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

ification. On top of all this, the ambiguity that characterizes
the word narcissism, even in professional literature, is
further complicated by the derogatory emotional overtone
it receives in everyday use. For there such meanings as "in
love with oneself," "always thinking of oneself," "egocentric,"
"incapable of object-love" have become attached to
it. Even psychoanalysts are not always free of such judgmental,
emotional use of the word—although they try for
neutrality.
Let us now examine some of these derogatory, judgmental
words. What exactly, for instance, is egoism? The
fifteen-year-old schoolboy Sigmund Freud wrote in his
notebook of aphorisms that the worst egoist is the person
to whom the thought has never occurred that he might be
one. Many people, even in old age, do not reach the wisdom
of the fifteen-year-old Freud but truly believe they
have no such needs of their own, simply because they are
not aware of them.
Our contempt for "egoists" begins very early in life.
Children who fulfill their parents' conscious or unconscious
wishes are "good," but if they ever refuse to do so or express
wishes of their own that go against those of their parents,
they are called egoistic and inconsiderate. It usually does
not occur to the parents that they might need and use the
child to fulfill their own egoistic wishes. They often are
convinced that they must teach their child how to behave
because it is their duty to help him along on the road to
socialization. If a child brought up this way does not wish
to lose his parents' love (And what child can risk that?), he
must learn very early to share, to give, to make sacrifices,
and to be willing to "do without" and forgo gratification
—long before he is capable of true sharing or of the real
willingness to "do without."
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