The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True SelfAs charming performers who skillfully reflect their parents expectations, far too many children grow into adults driven to greater and greater achievements by an underlying sense of worthlessness. Never allowed to express their true feelings, and having lost touch with their true selves, they act out their repressed feelings with episodes of depression and compulsive behavior. They in turn inflict the same legacy of repression on their own children. This poignant and thought-provoking book shows how narcissistic parents form and deform the lives of their children. "The Drama of the Gifted Child" is the first step toward helping readers reclaim their lives by discovering their own needs and their own truth."A book that patients prescribe...the therapists are reading it because their patients are recommending it." "--Washington Post Book World" "Full of wisdom and perception."--Anthony Storr, "New Republic" "Rare and compelling in its compassion and its unassuming eloquence...her examples are so vivid and so ordinary that they touch the hurt child in us all." "--New York Magazine" |
Contents
In Search of the True Self | 14 |
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CONTEMPT | 69 |
AFTERWORD | 117 |
Copyright | |
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ability able to experience abuse achievement addiction admiration adult Alice Miller aware baby beautiful become beginning behavior Child's Heart childhood compulsion to repeat consciously contempt cruelty danger defense Demian denial deny dependent depressive moods described despair despite develop discover Drama dream early emotional empathy ence example experienced exploited express father fear feelings felt give happens happy healing helplessness Hermann Hesse hidden hide humiliation idealized illusion Ingmar Bergman inner intellectual knowledge later lives loneliness longer look manipulation means mistreated mother mourning Narcissus needs never obsessions once one's ourselves pain parents pascha past patient perhaps perversion possible primal therapy prison protect psychiatrists psychoanalysis psychotherapists puberty rage reality realize recognize repressed memories respect rience scapegoat sciously sense sensitive sexual shame siblings sion Stetten story suffered suppress therapeutic therapist therapy things tion torment traumas true truth unconditional love understand Virago Press