Book Journal Portfolio Project

The Drama of the Gifted Child

Alice Miller

Cover Art for The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller

Things to love and hate about this book. I hated how everything that could go wrong was blamed on the mother with no room for fathers or non-heterosexual families. I hated how seemingly patients would recall a traumatic childhood memory and be miraculously recovered, as if remembering the event were the same as healing from it.

Gifted children are very well-attuned to the needs of the adults around them → the child learns how to be the “perfect” child by having no needs or wants → the adult child become depressed or narcissistic later in life, unable to recognize their own feelings and wants → to heal, the adult child must grieve the experience of being hurt in childhood → recovery?