Review of 'The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
On a personal level, this book rings too true for me, and I'm mindful that my opinion could be biased towards stressing its merits while remaining blind to the shortfalls.
I believe that the strength of the book is derived from Miller's keen and compassionate observation of her clients ("patients" in the old terminology), as well as the attention devoted to the literature of both psychological studies and biographical materials. While the word "Gifted" may preclude potential readers from identifying with the narratives of childhood, what Miller meant really was the "Desirable, but Uncared for" -- children who were desired for their attributes that satisfy the craving of the parents, but who weren't respected as individual human beings, whose right to be valued as such comes with no conditions attached. Their "gift" is their vulnerability.
A unifying theme of the three essays is the concept of mourning. Unmourned loss seems …
On a personal level, this book rings too true for me, and I'm mindful that my opinion could be biased towards stressing its merits while remaining blind to the shortfalls.
I believe that the strength of the book is derived from Miller's keen and compassionate observation of her clients ("patients" in the old terminology), as well as the attention devoted to the literature of both psychological studies and biographical materials. While the word "Gifted" may preclude potential readers from identifying with the narratives of childhood, what Miller meant really was the "Desirable, but Uncared for" -- children who were desired for their attributes that satisfy the craving of the parents, but who weren't respected as individual human beings, whose right to be valued as such comes with no conditions attached. Their "gift" is their vulnerability.
A unifying theme of the three essays is the concept of mourning. Unmourned loss seems to compel parents to fulfil their early unsatisfied (but then legitimate) needs in their own children (which is now by no means legitimate, or even possible any more). They thereby perpetrate toxic parenting upon the next generation, rob the children of their childhood, and the vicious cycle repeats. Only profound mourning can break this cycle. To mourn is to bury the axe that grinds in the heart, to say farewell the impossible paradise that never was, and to see world, life, and other people as they are after penetrating the veil of longing.
Of course, merely knowing this isn't enough. Many of the parents "know", but the knowledge is not embodied. The conflicted parents may not have done harm by active malice, but by ignorance and negligence about their own inner conflict and outward contradictory behaviours.
No parent is perfect, but more need to be good enough.
My only complaint is not directed towards the author herself, but to the unfortunate compromises she had to make. In order to get published and taken seriously by the old boys' club, Miller had to resort to shoehorning in those references to the old, and now increasingly obsolete, theories and terminologies, which she acknowledged in the preface to a later edition. One can read the book without loss of vital information if one ignores the references to "Œdipal", "drive theory", "orality", "anality", or "perversion", etc.
