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

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them), if one cannot love oneself as one really is. And how could a person do that if, from the very beginning, he has had no chance to experience his true feelings and to learn to know himself? For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved? So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamored of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self, whom they now have to face and to whom they are delivered up, helplessly, as to a threatening stranger. In the following pages I am trying to come closer to the origins of this loss of the self. While doing so, I shall not use the term "narcissism." However, in my clinical descriptions, I shall speak occasionally of a healthy narcissism and depict the ideal case of a person who is genuinely alive, with free access to the true self and his authentic feelings. I shall contrast this with narcissistic disorders, with the true self's "solitary confinement" within the prison of the false self. This I see less as an illness than as a tragedy, and it is my aim in this book to break away from judgmental, isolating, and therefore discriminating terminology. In order to avoid major misunderstandings, let me make clear that my thoughts on the genesis and treatment of narcissistic disorders in no way conflict with the concepts of drive theory. 1 Yet, all the work in the area of the patient's instinctual conflicts depends on the existence of an alive, true self that in the end is and must be the subject of those instinctual drives. This is what seems to be missing in our xx
patients. As I think back over my last twenty years' work, in the light of my present understanding, I can find no patient whose ability to experience his true feelings was not seriously impaired. Yet, without this basic ability, all our work with the patient's instinctual conflicts is illusory: we might increase his intellectual knowledge, and in some circumstances strengthen his resistance, but we shall not touch the world of his feelings. If, however, we now take the path that was opened up by D. W. Winnicott, for instance, then the patient will reach a new sense of being really alive and regain his capacity to open up to full experience. Then he will be able to face his repressed instinctual conflicts, which are sure to manifest themselves of their own accord, and he will experience them intensely. So when in the following three essays I try, among other things, to show my way of treating narcissistic disorders, it is not my intention to present an alternative to classical psychoanalysis. On the contrary, I am looking for a way, within the framework of psychoanalysis, by which the patient can regain his long-lost authentic sense of being truly alive. NOTE 1. See A. Miller, Du Sollst Nicht Merken: Variationen Über das Paradies Thema (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981), p.66, which has appeared since the first printing of this book: "When I wrote The Drama I still thought I could reconcile my own findings with Freud's drive theory. I considered my approach to the treatment of narcissistic disorders as preliminary work that had to be performed with many patients before 'conflict neuroses' could be addressed. But the more thought I give now to the theoretical consequences of my findings and the more carefully and impartially I test the empirical content of the traditional theories, the more clearly their function in the total structure of social repression emerges for me. As a result, I have become more and more suspicious of the validity of Freudian drive theory and have experienced a growing need to distinguish between it and my own views." See also my book Am Anfang war Erziehung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980) for further remarks on this subject. xxi
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 and 16: of child abuse. Had just one person
Page 17: ecognizing the absurdity of what th
Page 20 and 21: ification. On top of all this, the
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
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to formulate connections that the p
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strate to the patient that "his hop
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that resist this adaptation. In old
Page 86 and 87:
Points of Contact with Some Theorie
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Chapter 3 The Vicious Circle of Con
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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
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about his own childhood, which he d
Page 98 and 99:
ment of their children. What are we
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If we want to avoid the unconscious
Page 102 and 103:
ference feelings and his own childi
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• The hope that with this birth t
Page 106 and 107:
self—to show himself to the world
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PERPETUATION OF CONTEMPT IN PERVERS
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horrified eyes, and this clearly em
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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
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