the gifted child part two

quotes from the drama of the gifted child by alice miller

from chapter two: depression and grandiosity

“although the outward picture of depression is quite the opposite of that of grandiosity and has a quality that expresses the tragedy of the loss of self in a more obvious way, they have many points in common:

-a false self that has led to the loss of the potential true self

-a fragility of self-esteem because of a lack of confidence in one’s own feelings and wishes

-perfectionism

-denial of rejected feelings

-a preponderance of exploitative relationships

-an enormous fear of loss of love and therefore a great readiness to conform

-split-off aggression

-oversensitivity

-a readiness to feel shame and guilt

-restlessness”

“depression consists of a denial of one’s own emotional reactions. this denial begins in the service of an absolutely essential adaptation during childhood and indicates a very early injury. there are many children who have not been free, right up from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger – and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies.”

“Beatrice was not physically mistreated in her youth. she did, however, have to learn as a small infant how to make her mother happy by not crying, by not being hungry – by not having any needs at all.”

“today I would say: only a child needs (and absolutely needs) unconditional love. we must give it to the children who are entrusted to us. we must be able to love and accept them whatever they do, not only when they smile charmingly but also when they cry and scream. but to pretend to love an adult unconditionally – that is, independently of his or her deeds – would mean that we should love even a cold serial murderer or a notorious liar if only he joins our group. can we do that? should we even try? why? for whose sake? if we say that we love an adult unconditionally, we only prove our blindness and/or dishonesty. nothing else.”

“as adults we don’t need unconditional love, not even from our therapists. this is a childhood need, one that can never be fulfilled later in life, and we are playing with illusions if we have never mourned this lost opportunity. but there are other things we can get from good therapists: reliability, honesty, respect, trust, empathy, understanding, and an ability to clarify their emotions so that they need not bother us with them.”

“although ann could see and understand what had happened to her, she was able to feel the rage and indignation only toward her partners, not toward her father. as she wrote in her letter, she still ‘loved’ and respected him.”

“everyone probably knows about depressive moods from personal experience since they may be expressed as well as hidden by psychosomatic suffering. it is easy to notice, if we pay attention, that they hit almost with regularity – whenever we suppress an impulse or an unwanted emotion. then, suddenly, a depressive mood will stifle all spontaneity. if an adult, for example, cannot experience grief when they lose somebody dear to them but tries to distract themselves from their sadness, or if they suppress* and hide from themselves their indignation over an idealized friend’s behavior out of fear of losing their friendship, they must reckon with the probability of depression (unless their grandiose defense is constantly at their disposal). [*suppression is a conscious act, in contrast to repression.]”

“this ability to grieve – that is, to give up the illusion of their ‘happy’ childhood, to feel and recognize the full extent of the hurt they have endured – can restore the depressive’s vitality and creativity and free the grandiose person from the exertions of and dependence on their Sisyphean task. if a person is able, during this long process, to experience the reality that they were never loved as a child for what they were but was instead needed and exploited for their achievements, success, and good qualities – and that they sacrificed their childhood for this form of love – they will be very deeply shaken, but one day they will feel the desire to end these efforts. they will discover in themselves a need to live according to their true self and no longer be forced to earn ‘love’ that always leaves them empty-handed, since it is given to their false self – something they have begun to identify and relinquish.

the true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality – the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.”

“it is precisely their oversensitivity, shame, and self-reproach that form a continuous thread in their lives, unless they learn to understand to what these feelings actually relate. the more unrealistic such feelings are and the less they fit present reality, the more clearly they show that they are concerned with unremembered situations from the past that are still to be discovered. if the feeling that begins to arise is not experienced but reasoned away, the discovery cannot take place, and depression will triumph.”

“paula, age twenty-eight, wanted to free herself from her patriarchal family in which the mother was completely subjugated by the father. she married a submissive man and seemed to behave differently from her mother. her husband allowed her to bring her lovers into the house. she did not permit herself any feelings of jealousy or tenderness and wanted to have relations with a number of men without any emotional ties, so that she could feel as autonomous as a man. her need to be ‘progressive’ went so far that she allowed her partners to abuse and humiliate her, and she suppressed all her feelings of mortification and anger in the belief that her behavior made her modern and free from prejudice. in this way she unconsciously carried over into these relationships both her childhood obedience and her mother’s submissiveness. at times she suffered from severe depression, so she entered therapy, which enabled her to feel how much she suffered because of the passiveness of her mother, who tolerated the abusive father without the slightest opposition. confronting the pain of not having been protected by her indifferent, defensive mother eventually helped paula to stop creating her mother’s self-destructive attitude in her own relationships with men and to allow herself to love people who deserved her love.”

“the child must adapt to ensure the illusion of love, care, and kindness, but the adult does not need this illusion to survive. they can give up their amnesia and then be in a position to determine their actions with open eyes. only this path will free them from their depression. both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality by living as though the availability of the parents could still be salvaged: the grandiose person through the illusion of achievement, and the depressive through their constant fear of losing ‘love.’ neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact.”