Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

ANNOTATION

Examines how narcissistic parents form and deform the lives of their talented children.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided thousands of readers with an answer - and has helped them to apply it to their own lives. Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their "love." Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb...Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived." But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Magazine

Rare and compelling in its compassion and its unassuming eloquence...her examples are so vivid and so ordinary that they touch the hurt child in us all.

Washington Post Book World

A book that patients prescribe...the therapists are reading it because their patients are recommending it.

Publishers Weekly

The revised edition of Miller's study of the psychology of successful people features a new introduction by the author; also available in hardcover, $20 *-01694-4 (Aug.)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING