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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

arduous path of my search. For doing this I have been the recipient of much gratitude but I have also encountered much hostility. In the meantime I had come to understand that I was abused as a child because my parents had experienced something similar in their childhood but had learned, as had my analysts and teachers, to regard this abuse as upbringing or treatment or training for their own good. Because they were not allowed to feel or, consequently, understand what had once been done to them, they were unable to recognize the abuse as such and passed it on to me in turn, without even the trace of a bad conscience. I realized that I could not change in the slightest my parents' and teachers' past, which had made them blind. But at the same time I felt that I could and must attempt to point out to today's young parents—and especially to future parents—the danger of misusing their power, that I must sensitize them to this danger and make it easier for them to hear the signals of the child inside them as well as of children everywhere. This is something I can do if I help children—victims who have been condemned to silence and who have no rights—to speak; if I describe their suffering from their perspective and not from that of adults. For after all, it was from a child that I myself received crucial information, answers to questions which had gone unanswered throughout my study of philosophy and psychoanalysis and which did not cease to preoccupy me in the years that followed. It was thanks to the pain of the child in me that I fully grasped what so many adults must ward off all their life, and I also realized why they fail to confront their truth, preferring instead to plan selfdestruction on a gigantic atomic scale, without even xiv
ecognizing the absurdity of what they are doing. These are the same people who, like all of us, entered the world as innocent infants, with the primary goals of growing, living in peace, and loving—never of destroying life. I recognized the compelling logic of this absurdity after I found the missing piece of the puzzle: the secret of childhood, till then closely guarded. This discovery convinced me that if we are willing to open our eyes to the suffering of the child, we will soon realize that it lies within us as adults either to turn the newborn into monsters by the way we treat them or to let them grow up into feeling—and therefore responsible—human beings. ALICE MILLER Zollikerberg, Switzerland 1986 xv
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: of child abuse. Had just one person
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 124 and 125:
through experience, not merely corr
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?