The Drama of the Gifted Child

Only a child needs (and absolutely needs) unconditional love. We must give it to the children who are entrusted to us. We must be able to love and accept them whatever they do, not only when they smile charmingly but also when they cry and scream.

It is not only the “beautiful,” “good,” and pleasant feelings that make us really alive, deepen our existence, and give us crucial insight, but often precisely the unacceptable and unadapted ones from which we would prefer to escape: helplessness, shame, envy, jealousy, confusion, rage, and grief.

It is not the task of the therapist to “socialize” her, or to “raise her consciousness” (not even politically, for every form of indoctrination denies her autonomy), or to “make friendships possible for her.” All that is her own affair.

In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom.

The repression of brutal abuse experienced during childhood drives many people to destroy their lives and the lives of others.

Parents who did not experience this climate as children are themselves deprived; throughout their lives they will continue to look for what their own parents could not give them.

One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.

Only after painfully experiencing and accepting our own truth can we be free from the hope that we might still find an understanding, empathic 'parent'—perhaps in a patient.

For one is free from it only when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of one's own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.

Depression leads him close to his wounds, but only mourning for what he has missed, missed at the crucial time, can lead to real healing.

A False self that has led to the loss of the potential True self.

Depression consists of a denial of one’s own emotional reactions.

We cannot really love if we are forbidden to know our truth, the truth about our parents and caregivers as well as about ourselves.

The True opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.

Our access to the True self is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world of early childhood.

Until we become sensitized to the small child’s suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be regarded as a normal aspect of the human condition.

For one is free from it only when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of ones own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.

The grandiose person is never really free; first, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.

The child has a primary need from the very beginning of her life to be regarded and respected as the person she really is at any given time.

If Bob had been able as a child to express his disappointment with his mother—to experience his rage and anger—he could have stayed fully alive. But that would have led to the loss of his mother’s love, and that, for a child, can mean the same as death.

The difficulties inherent in experiencing and developing one’s own emotions lead to mutual dependency, which prevents individuation.

True autonomy is preceded by the experience of being dependent. True liberation can be found only beyond the deep ambivalence of infantile dependence.

Every child has a legitimate need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother.

The automatic, natural contact with his own emotions and needs gives an individual strength and self-esteem.

If a woman is to give her child what he will need throughout his life, it is absolutely fundamental that she not be separated from her newborn, for the hormones that foster and nourish her motherly instinct are released immediately after birth and continue in the following days and weeks as she grows more familiar with her baby.

The bonding (through skin and eye contact) between mother and baby after birth stimulates in both of them the feeling that they belong together, a feeling of oneness that ideally has been growing from the time of conception.

The crucial significance of bonding has only recently been proved scientifically.

As adults we don’t need unconditional love, not even from our therapists. This is a childhood need, one that can never be fulfilled later in life, and we are playing with illusions if we have never mourned this lost opportunity.

The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.

The strength within ourselves—through access to our own real needs and feelings and the possibility of expressing them—is crucially important for us if we want to live without depression and addiction.

It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I had fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful, or confused; and, above all, sad and lonely.

Disregard for those who are smaller and weaker is thus the best defense against a breakthrough of one’s own feelings of helplessness: it is an expression of this split-off weakness.

The suffering that was not consciously felt as a child can be avoided by delegating it to one’s own children.

It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior.

Our feelings will always reveal the true story, which no one else knows and which only we can discover.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents’ expectations.

What is unconscious cannot be abolished by proclamation or prohibition. One can, however, develop sensitivity toward recognizing it and begin to experience it consciously, and thus eventually gain control over it.

A mother cannot truly respect her child as long as she does not realize what deep shame she causes him with an ironic remark, intended only to cover her own uncertainty.

Knowledge of theory is essential, but knowledge of the theory must not have a defensive function: It must not become the successor of a strict, controlling mother, forcing the therapist to accommodate himself to it.

Every child forms his first image of what is “bad” quite concretely, by what is forbidden—by his parents’ prohibitions, taboos, and fears.

As an adult, he can discover the causes and free himself from this unconscious reaction.

Often a child’s very gifts (his great intensity of feeling, depth of experience, curiosity, intelligence, quickness—and his ability to be critical) will confront his parents with conflicts that they have long sought to keep at bay by means of rules and regulations.

Contempt as a rule will cease with the beginning of mourning for the irreversible that cannot be changed, for contempt, too, has in its own way served to deny the reality of the past.

It greatly aids the success of the therapeutic work when we become aware of our parents’ destructive patterns at work within us.

When the patient has emotionally worked through the history of her childhood and has thus regained her sense of being alive, the goal of therapy has been reached.

A person who has matured through her own experience cannot be tricked with fascinating, incomprehensible words.

Repressed emotion can be resolved as soon as it is felt, understood, and recognized as legitimate.

We become free of them only when we can fully feel and acknowledge the suffering they inflicted on us.