The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
There are people, for example, who never say a loud or angry word, who seem to be only good and noble, and who still give others the palpable feeling of being ridiculous or stupid or too noisy, or at any rate too common compared with themselves. They do not know it and perhaps do not intend it, but this is what they radiate: the attitude of their p
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Once our own reality has been faced and experienced, the inner necessity to keep building up new illusions and denials in order to avoid the experience of that reality disappears.
Alice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Once we have experienced a few times that the breakthrough of intense early-childhood feelings (characterized by the specific quality of noncomprehension) can relieve a long period of depression, this experience will bring about a gradual change in our way of approaching “undesired” feelings—painful feelings, above all. We discover that we are no l
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to free ourselves from these patterns we need more than an intellectual awareness: we need an emotional confrontation with our parents in an inner dialogue.
Alice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
He cannot rely on his own emotions, has not come to experience them through trial and error, has no sense of his own real needs, and is alienated from himself to the highest degree. Under these circumstances he cannot separate from his parents, and even as an adult he is still dependent on affirmation from his partner, from groups, and especially f
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I understand a healthy self-feeling to mean the unquestioned certainty that the feelings and needs one experiences are a part of one’s self. This certainty is not something one can gain upon reflection; it is there like one’s own pulse, which one does not notice as long as it functions normally.
Alice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Does not mother love belong to the “smallest,” but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?
Alice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering. . . .
Alice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Children who are intelligent, alert, attentive, sensitive, and completely attuned to the mothers well-being are entirely at her disposal.