Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child and the Search for the True Self

Rating:
Summary: The Sad Narcissist
Review: Alice Miller is by far the most prominent popularizer of the twin concepts - True Self and False Self. She regards the True Self as a prisoner within the walls of the False Self. The latter is an intricate and multi-faceted defence mechanism. Defence against what? Against one's emotions that were repressed during early childhood. The narcissist plays a role - that of the gifted, docile, accepting, tranquil, loving, peaceful and well-adjusted child. He becomes the extension of his parents: their unfulfilled dreams and sexret wishes. His identity is moulded to fit the idealized and ideal offspring. His negative feelings are buried deep inside his tormented psyche. These emotional skeletons later erupt and produce depression, suicidal ideation or narcissistic defences. Excellent, readable and - if one can use this word in this context - entertaining. Sam Vaknin, author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited'.

Rating:
Summary: Different Read
Review: Did I read the same book as the other reviewers? Doesn't seem so. This is a classic work (maybe the prior version was?). It delineates a theory (and fully supports it with examples etc.) that traits are passes on from generation to generation via learning (as opposed to biology/genetics). For example, a child learns what it MEANS to be a father or mother from watching how her or his father and mother act. Thus, history repeats itself over generations--unless one recognizes the problem (1/2 the solution) and does something about it. It's a short book (thank goodness because it just doesn't take that much space to put down such a thesis). But, it represents a major contribution to both theory and practice in psychology today and helps provide a balanced view between nature and nurture.

Rating:
Summary: Childhood, for a lot of people, is very traumatic
Review: I bought this book in 1999. I'm not sure why, I think the title "Prisoners of Childhood" caught my eye. Somewhere in the back of my head I felt that's what I was.

This book should be required reading for any psychoanalyst or social worker. The premise of this book is that adult psychosis are borne of childhood abuses. A child's true self is often "beaten down" and draws away from the world through either overt(physical) or covert(emotional) abuse.

A particularly salient quote from the forward to this (the original) edition:

"For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. [...] Such people are enamored of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self."

That is basically the thrust of the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand human motivation on the macro- or micro-scale. A large part of that motivation is simply avoidance of childhood reality. This problem is as ubiquitous and ever-present as the air we breathe.

As a side note, this book has been revised, the new edition entitled "The Drama of the Gifted Child" is a significant update. Note that "gifted" doesn't refer to especially bright children. The notion of gifted refers to anyone who was able to survive childhood abuse.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book ... then you'll see
Review: I do not understand how another person who wrote a review here, could have read this book. The book has nothing to do with "gifted" (as in really smart) kids, as the reviewer seems to think. Miller is an expert at helping us to become aware of, and overcome, the trauma that all children endure - - just by virture of being children in our society, and having imperfect parents. (No parent is perfect.) Her use of the word "Gifted" - - means that all children have the "gift" of survival and the ability to love their parents, regardless of the mistakes that ALL parents make. Her use of the word, "Gifted" also means that children have the gift of surpressing painful experiences, while they are children, and powerless to do otherwise. This book can be invaluable in unlocking the pain that every adult carries, within the child that dwells within us all. To ignore this pain, hidden or not, is to live a life that is not as full and rewarding as it could be. Like a rose bud........beautiful perhaps........but not as beautiful and fragrant as when it is in full bloom. "Gift" yourself with this book. Bloom. I did, years ago, on the advice of someone who loves me; and, I have given this book - - this GIFT - - to every person that I love.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing special
Review: I have never been a big believer in psychology, and I find that giftedness is still a rather complex subject. This book will present some interesting hypotheticals to the reader. But, as with most books on giftedness, the focus is on excuses.

So, take it with a grain of salt. If you are looking for answers, you won't find them here. I don't think we will ever know exactly what makes gifted people gifted, but thats the fun of it.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing special
Review: I have never been a big believer in psychology, and I find that giftedness is still a rather complex subject. This book will present some interesting hypotheticals to the reader. But, as with most books on giftedness, the focus is on excuses.

So, take it with a grain of salt. If you are looking for answers, you won't find them here. I don't think we will ever know exactly what makes gifted people gifted, but thats the fun of it.

Rating:
Summary: What "gifted" means to Alice Miller
Review: Just so readers won't be misled by one of these reviews, (one wonders if the reviewer even read the book) please understand what Alice Miller means by "gifted" in her own words: "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 surived." The reviewer who says "we will ever know exactly what makes gifted people gifted" and "that's the fun of it" clearly the foggiest idea about what Alice Miller means when she uses the word "gifted," which makes his or her review ridiculously irrelevant. There's nothing "fun" about being "gifted' in the sense that Alice Miller is writing about! As for this incredible book, no one has written more clearly or insightly about child abuse than Alice Miller and if anyone knows about what makes children "gifted" (in her special use of the term), it's Alice Miller. People who review books should at least read the book they review, and should at the very least, if they hav e read it, understand what the writer has written. If you have been abused, whether overtly or by the poisonous pedagogy of our society, this book is healing balm to your soul. Read it and may it help you be healed.

Rating:
Summary: What "gifted" means to Alice Miller
Review: Just so readers won't be misled by one of these reviews, (one wonders if the reviewer even read the book) please understand what Alice Miller means by "gifted" in her own words: "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 surived." The reviewer who says "we will ever know exactly what makes gifted people gifted" and "that's the fun of it" clearly the foggiest idea about what Alice Miller means when she uses the word "gifted," which makes his or her review ridiculously irrelevant. There's nothing "fun" about being "gifted' in the sense that Alice Miller is writing about! As for this incredible book, no one has written more clearly or insightly about child abuse than Alice Miller and if anyone knows about what makes children "gifted" (in her special use of the term), it's Alice Miller. People who review books should at least read the book they review, and should at the very least, if they hav e read it, understand what the writer has written. If you have been abused, whether overtly or by the poisonous pedagogy of our society, this book is healing balm to your soul. Read it and may it help you be healed.

Rating:
Summary: The Untouched Key
Review: So many of us grow up and forget about our painful childhood traumas. Well, we don't ever forget them, we never can we just repress them. And we live out the rest of our lives subconciously reliving our childhood in every relationship. If you a re depressed, this book may awaken you to the unlived self that is the root of your depression.

Rating:
Summary: A book that makes you cry in your dreams- and then sleep
Review: This is one of those books that are not for the faint of heart. So many books in the world that people think are incendiary or revolutionary, challenging and rechallenging our conception of free speech, religion, citizenship, science and technology, philosophy, economics and politics or spirituality have an attraction to us because of how they serve as metaphors for the painful realities of our personal lives under the illusions we create for public consumption, and the secrets of our inner selves we wish to uncover. We yearn to break free of something and embrace some inner truth; we just don't know what, and therefore call it some aspect of the outer world. The desires we have to be and have more than what we are, the feelings of not knowing who we truly are and never truly being loved- and the root causes of such feelings- are unveiled in this powerful, disturbing, life shifting and life-affirming book.

Alice Miller was one of the patron saints of John Bradshaw, the man whose work heralded the age of the Inner Child that became part of the pop-psychology lexicon of the 90's. Her perspective and conclusions, scientifically, sociologically and philosophically speaking, are practically undebateable. And without even needing the true case examples from her therapeutic practice to underscore her points (which she uses with striking and original clarity and precision across gender, racial, ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic lines), her elucidation of her central thesis on the ignored emotional life of children- and the cost of having parents unequipped to give them the love they need- will undoubtedly make deep seated memories of your own childhood come to the surface.

Why does society have such automatic and irrational contempt for the egotist? Why do individulas run to prove themselves (or immediately start thinking of themselves defensively) as the antithesis, upon seeing anyone's character asessed in such a context? Why does even the WORD "self" conjure up confused and uncomfortable feelings when used in anything but a mind-numbing spiritual context with people? What do children need beyond basic nutritional and socioeconomic concerns, and what happens to them when they grow older but do not get it? How is it possible to have more material things and personal achievements than anyone, and still have less and less confidence in who you are?

This book can explain things about your adult life and relationships that you'd rather not have so easily and individually explained. And those who look to books like these to figure out what's wrong with their friends, lovers and parents will discover more about themselves than they may think they're ready to process. We all are not just ready but overdue for these kinds of life lessons.

Never has a writer, perhaps before or since, put the words "childhood" and "mourning" together in one thought, such that it can create a complete paradigm shift in how one sees oneself, and sees the opportunities for happiness one's world.

The fault levied on any psychologist on her level- and there are very, very few- is that this kind of thinking all but demands the kind of narcisstic modern solipsism she seems to diagnose as symptomatic of the illness. (She refers to the dynamic not as an illness, however, but a "tragedy"; keeping us again, I believe, in tune with the ancient Greek mythic/philosophical reference inherent in the old title for this book, "The Drama of the Gifted Child".) Such blanket criticism of psychology books in general could only be concluded with one of this quality from a misreading of the text; the kind of misreading that usually comes when she has hit a nerve the likes of which one didn't expect, may be afraid of and couldn't imagine beforehand. Nonetheless, taking our culture's preoccupation with the self into consideration, there is still nothing of lasting value one could do in the world without at least endeavoring to answer the existential questions of soul, love, freedom, loss and pain- and the true self- that this book demands you to do in a new way for practically the rest of your life.

I gave it four stars instead of five because it was too short. I didn't want it to end. And the idea that she could 1) prove her point, 2)deeply affect me by making me dream dreams that I've never dreamed before, 3)access undramatic but painful memories of childhood events that I forgot happened but have been behind more than half of the seemingly unrelated choices I've made in my adult life, and 4) feel a usually suppressed rage and grief give way to a new sense of purpose and a release of joyful energy and optimism- all in a little more than a hundred pages- still makes me queasy. In other words, read this as a five and a half star review! Then buy the book, put down the most recent bash on modern politics and the latest neo-spiritual mind candy on the bestseller's list, and begin a real journey.