The Drama of the Gifted Child

I first read this book in the mid-1990s as I was honing my skills as a therapist.

It hit me hard, as if the author, a psychiatrist, had been a fly on the wall of my childhood home. Miller holds no punches about what drives some people to become clinicians.

Part One of her book is titled “The Drama of the Gifted Child and How We Became Psychotherapists.” It helped me get clear about my choice of career. It was painful reading, but critical to my skills as a clinician and my own mental well-being. I’ve never forgotten it.

Whether… show more.

This little book, by a Swiss psychoanalyst, was translated into English when I was studying psychology.

One by one, my classmates and I all read it, and we were all blown away. How did she know us, when she had never met us and lived half a world away?

She revealed the soul of sensitive children, who are tuned in to their parents’ emotions, with all the benefits and difficulties this brings.

In her other books, Miller reveals the pain and suffering caused by a society which protects adults’ “right” to harm children more than the rights of children to… show more.

Reading this book I discovered the difference between the true and the false self. If you are not truly seen as the person you are in your childhood, you will develop a false self. A way of being and performing that you think others might like. And you might forget who you really are, and what you deep inside desire and long for.

Alice Miller describes this situation so clearly. And I recognized my own false self, and have since then worked on becoming my true self again.

This book literally changed my life. It explores the question of why so many people who could be considered successful and thriving on the outside still have intense feelings of alienation and emptiness.

I myself had a childhood where I often felt alone and misunderstood. Isolated at school, and constantly trying to live up to the expectations of my family at home. Then as a young adult, I would do things I’m not particularly proud of. I would ask myself, “Why am I doing this!?” It was a question I could never answer until I read this book. What Alice… show more.