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

jected a parental attitude of which they have never been
aware. The children of such parents find it particularly
difficult to formulate any reproach in their analysis.
Then there are the people who can be very friendly,
perhaps a shade patronizing, but in whose presence one
feels as if one were nothing. They convey the feeling that
they are the only ones who exist, the only ones who have
anything interesting or relevant to say. The others can only
stand there and admire them in fascination, or turn away in
disappointment and sorrow about their own lack of worth,
unable to express themselves in these persons' presence.
These people might be the children of grandiose parents,
with whom these children had no hope of rivalry, and so
later, as adults, they unconsciously pass on this atmosphere
to those around them.
Now those people who, as children, were intellectually
far beyond their parents and therefore admired by them,
but so also had to solve their own problems alone, will give
us quite a different impression. These people will give us a
feeling of their intellectual strength and will power, and
they also seem to demand that we, too, ought to fight off
any feeling of weakness with intellectual means. In their
presence one feels one can't be recognized as a person with
problems—just as they and their problems had not been
recognized by their parents, for whom they always had to
be strong.
Keeping these examples in mind, it is easy to see why
some professors, who are quite capable of expressing
themselves clearly, will use such complicated and convoluted
language when they present their ideas that the students
can only acquire them in a fog of anger and diligence—without
being able to make much use of them.
These students then may well have the same sorts of feelings
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