the drama of the gifted child

Seems really dated and simplistic, which, given all we've learned about depression since the advent of SSRI's, isn't all that surprising for a book almost 40 years old. I found it useful more for how it helps illustrate the evolution of psychotherapy and how it helped me understand certain things about how therapists I saw approached their practice than for any insight it offered into myself.

Re: the evolution of psychotherapy, I was struck by the focus on mothers and what they do wrong. You would think that most people have only a female parent, that fathers play almost no role in a child's life. This was really brought home to me in this passage:

In the Zurich exhibition (1977) to commemorate the centennial of [Hermann] Hesse's birth [in 1877], a picture was displayed that had hung above the little Hermann's bed and that he had grown up with. In this picture, on the right, we see the "good" road to heaven, full of thorns, difficulties, and suffering. On the left, we see the easy, pleasurable road the inevitably leads to hell. Taverns play a prominent part on this road, probably because devout women hoped to keep their husbands and sons away from these wicked places with this threatening representation.[emphasis added]

Notice how she rushes to blame "devout women" for wanting to spoil the pleasure of "their husbands and sons." Did "devout women" in 1877 have much influence over art? Were they allowed to create it? Did they have time to create it when they were also probably busy raising families? Did they write and deliver the sermons about the evils of taverns?

NO. They didn't.

And here's another thing: women both devout and otherwise had good reason to fear when their husbands went to taverns and came home drunk, because drunkenness is a contributing factor to domestic violence against both wives and children. For women who had no independent income, no vote, no say in governance, and who could lose all custody of their children if they left an abusive husband, a primary way to try to keep their children safe from violence was to try to keep their husbands out of taverns.

But sure, the real problem was that these horrible women made four-year-olds feel bad about their unconscious desires to hang out in places full of drunk male adults.

That's just some straight-up misogyny. 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.

The insistence here that depression MUST BE ROOTED IN SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD, an idea more recent research undercuts, is also a problem. I had a therapist or two who followed that dogma in ways that probably caused a lot of harm.

A therapist told me the key to my healing was to discover my early childhood trauma. I was like, "Nah, I was a pretty happy little kid; the shit hit the fan around the time my body started changing and boys started getting mean and scary in sixth and seventh grade." She flat-out told me, "You were traumatized as a child, probably through a molestation, and you have to uncover the memory of the trauma."

I actually followed the visualizations she gave me and dutifully went into a meditative state to talk to my seven-year-old self, who told me, when I asked her what was wrong, that she couldn't help me fix the problem I wanted to address because it hadn't happened yet.

When I told my therapist that, she actually got upset at me and insisted I'd just done it wrong. She told me I better uncover a memory of being molested if I wanted to get better. I had very clear memories of my early childhood (something people who have repressed memories typically lack) and I also understand female biology enough to be confident of when certain events happened to me (hint: it was adulthood) and was therefore further confident that I was right about my life and she was wrong. So I fired her.

If someone did that shit now, they'd lose their license. It's completely unethical--and with good reason. While there are certainly people who have recovered memories of being molested in early childhood--one of my good friends experienced that, and it's the only thing that explains certain aspects of his life--there are others who invented memories to please aggressive therapists like the unethical, wrong-headed person I worked with.

In any event, we now know that puberty REALLY FUCKS WITH PEOPLE'S BRAINS. Adolescents are weird. They are super anxious, and there are biological reasons for this. That anxiety can be something they don't grow out of, and there can be biological reasons for that, too. It's not automatically because their parents fucked them up.

So all in all, with its misogyny and its erroneous insistence that adult depression has to be rooted in trauma inflicted by parents on children in early childhood, I think this book does as much harm as good. I'm glad it seems dated and simplistic, since that means psychotherapy is moving on from it.

"The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants.” - William Shakespeare

Psychology writer and therapist Alice Miller's classic book is a must read for anyone who has a interest in psychology and childhood trauma/abuse. Written in 1978, it is brilliant and life-changing at little over one-hundred pages.

The author, Alice Miller was forced to live in Warsaw as a Jewish girl living under a false name in World War Two. She was a victim of the holocaust and never recovered completely from it as her father died in the Warsaw Ghetto. Alice was never able to completely talk about her devastating experience with her friends and family. She spent her life and career trying to understand how the German people could have followed Hitler and went along with his murderous plans.

In her outstanding book, she delves into childhood and how your parents behavior has shaped you. It is very painful in that she insists that the reader must accept their parents behavior and accept it for what it really is. She also makes you examine your own parenting. I really liked that part where she discusses children having to repress their own needs to appease their parents. She also comes down very hard on society and believes that all criminals were infants/children who were emotionally, sexually or physically abused and repressed it. An unwanted child leads a life of despair and furthermore is most likely incapable of love.

When you read this book, you will come face to face with your own childhood and start the journey to your own story. This is a book you might find yourself reading and processing, a few times over the years. This is a four plus star book.

اتمام..
۳۰ آبان ۱۴۰۰
ساعت ۱۸:۰۷

یکبار دیگه باید بیاگ سراغش

Περίμενα πολύ καιρό την κατάλληλη στιγμή για να το διαβάσω.Πίστευα ότι θα με βοηθούσε να καταλάβω κάποια πράγματα και για τον εαυτό μου και για τους γύρω μου, και πράγματι το έκανε.Αλλά δεν έχω χειρότερο από τις ατελείωτες επαναλήψεις είτε φραστικές είτε θεματολογικές.Ενώ το βρήκα αρκετά ενδιαφέρον δε μου άρεσε ο τρόπος που ήταν γραμμένο.Σαν χαζή ένιωθα που έπρεπε να διαβάζω το ίδιο πράγμα κάθε τρεις και λίγο.Πάντως αν σας αρέσουν τα βιβλία ψυχολογίας και οι εσωτερικές αναλύσεις να του δώσετε μια ευκαιρία.
2,5/5

This book is both brilliant and full of schlock. I know people with the problems she described, people who were never going to be loved for who they were, so either buried themselves in achievement or cut off important parts of themselves. These childhood traumas have crippled them in adulthood. The thing about these people, though, is that their parents were fundamentally flawed and repeated these actions over and over again. Unlike in Miller's book, these were not one-off events.

I think it is great that Miller decided to write about these people, but she took the ideas too far. Babies should have their needs catered to and children should be respected for who they are, but they should not be allowed to "order their mothers around like paschas." It is normal for good, loving parents to need a night off, and it is necessary for them not to indulge their child's every whim. It is called parenting. Also, I do not think it is neurologically possible for someone to remember being sexually abused once at three months old.

Conclusion: This book can give you some real insight if you are willing to wade through a lot of junk.

Just finished this quick little read. This is a specific kind of book for a specific type of person at a specific point in their specific lives. If the time or the person isn't a great fit, you might hate this book and think it is useless, but if the timing is right, then you might love it. It's about learning about yourself and where you came from. To a certain extent we are all trying to better understand who we are and where we came from. Some people do it more obviously then others. Even if you completely deny that you came from anywhere because you dont like that place, that is your attempt to figure it all out. I read this over three days. The first day i loved it. The second day i hated it, and the third day it was at least likeable once again. It's a psychoanalyst's approach, so there is a lot of talk about your "inner-child," and that isnt always my favorite thing, but there is also a lot of wisdom in this approach to life aswell. Specifically, in the earlier pages the author made a distinction between depression and grandiosity and drew some great commonalities between the two seeming opposites. That was the one section that struck me, and gave me some "ah ha" moments.

Στην αρχή ενθουσιάστηκα, στο τέλος λίγο με έχασε. Συνολικά όμως διαφωτιστικό και ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο.