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

ing aroused by the fact that our parents were not available
to fulfill our primary narcissistic needs. If we have never
lived through this despair and the resulting narcissistic rage,
and have therefore never been able to work through it, we
can be in danger of transferring this situation, which then
would have had remained unconscious, onto our patients. It
would not be surprising if our unconscious anger should find
no better way than once more to make use of a weaker person
and to make him take the unavailable parents' place.
This can be done most easily with one's own children, or
with patients, who at times are as dependent on their analysts
as children are on their parents. An analytically talented
patient, one with "antennae" for his analyst's unconscious,
reacts promptly. He will present the analyst with a
complete picture of his "Oedipus complex," with all the
affects and insights are required. The only disadvantage
is that we then have to deal with an "as-if" Oedipus
complex, a defense against the patient's real feelings. Not
until he has been given time and space to develop his "true
self," to let it speak and to listen to it, can the unknown,
unique history of his Oedipal vicissitudes be unfolded, affecting
both patient and analyst, because it is the painfully
discovered truth.
This is true not only for the Oedipus complex, but for
everything. Such an analysand will quickly "feel" himself
autonomous, and he will react accordingly if he senses that
it is important to his analyst to have analysands who soon
become autonomous and behave with self-confidence. He
can do that, he can do anything that is expected of him.
But as this "autonomy" is not genuine, it soon ends in depression.
True autonomy is preceded by the experience of
being dependent, first on partners, then on the analyst, and
finally on the primary objects. True liberation can only
23