The Drama of the Gifted Child

143 Pages·2005·5.11 MB·English

by  Alice Miller

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S H A H E D D A V O U D I P O U R’S

The Drama of
the Gifted Child

THE DRAMA
OF THE
GIFTED CHILD
Alice Miller
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
Ruth Ward
Basic Books
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
A previous version of chapter 1 appeared in the International Journal of Psycho-
analysis 60 (1979):47; a previous version of chapter 2 appeared in the Interna-
tional Review of Psychoanalysis 6 (1979):61.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
excerpts from the following: Herman Hesse, "A Child's Heart," from Kling-
sor's Last Summer, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Far-
rar, Straus and Giroux, 1970) and Demian, translated by Michael Roloff and
Michael Lebeck (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS
PRISONERS OF CHILDHOOD
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Miller, Alice.
Prisoners of childhood.
Translation of Das Drama des begabten Kindes.
Bibliography: p. 115
Includes index.
1. Narcissism. 2. Psychology, Pathological.
3. Self-respect. I. Title.
RC553.N36M5413 616.89'17 80-50535
ISBN: 0-465-06347-0 (cloth)
ISBN: 0-465-01691-X (paper)
Copyright © 1981 by Basic Books, Inc.
Originally Published in German as
Das Drama des begabten Kindes
Copyright © 1979 Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main
All Rights Reserved
Introduction and preface to the paperback
edition copyright © 1990 by Basic Books, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Vincent Torre
91 92 93 MPC 25 24 23 22 21 20
Contents
Vantage Point 1990 vii
Preface xi
Foreword xvii
Chapter 1
The Drama of the Gifted Child and the
Psychoanalyst's Narcissistic Disturbance 3
Chapter 2
Depression and Grandiosity as Related
Forms of Narcissistic Disturbance 30
Chapter 3
The Vicious Circle of Contempt 64
Works Cited 115
Index 117

Vantage Point 1990
Almost ten years have passed since my first three books
were published: The Drama of the Gifted Child, For Your Own
Good, and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware. The facts and inter-
connections I then presented, on the basis of my many
years of practice, have lost neither in validity nor, unfor-
tunately, in immediacy. On the other hand, what has
radically changed is my hopeful attitude toward psycho-
analysis, from which, in 1988, I officially broke away by
resigning from the Swiss as well as the International
Psychoanalytical associations. I was forced to take this
step when I realized that psychoanalytical theory and
practice obscure—that is, render unrecognizable—the
causes and consequences of child abuse by (among other
things) labeling facts as fantasies, and, furthermore, that
such treatments can be dangerous, as in my own case,
because they cement the confusion deriving from child-
hood instead of resolving it.
Ten years ago I was not yet so clear about this, my
study of philosophy as well as my training in and practice
of psychoanalysis having long prevented me from recog-
nizing many facts. Only when I was prepared to end my
repression, to liberate my childhood from the prison of
pedagogic notions and psychoanalytical theories—when
I rejected the ideology of forgetting and forgiving, allied
myself with the abused child, and, thanks to my therapy,
vii