The Drama of the Gifted Child; Excerpt 1

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 their childhood was happy and protected.

Quite often, we are faced here with gifted patients who have been praised and admired for their talents and their achievements.

According to prevailing general attitudes, these people should have had a strong and stable sense of self assurance.

But exactly the opposite is the case.

In everything they undertake, they do well, and often excellently, they are admired and envied, they are successful whatever they care to do, but all to no avail.

Behind this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness and self-alienation, and a sense that their life has no meaning.

These dark feelings will come to the fore as soon as the drug of grandiosity fails, as soon as they are not on top, not definitely the superstar.

Or, whenever they suddenly get the feeling they have failed to live up to some idealised image and measure they feel they must adhere to.

Then, they are plagued by anxiety, or deep feelings of guilt & shame.

What are the reasons for such disturbances in these gifted people?

In the very first interview, they will let the listener know they have had understanding parents, or at least one such, and if they ever lacked understanding, they felt that the fault lay with them, and with their inability to express themselves appropriately.

They recount their earliest memories without any sympathy for the child they once were.

And this is the more striking, since these patients not only have a pronounced introspective ability, but they are also able to emphasise well with other people.

Their relationship to their own childhood's emotional world however is characterised by lack of respect, compulsion to control, manipulation and a demand for achievement. Very often they show disdain, irony, even derision and cynacism.

In general, there is a complete absence of real emotional understanding or serious appreciation of their own childhood vicissitudes (unwelcome changes in circumstance), and no conception of their true needs, beyond the need for achievement.

The internalisation of original drama has been so complete, that the illusion of a good childhood can be maintained.