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

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
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