The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

Product Information

According to prevailing attitudes, these people —the pride of the parents —should’ve had a strong and stable sense of self-assurance. By working to help their kids feel the love they never did, they actually end up putting new kinds of stress on them without knowing it. Miller says one can only be free from depression "when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of one's own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities. It is helpful for parents to avoid projecting their own expectations, fears, and plans for the child.

About parents who turn to the child and children who can't turn to their parents to have their needs met. This healing improves your psychological health, and, she claims, will eventually lead to the re-discovery of your true self, your untraumatized soul. This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer,and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.

And considering that misogyny has been one of the things at the root of my depression, a book so steeped in it isn't likely to give me a lot of relief. Grandiosity is characterised by contempt for others (who have not, as a casual example, read as many books or displayed as brilliant intellectual and artistic accomplishments). Because that child is made of so many repressed emotions, so he seeks to either take revenge upon the world, or hide away everything even more.

Why did they both stand there laughing, eating so slowly and showing so little concern about the child’s obvious distress?I'm fairly certain that my parents' toilet training techniques contribued nothing to why I'm a hot mess. And you do not have to have been a vicious childbeater - Proust's mother was no worse than clinging and controlling, but it was enough, according to Miller, to condemn him to an untimely death. Alice has great insight into the importance of the early years of childhood and describes how we were treated will effect how we treat our children and how we work out issues with our parents through the relationships we create with our children. We could make great progress in becoming more honest, respectful, and conscious, thus less destructive, if religious leaders could acknowledge and respect these simple psychological laws. Especially when the child’s needs for respect, echoing, understanding, sympathy, and mirroring aren’t fulfilled.

The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.

Much like emotional therapeutic counselling, Miller recognises the importance of the hurt and lonely child we all carry within us. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. However, if the child's great need for admiration is not met, for his/her looks, intelligence or achievements, he/she falls into severe depression. What I have learned from this remarkable book is that we hide these feelings from our parents so they will `love' us, but it's not our true self that they love since it is these hidden feelings that are the manifestations of who we really are. Miller claims that the key to these feelings is the realisation that one was loved as a child not for who one was, but (in large part at least) because of one's achievements.

Alice Miller makes her readers aware of the unexpressed sufferings of the child and the tragedy of the parent(s) own illness.The book described my life in extraordinary detail, it was a catharsis to see expressed what I never could have spoken. These events from childhood that have become the invisible strings that guide us through our lives are, more often than not, simply accepted by the adult person as a fact that had little to no consequences on their lives. Alice Miller speaks of the vital importance for us to discover our own personal truth that puts us in touch with our true self.