Prisoners of Childhood PDF
Preview Prisoners of Childhood
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 learned to feel—did I gradually discover my hitherto concealed history. I have described my path to this history and to my new insights in books published after 1985: The Untouched Key (1990), Banished Knowledge (1990), and Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (1991). My first three books mark the be- ginning of this development, for it was only as I was writing them that I began systematically to explore child- hoods, including my own. It was thanks to my work on those books, and later also thanks to the success of a carefully and systematically uncovering therapy, that I could see what, despite my critical attitude toward the drive theory, still had remained concealed from me dur- ing the twenty years of my analytical practice. I owe this information to my readers because I have learned from their letters to me that, unfortunately, some individuals, after reading my earlier books, de- cided to undergo psychoanalytical training or treatment, assuming that my views as expressed therein reflected the views of contemporary analysts. This assumption is completely erroneous and mislead- ing. The teaching structure of psychoanalysis has re- mained unchanged over the past ten years, and I have not met a single person who, having assimilated the insights of my books, would still be willing to describe herself or himself as a psychoanalyst. Nor in my view would this be possible, since a therapist who has gained emotional ac- cess to her or his childhood—a process that I regard as essential—cannot remain blind to the fact that it is pre- cisely this access that psychoanalysis prevents at all costs. Whenever I am—frequently and mistakenly—described as a psychoanalyst, it is only because I do not always hear about it in time to correct such a notion. viii
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