Customer Reviews

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Miller has created a work that reaches into the soul and guides the reader through innermost (sometimes forgotten) memories and details of early life. By showing very clearly how gifted children are often relegated to that back burner of the family because of their own innate self-sufficiency, she paints a vivid picture of unconscious, conditioned manipulation and a common lack of emotional maturity in the part of the parents. The child is essentially denied a self of its own, as the needs of the parent are always paramount.

WARNING: This book is powerful and extremely insightful, but not the informational or educational manual you might expect from the title--it is very personal, and is likely to evoke unexpectedly strong emotions. Several people saw me with the book over a course of a few months, and immediately thought it would be for them: "Oh, I should read that--I have three gifted children!". I found myself almost discouraging their interest, as they clearly were looking for validation of this statement, not actual insight. The content of this book is extremely powerful and can be a painful experience, especially for a reader who finds himself relating to the content but not ready to face their own reality. Although it is certainly a classic, it is not a book to be offered capriciously to friends and acquaintances--a casual recommendation may be detrimental to your relationship with the unsuspecting victim.

In my case, my role as peacemaker and surrogate caregiver in the family left me with an overall sense of personal worthlessness and confusion about my own reactions to the events of my adult life. Not having been allowed true feelings of my own through my childhood, I found myself lost in a sea of immature emotions once separated from the needs of both of my parents.

Miller herself has identified one of the basic problems of her approach: she views the mother as the most probable source of this type of emotional manipulation, as the mother is traditionally the primary caregiver in very early childhood. But if read with a deliberate awareness that both parents (present or not) are involved in the panorama of childhood experience, a more balanced reading will yield surprisingly sharp images and a keener understanding of one's formative years.

I found myself reading it in small bursts, as some sections resonated so keenly that I had to put the words away for a while to ruminate. But I always came back, as it helped me examine closely some things about myself that I truly had not realized, and has helped me resolve some issues that have caused me continued anger and distress. The work inspired by this book has left me feeling more capable of identifying my true feelings in times of stress, and I feel that the insight into my true self will help me as I continue to grow.

Alice Miller's "Drama Of The Gifted Child," was originally published as "Prisoners Of Childhood; The Drama Of The Gifted Child," in 1981. I read the book over 20 years ago, and recently reread it. I find that it is just as relevant, wise and perceptive today as it was then. Ms. Miller was a practicing psychoanalyst, who gave up her work with patients to write books, for the layperson, primarily dealing with early childhood abuse. In a new Forward, Miller continues to disavow psychoanalysis. Although I am not in agreement with her on this, she continues to be one of my heroes.

Ms. Miller, who writes an elegant and easily understandable prose, discusses here the issue of children raised by a narcissistic parent(s). She explains that this book is not about high I.Q. children, but about those who were able to survive an abusive childhood because they developed an adequate defense system. At a very early age the child intuitively apprehends the parent's needs. Since the parent, especially the mother, is the child's soul source of survival, the child strives to please, fearing disapproval, or abandonment. Thus, the child sublimates his needs for the parent's. Roles reverse and the child frequently takes on the parent's responsibility as emotional caregiver. This impedes the growth of a child's true identity, and a "loss of self" frequently occurs. The child adapts by not "feeling" his own needs, and develops finely tuned antennae, focusing intensely on the needs of the all important other. Ms. Miller writes, "An abused child, (emotionally), does not know it is being abused, and in order to survive and avoid the unbearable pain, the mind is provided with a remarkable mechanism, the 'gift' of 'repression,' which stores these experiences in a place outside of consciousness." Although, later in life, these "prohibited" feelings and needs cannot always be avoided, they remain split off and the most vital part of the true self is not integrated into the personality. The results are often depression, and tremendous insecurity.

Alice Miller makes her readers aware of the unexpressed sufferings of the child and the tragedy of the parent(s) own illness. As she frequently states, "any parent who abuses a child," knowingly or otherwise, "has himself been severely traumatized in his childhood, in some form or another."

Gifted children are often the products of emotional abuse by a narcissistic parent. 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. 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."

Children need a great deal of both emotional and physical support from the adult. According to Miller, this adult support must include the following elements in order for a child to develop to his or her full potential: "Respect for the child; respect for his rights; tolerance for his feelings; willingness to learn from his behavior."

Miller also writes about the "origins of grandiosity as a form of denial and its relationship with depression." Another interesting chapter deals with the "process of parental derision" and how it results in humiliation and possible psychic trauma of the child.

Alice Miller's extraordinary book, along with consistent psychoanalytic psychotherapy, enabled me to understand my past, modify behavior, forgive, and finally, best of all, to heal. I cannot recommend "The Drama Of The Gifted Child" highly enough.

When I read this book (which was originally published in German in 1979) for the first time in the early eighties, it completely swept me off my feet. Here was an analysis that explained why I was in search of my 'true self', why I felt my achievements were 'empty', why I felt empathy for others and antipathy for myself. The idea proposed by Alice Miller, in a nutshell, was that there are children who are able to feel and ease the emotional insecurity of their mothers (the 'gift' of the title), thus gain her love but in the process deny their own desires. These children grow up to become helpers in various roles, including therapists - like Alice Miller herself. They develop sensors for the subconscious signals of the needs of others. The problem is, they subconsciously deny themselves the pursuit of their own needs, and consequently cannot become who they 'are'. Which makes them prone to the illnesses which, according to the Freudian theory, go with suppressed desires - depression and grandiosity (the latter being just a way of keeping depression at bay).

Alice Miller's ideas are based on her experiences as a psychotherapist who practiced for 20 years, and her own self-analysis. Her reasoning draws on some basic Freudian ideas: if the subconscious is brought to consciousness, the illnesses caused by the suppression can eventually be contained; the life of a person is rooted in her childhood and childhood experiences shape who a person 'is'. In the last part of her book she adds a theory derived from her work experience: when children whose needs have been denied in their childhood grow up and have children of their own, they can 'get rid' of their pain by inflicting the pain on their own children. She calls it the vicious circle of disdain, and the handing down of destructive attitudes from one generation to the next like a chain reaction.

How do I see 'The Drama of the Gifted Child' almost 20 years after reading it for the first time? I continue to be convinced that the general argument is true. Alice Miller captures very well the emotional consequences of denying one's own desires in the service of a person whose love is so overpoweringly important that it demands the sacrifice of one's 'true' self. Hermann Hesse's life and works provide her with excellent examples to illustrate this, by the way. On some cornerstones of her argument, however, I have my doubts now. Firstly, the idea of a 'true self', chiseled in stone if you so want, does not sit very well with me any more. Secondly, her thesis completely omits the role of fathers (quite un-Freudian, by the way), and what I saw as a refreshingly new point of view 20 years ago, looks like a major shortcoming to me now. Thirdly, having read up on some developmental psychology, I do not believe any longer that early experience inexorably shapes our lives. Finally, I think humans are so complex that there can not be a simple mechanism such as a handing down of certain attitudes: there are just too many exceptions from the rule.

'The Drama of the Gifted Child' is a powerful book and it is worth reading even after 20 years. It is not a scientific book in the sense that it contains testable findings, it presents a practitioner's conclusions gained from personal experience. You may call it an informed speculation, or an interim report from 'the search for the true self' as it is subtitled.

I am on my second reading of "Drama" and am finding it even more riveting. It seems written for me personally. Miller takes on the reigning Freudian methodology with the heretical insight that even well-meaning parents can contribute to the suppression of their children's true selves. It is common knowledge that Freud initially determined that his "hysterical" female patients had often been sexually abused by men in positions of trust and power in their lives, but that the medical society of the time refused to believe this. In order to not be thrown out of the Viennese Medical Society, Freud came up with ingenious but destructive theories (Oedipal complex, etc.) to explain his patients' symptoms. Miller takes us back to the truth - that early childhood trauma and betrayal causes peculiarly destructive symptoms in adult life, and that the situation is further complicated by the psychological process of denial and suppression. The victims even feel positive about their tormentors, so that they can survive (the "Stockholm syndrome"). Miller relates this process to the now well-documented "post-traumatic stress syndrome", but argues that it is even more difficult to understand and undo when the trauma happens not to fully formed adults, but to pre-verbal children, who can only feel the pain, but cannot express its cause. The memories can be suppressed, but the feelings and their effects cannot be eradicated without witnessing them as an adult. This is a very liberating discovery for one who has been traumatized as a child, and leads to methods of recovery that provide hope for adult sufferers. Interestingly, in the preface to the 1994 edition, Miller enthusiastically credits the methods of J. Konrad Stettbacher with helping her overcome her own symptoms of childhood abuse. In the 1996 version, this forward is omitted, as is any reference to Stettbacher's work. I wonder if that is because Miller has changed her mind about his methods, or if there was some kind of proprietary struggle? In any event, "Drama" is a seminal work, and will likely reverberate in the psychotherapy community for a long time to come. A must-read for anyone struggling with the effects of their childhood - and who isn't? Give a copy to your shrink, your parents, your kids, your significant other...but be prepared for some interesting dinner conversations!

Interesting range of views here. First of all, this version of the book is a significanly revised version of the book originally entitled "Prisoners of Childhood." I, for one, think Alice Miller changed the book for the worse.

The original book describes sensitivity of "gifted" children who resonate with the emotional/psychological energy of their neurotic (or worse) parents and don't have the developmental capibility to cope appropriately. And yes, the book is primarily about narcissism.

The new version, however, became about all "abused" children, which deflated--and devalued--the dynamics of which I felt she had described more effectively in the earlier version. I wonder if the revision was so she could get on the "co-dependence" bandwagon of the 90's--and sell more books!! (but then, that's my cynical side...)

This book profoundly "resonated" with me when I first read it in the earlier version--and I think the book still has relevance in that version. I do not, like some reviewers here, think that Miller was primarily advocating blame (of mothers, primarily); if anything, she was stressing personal responsibility to cease to be a "prisoner of childhood" but through honest exploration that childhood--which is probably the most difficult and painful process a person can go through. To continually blame without getting past it, as I think Miller would agree, never accomplishes anything--one is still a prisoner.

This book is (was) a skillful proponent of psychoanalytic theory and practice--and like another reviewer, changed my life in leading me in a direction that has shown to be remarkably productive.

A very insightful book. It felt like Alice Miller had written these pages for me. I even found myself reading whole sections of text out loud! I was also surprised when I handed the book to my girlfriend, and she also remarked that the book applied to her as well.

A quick note... For you to really use the material in this book, you must be willing to look into yourself and into your past. If your defense mechanisms are out in force (or if you don't realize that you even have defense mechanisms), then you will not be able to see what you have to do. (In fact, some of your defense mechnisms are there specifically to prevent access to the very content you need to get to.)

It is unsurprising that Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child has met with a certain amount of hostility from both the psychiatry and psychotherapy establishments. After all, she frowns both on the use of drugs and cognitive-behavioral techniques as treatments for anxiety--especially in children. She even suggests that those who would use such remedies may have unaddressed psychological problems of their own. What's worse, she appeals to no empirical studies (double-blind or not) in reaching these conclusions; in fact, a reader might be reluctant to conclude from this book that Miller would even be capable of assessing the value of a careful scientific study of this or that anti-anxiety treatment. So, as I've indicated above, this book is often very frustrating. But Miller's work is also quite valuable, at least in my opinion. Like Freud's contemporary Wilhelm Stekel, Miller may not be a systematic theoretician, but her extensive clinical experience has provided her with several important insights that I believe may be useful, particularly to parents of anxious children.

I suppose it's fairly obvious by now that there can be many causes of anxiety. Legitimate dangers, sleep deprivation, repressed thoughts or desires, negative reinforcements coincident with pleasurable activities, isolation, and lots of other things can factor into fearfulness. Similarly, we now know that various drugs, meditation techniques, cognitive "re-learning," and gradual desensitization can all help combat these feelings, at least sometimes. It's often forgotten, though, that there are other, simpler techniques that people often use, knowingly or unknowingly, to calm themselves or others down. They may turn on the TV, take a walk, call a friend or even have some ice cream. Perhaps the most common palliative used by parents to allay their children's anxieties is one that comes very naturally. We hug them, sit them on our laps, tell them we love them to pieces, and so on. Most parents don't need to be taught these techniques: we come by them almost biologically. It is interesting to note, however, that this most basic of anti-anxiety medicines is, to a certain extent, inconsistent with all the others because it indicates complete acceptance of the sufferers' current condition. While desensitization, meditation and the rest suggest a certain level of dissatisfaction with the anxious individual, at least in his/her present state, the concentrated care provided by the simple comfort-giver is pure and unconditional. It says "I love you, and I'm fine with you no matter what." There's no rush to distract, improve matters, make things different. Furthermore, Miller suggests that many of those advocating other means to improved mental health are themselves frantic: in the case of stressed parents, it may be that their children are spooking them because they're unable to deal with their own unresolved anxieties. And this may be a result of the fact that their own parents didn't manage things quite right when they were kids.

While Miller's book isn't specifically a how-to book for parents, but rather a general primer on the importance of looking into one's own childhood for clues to one's current psychological make-up, I believe there are important lessons for parents here. Her position seems to imply that when a `gifted' (i.e. sensitive) child is frightened, perhaps won't go to school, is afraid of the dark, or can't be alone, rushing in with `cures' may just make things worse. The results of such attempted interventions will be familiar to many parents: "You know that you have to go to school." "But I can't go to school, my head hurts too much!" "What do you think is so horrible about school anyways?" "I don't know!" "Well, you must not be breathing correctly or you'd feel better." "I CAN'T!" Etc. Miller's work suggests the merits of an alternative approach: that of acceptance--not only of the child, but even of the condition itself. What she has noticed in her adult patients (and herself) is that where that sort of unconditional acceptance was lacking in childhood, the life of the grown-up is likely to have been difficult, or worse. A feeling of dissatisfaction, incompetance and unhappiness may have haunted the adult.

What will be amazing to some (and, surprisingly, what Miller doesn't really go into in her book) is how nicely this apparently basic lesson works for both kinds and their parents during the child-rearing years. A number of our friends, (some, like me, freaked out pseudo-therapists themselves) have discovered along with us that in many cases, if we will do no more than sit quietly with a troubled child, making no attempts to distract her, guide her meditations, help her breathe, convince her of the harmlessness of the feared item, or otherwise re-tool, within minutes, everything will be fine. Not only our children, but we too have to "let it be." If we can just look our kids in the eye, tell them how much we love them, and wait out these storms with them, we'll be amazed how unlikely they are to actually fall to pieces. In any event, Miller illustrates quite scarily that if we can't do this, we're failing in basic parenthood, and our children will suffer as adults. For what it's worth, this has been an important lesson for me. In spite of her anecdotal approach, I believe Alice Miller is on to something that not only will be helpful for many unhappy individuals, but that many parents desperately need to learn.

I read this book once, several months ago, and now I'm reading it again, more carefully. The first time, I found myself constantly fighting to continue reading in spite of what seemed to me to be Miller's unbearably arrogant self-righteousness. I fought my way past that, and past some of Miller's patently absurd opinions, because I believed in my gut that there was something extremely important to me (and to the world) buried in this stream of psychobabble. I found that Miller's concepts of childhood abuse and it's effects (and I mean childhood starting at one minute past-partum) were astoundingly insightful, although they didn't apply to me since my mother has always been unconditionally loving. I returned the book to the person who had recommended it and went on with my life as usual.

Elsewhere in these Amazon.com reviews, "A reader" claimed that, "For you to really use the material in this book, you must be willing to look into yourself and into your past. If your defense mechanisms are out in force (or if you don't realize that you even have defense mechanisms), then you will not be able to see what you have to do. (In fact, some of your defense mechnisms are there specifically to prevent access to the very content you need to get to.)

"A reader" nailed the problem. Last week I discovered, with the help of a therapist I recently started seeing, that my life is riddled with narcissistic patterns. When I asked if there was any literature I could read about "narcissism", I was dumbstruck when he said the best description is given in a series of books by someone named Alice Miller. When I went to a bookstore and leafed through the book I had already read several months previously, I was dumbstruck again to see the words "narcissism" and "grandiosity" and "depression" sprinkled through the pages. I had read the pages before, and I had thought I understood them, but they never really applied to me and I forgot them easily. I was in denial.

It's interesting that Miller's book was seemingly useless to me before an insightful therapist somehow made a crack in my defense mechanisms. However, I suspect that it was my first reading of Miller's book that propelled me into therapy (that led me back to the book). Now I wonder why a casual acquaintance loaned me that book in the first place. There seems to be more to the psyche than meets the eye. One wonders how far it goes.

On my first reading of "Gifted Child", I thought Miller seriously underestimated the potentially positive, and in some cases lifesaving, contributions to a person's growth attributable to social interactions beyond the immediate family or therapist. In general in "Gifted Child" as well as in "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware", Miller seemed to focus on destructive, cultish effects of social group interactions. I suspect that her ideas about social effects are incompletely developed and overly pessimistic. I base that suspicion on my own repeated interactions with ordinary people who willingly pay close attention to my words solely in order to understand my point of view, without passing judgement on me, and without being motivated by any overt or hidden agenda. That kind of interaction can be described as a "loving" one, in some sense, and I think Miller would not disagree. I suspect such interactions are not uncommon and are perhaps essential for both personal and societal health. We are a social species. I regret that Miller seems curiously unimpressed by that fact and uninterested in its implications. Childhood abuse is her main concern, and for excellent reasons. But a view of the world through pathologist's glasses can not be an unbiased view.

It is not only the content that is excellent but also her writing style. It is objective and not sentimental like lots of books on psychological topics. It reveals repetitive patterns that you learnt during childhood and that you pass on to your children and also experience it with your partner. Most people have a kind of "dark room" where they unconsciously hide negative feelings that only their children will experience. The only critical point is I do not believe that psychoanalysis is the only way of solving these problems, I am sure that other treatments do help as well. Anyway, a fantastic book, I nearly read it four times.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" wrote Socrates. If you find yourself on the path of this philosophy a good place to stop is with Alice Miller's short book, "Drama of the Gifted Child". The book, despite being written for therapist's, is unambiguous, easy to understand, and extremely compelling. The book addresses our secret-selves, which includes our subconscious selves, and asks the question, and I paraphrase here, how did you really feel back in the day? Miller contends that a trauma suffered in your young life will continue producing unhappiness, addiction, compulsion, fetishes, mental illness, and worse in your adult life. The only way out of pain is to face the truth. You must face what happened and how you really felt. Not how you were told to feel, not how you needed to feel to survive, not how you told yourself you should feel-- but how you really felt. This is easier read than done. The author states that you cannot undo the past, but through the process of mourning, obtained only by squarely facing the truth, you can free yourself and finally move forward. It is ultimately the story of your psychic pain and psychic redemption. Pain that could not be have been mourned at the point of trauma, and the devastating effects that pain can still be having on your life

I read reviews that stated Ms. Miller's book was too anti-family, too extreme, and too harsh. Of course, these reviewers probably have not lived lives of hopeless denial spinning in destructive unconscious circles, which only aggregate more psychological suffering. Drama of The Gifted Child unleashes Pandora's Box and demands you look squarely at the contents: the past, your secret self and perhaps more importantly, your fear of both.