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

more "ordinary" than he is himself? And is he not bound
to carry pent-up rage within himself, against those who
have made him afraid to walk without stilts? Thus envy of
other things can come about as the result of the defense
mechanism of displacement. Basically, he is envious of
healthy people because they do not have to make a constant
effort to earn admiration, and because they do not
have to do something in order to impress, one way or the
other, but are free to be "average."
Manifest grandiosity, especially in the erotic sphere, is
often described as "phallic narcissism." The women with
the structure and pathogenesis described here usually attained
their "special position" in the sexual sphere during
the Oedipal phase or even earlier (in cases where the
mother was emotionally replaced by the father). They had
been specially predestined to this by their development during
the pre-Oedipal period as narcissistic showpieces of
the mother. If seductive behavior on the father's part is
added, then the woman is forced, by the compulsion to repeat,
to go on looking for a special position in her relationships
to men. She also has to repress the painful rivalry
of the Oedipal triangle in order to maintain the fantasy of
her favored position with her father. The inability to develop
genuine object love is also narcissistically mortifying,
since it is part of her ambition to be a complete woman—
that is, capable of loving. Paradoxically, she owes this to
her introjected and subsequently transformed mother as
well.
Things may be simpler for the so-called phallic man. He
is his mother's special son and, in the seduction situation,
her preferred sexual object. The "phallic man" must be a
really splendid fellow if he wants to feel like a man at all.
However, as soon as he has to be something specific and
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