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The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition By Alice Miller ( Basic Books )
Release Date: 1996-12-23
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List Price: $13.95
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Product Description
Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer—and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents’ expectations and win their ”love.” Alice Miller writes, ”When I used the word ’gifted’ in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb… Without this ’gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.” But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.
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 A classic. Groundbreaking truths still enlightening after all these years. And I can recommend ( newbooksforyou )
a fascinating and remarkably candid memoir written by another brilliant and compassionate woman: That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist by Susan Rako, M.D. The title comes from a song by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rako was herself notably a "gifted child," -- actually a child prodigy on the piano who performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 14, and who became a psychiatrist to heal herself and others on the journey founded on courage to stand to one's own truth. Rako's memoir is wonderfully well-written and a great read. The writing just flows.
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for adults who were parentified as children by their own parents ( chardavis )
Great read for adults who were parentified as children by their own parents, and helping you to cope with and MOVE PAST the legacy and wounds your parents accidentally left you with. They learned it from their parents, and it's important to break the cycle if you don't want to pass it to your children too. You will, unless you work very hard to heal the wounds. It's inevitable.
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Great book w good examples ( robnitro )
Alice Miller explains how a lot of us have been affected from childhood. The book flows well and is a page turner when you see that a lot of the situations relate to you in some way. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to improve themselves!
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A Significant Piece of the Puzzle
Reading books about psychology, especially books dealing with childhood trauma, is a bit like looking into a shattered mirror. Some parts will accurately reflect aspects of one's own psyche; other parts will be too distorted to have any relevance. As far as mirrors go, I think Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child" provides for excellent viewing.
The core of the book is about narcissism, or more precisely, the way that children are negatively affected by the emotional unavailability and/or abuse of their parents. These emotional wounds can create severe dysfunctions and personality disorders later in life - disorders over which the victim has absolutely no control, unless they begin the long and painful road towards breaking out of their "Inner Prison" (as Miller puts it).
Early editions of this book used a lot more psychological jargon, and the revised edition makes things quite clear and concise for the layman, without losing the essential concepts: the role and critical responsibility of the primary object (usually mother); the suppression/repression of feelings in favour of a need to please; the cycles of grandiosity and depression; contempt and its role in perversion and obsession; compulsion to repeat behaviours; the societal role in propagating psychologically diseased values through generations; the severe shortcomings of tradition psychotherapeutic methods (although this was first published in 1979), and the key to healing - consciously experiencing hidden emotional pain.
The case studies and quotes from patients are relevant and add an extra dimension to the theory. I found that some of the examples struck a stronger emotional chord than Miller's own observations, which is important if one is reading a book to gain insight rather than for simple curiosity.
Although a short book at approximately 126 pages, there is very little "fluff" or filling in it. Miller gets straight to the point and has little patience for "parental apologia", which is an approach I think needs to be taken. It seems from other reviews though that some parents bought the book thinking it would affirm their own notions of their child's "giftedness", and were a little "miffed" to find out that wasn't the case. In my opinion, parents like these are the exact reason professionals like Miller need to focus the lens directly on their behaviour.
While it is somewhat of a cliché these days to blame one's parents for one's neuroses, that isn't really the point; responsibility for healing rests with the victim, not the perpetrator. This is something Miller makes clear, although the point is better made in other books, notably Martha Stout's "The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness".
That the book is now still in print and in its 3rd revision is a testament to its long-term appeal. Despite having read it twice now, I still find revisits to be enlightening and worthwhile. I am very glad to have it on my bookshelf and consider it money well spent.
Readers with a deep interest in the subject may also find "The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment", "Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism", "Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves & Others" and the previously mentioned "Myth of Sanity" to be excellent sources of additional information.
Overall, an immensely valuable work and I thank Ms. Miller for her long-term efforts in sharing such important knowledge with the wider public.
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always there
I read this book for the first time when it was first published and it had a great impact on me and on understanding how I had grown. It was painful but at the same time healing. I continue reading it and it continues having those characteristics. Thanks
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Addiction
