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

(holding) empathic environment. Winnicott (1969) compared
the infant's emotional world with that of a psychotic,
and there is something convincing about this comparison.
What these two worlds have in common, in addition
to the lack of structuring, is the extreme intensity of
feeling that is otherwise only to be found in puberty. Yet,
the recollection of the pains of puberty, of not being able
to understand or to place our own impulses is usually more
accessible than the earliest narcissistic traumata that are often
hidden behind the picture of an idyllic childhood or
even behind an almost complete amnesia. This is perhaps
one reason why adults less often look back nostalgically to
the time of their puberty than to that of their childhood.
The mixture of longing, expectation, and fear of disappointment,
which for most people accompanies the remembrance
of the festivities they have known in their
childhood, can perhaps be explained by their search for the
intensity of feeling they knew in childhood, and cannot
regain.
It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that
they cannot be repressed without serious consequences.
The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls
have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional
growth.
Once a patient has experienced a few times in the course
of his analysis that the breakthrough of intense earlychildhood
feelings (characterized by the specific quality of
noncomprehension) can relieve a long period of depression,
this experience will bring about a gradual change in his way
of approaching "undesired" feelings, above all, those of
pain. He discovers that he is no longer compelled to follow
the former pattern of disappointment, suppression of pain,
and depression, since he now has another possibility of
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