Alice Miller
I discovered The Drama of the Gifted Child via a fantastic conversation on the Tim Ferriss podcast in which Dr. Gabor Maté spoke about his life and work. This was one of the books that was brought up when the latter spoke about the question that drove his life’s work – what is it that makes people be the way they are? Apparently, the German title of the book when translated is Prisoners of Childhood, which I think is more apt, but probably ‘darker’! 🙂
Through logic and anecdotes of patients, Miller explores the complexity of childhood and the impact it has on us as adults. The title of the book makes sense because of some focus on the gifted child, who is more intelligent/ sensitive/ emotionally aware than someone their age. These children understand their parents’ expectations so well that they often develop a “false self” by suppressing their own emotions, needs, and authenticity to gain love, approval, or validation from their parents. This process often leads to emotional numbness, perfectionism, and low self-esteem, as the child grows up detached from their authentic self.
Adult struggles, thus, are a battle of the “true self” versus the “false self”. The psychological impact of the unmet emotional needs during childhood manifests in adult life in mindset and actions and many a time, despite pursuing different activities across career and life (competitiveness, relationships, fetishes, cults, political belief systems etc) leaves behind an emptiness because of difficulty in accessing real feelings, trusting intuition, or establishing genuine connections with others. The feeling could be depression or grandiosity (excels in everything and needs to be admired). Often, it also perpetuates the cycle of emotional repression with their children or through dysfunctional relationships, exactly what their own parents did.
A key component of Miller’s solution is the need to acknowledge and process these buried childhood experiences. She emphasises the importance of mourning one’s unmet needs and reconnecting with the feelings that were suppressed in childhood. This self-reflection allows individuals to differentiate between their “true self “- with their genuine feelings, desires, and personality – and the “false self” they constructed to survive their childhood. She advocates for emotional empathy, nurturing, self-discovery, self-compassion and therapeutic intervention to break the cycle of inherited emotional trauma, regain one’s authenticity, and lead more emotionally honest and fulfilling lives. The Drama of the Gifted Child is an excellent read if you want to journey into your true self.
Notes
“Depression consists of a denial of one’s own emotional reactions.”
“The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality – the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.”
“If I were to reduce all my feelings and their painful conflicts to a single name, I can think of no other word but: dread. It was dread, dread and uncertainty, that I felt in all those hours of shattered childhood felicity : dread of punishment, dread of my own conscience, dread of stirrings in my soul which I considered forbidden and criminal.” Hermann Hesse, A Child’s Heart
“Once we are able to feel and understand the repressed emotions of childhood, we will no longer need contempt as a defence against them. On the other hand, as long as we despise the other person and over-value our own achievements (“he can’t do what I can do”), we do not have to mourn the fact that love is not forthcoming without achievement. Nevertheless, if we avoid this mourning it means that we remain at bottom the one who is despised, for we have to despise everything in ourselves that is not wonderful, good, and clever. Thus we perpetuate the loneliness of childhood: We despise weakness, helplessness, uncertainty—in short, the child in ourselves and in others.
The contempt for others in grandiose, successful people always includes disrespect for their own true selves, as their scorn implies: “Without these superior qualities of mine, a person is completely worthless.” This means further: “Without these achievements, these gifts, I could never be loved, would never have been loved.” Grandiosity in the adult guarantees that the illusion continues: “I was loved.””
“It is usually considered normal when sick or aged people who have suffered the loss of much of their health and vitality or women who are experiencing menopause become depressive. There are, however, many people who can tolerate the loss of beauty, health, youth, or loved ones and, although they grieve, do so without depression. In contrast, there are those with great gifts, often precisely the most gifted, who do suffer from severe depression. For one is free from it only when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of ones own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.”
“The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.”
Disrespect” is the weapon of the weak and a defence against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings, which could trigger memories of events in one’s repressed history”
“The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.”
“Political action can be fed by the unconscious rage of children who have been misused, imprisoned, exploited, cramped and drilled. This rage can be partially discharged in fighting “enemies”, without having to give up the idealisation of one’s own parents”
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