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

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neither the grandiose nor the depressive "Narcissus" can really love himself. His passion for his false self not only makes object love impossible but also love for the one person who is fully entrusted to his care: he, himself. Depressive Phases During Analysis A grandiose person will only look for an analyst if depressive episodes come to his aid and force him to do so. As long as the grandiose defense is effective, this form of narcissistic disturbance exerts no pressure through visible suffering, except when other members of the family (spouse or children) have to seek psychotherapeutic help for depression or psychosomatic disorders. In our analytic work, we encounter grandiosity that is coupled with depression. On the other hand, we see depression in almost all our patients, either in the form of a manifest illness or in distinct phases of depressive moods. These phases can have different functions. SIGNAL FUNCTION Every analyst is familiar with sessions when the patient arrives complaining of depression and later leaves the consulting room in tears but much relieved and free from depression. Perhaps this patient now has been able to experience a long-pent-up rage against his mother; or he has been able to express his mistrust of the analyst's superiority, or to feel for the first time his sadness over the many lost years of his life during which he did not really live; or he has vented his anger over the impending holidays and separa- 50
tion from his analyst. It is irrelevant which of these feelings are coming to the fore; the important thing is that they could be experienced. The depression had signaled their proximity but also their denial. The analytic session enabled the feelings to break through and then the depression disappeared. Such a mood can be an indication that parts of the self that had been rejected (feelings, fantasies, wishes, fears) have become stronger without rinding discharge in grandiosity. DENIAL OF SELF Some patients, while feeling content and understood after having come close to the core of their selves in a session, will organize a party or something else equally unimportant to them at that moment, which will make them feel lonely and inadequate again. After a few days they will complain of self-alienation and emptiness, of again having lost the way to themselves. Here the patient has actively, though unconsciously, provoked a situation that could demonstrate the repetition of what used to happen to him as a child: when he really got a sense of himself in "play"— feeling creative in Winnicott's sense—he would be asked to do something "more sensible," to achieve something, and his world, which was just beginning to unfold, would be overthrown. These patients, even as children, probably reacted to this by withdrawing their feelings and by becoming depressed. THE ACCUMULATION OF STRONG, HIDDEN FEELINGS Patients who are no longer depressive sometimes still have depressive phases that may last several weeks before strong emotions from their childhood break through. It is as though the depression had held back the effect. When it 51
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The Drama of the Gifted Child
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A previous version of chapter 1 app
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Vantage Point 1990 Almost ten years
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Although, understandably enough, I
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Preface We live in a culture that e
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of child abuse. Had just one person
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ecognizing the absurdity of what th
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ification. On top of all this, the
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them), if one cannot love oneself a
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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 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
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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
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through experience, not merely corr
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ecause of their very nature, inacce
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course of analysis it can then be s
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flicts had absolutely no effect, th
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not so clever and quick (for instan
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that their teacher once had and was
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the history of his childhood and th
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Works Cited Abraham, K. 1960 (orig.
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Index abandonment, 10-14, 79 Abraha
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The Drama of the Gifted Child (The Search for the True Self)

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