A huddle on the greasy street – cars stop, nose past, withdraw – dull glint on soles of tackety boots, frayed rough blue trousers, nondescript coat stretching back, head supported in strangers’ arms, a crowd collecting – ‘Whit’s wrang?’ ‘Can ye see’m?’ ‘An auld fella, he’s had it.’ On one side, a young mother in a headscarf is kneeling to comfort him, her three-year-old son stands puzzled, touching her coat, her shopping bag spills its packages that people look at as they loo

Blink 3 Many gifted children have high expectations of themselves, and grow up to suffer from depression. We've all heard of great composers, writers or artists who were unbelievably creative, but suffered from depression throughout their lives. How could people who are so successful be so unhappy? Brilliant people often have feelings of grandiosity. Their sense of their own importance and value is what propels them to create. However, grandiosity is the first sign of a repre

Bohemians upend the social order by refusing to participate in society in a traditional way. When you hear the word 'bohemian', you might picture a young hippy-ish man or woman with messy hair, baggy clothing and the job title of poet or artist. While bohemian fashion is now a modern fad, 'bohemia' itself actually began in the early nineteenth century. The term defined a loose group of people who dressed simply, lived in cheap areas, valued art over business, and sometimes h

All excerpts taken from the audio version of The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller, which can be found on YouTube This excerpt begins at approximately 2:35:07; As the child grows up, he cannot cease living his own truth, and expressing it somewhere, perhaps in complete secrecy. In this way a person can have adapted a completely to their own surroundings, and can have developed a FALSE SELF, but in his perversion, or his obsessional neurosis, he still allows a portion of

All excerpts taken from the audio version of The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller, which can be found on YouTube This excerpt begins at approximately 2:31:24; In an effecting and angry letter from Steten (Hermann) Hesse wrote to his parents; If I were a bigot and not a human being, I could perhaps hope for your understanding. All the same, his release from the home was on the condition of his 'improvement', so, the boy improved. In a later poem dedicated to his parents

All excerpts taken from the audio version of The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller, which can be found on YouTube This excerpt begins at approximately 39:54; I constantly feel that the demands are too great, but I cannot change that, I must always achieve MORE than others. ... Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the as-if personality, to a FALSE self. This person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him, and fuses s

All excerpts taken from the audio version of The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller, which can be found on YouTube This excerpt begins at approximately 28:21 Apart from these extreme cases, there are a large number of people who suffer from narcissistic disorders who often had sensitive and caring parents, from whom they received much encouragement. Yet these people are suffering from severe depressions. They enter analysis in the belief, with which they grew up, that th