126 and 127: ecause of their very nature, inacce
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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