Rating: 
Summary: Powerfully insightful!
Review: A powerfully insightful book on the intra-psychic 'dramas' that can shape the belief systems of the sensitive (i.e. "gifted") child. Written with an appreciation for the innermost sensitive parts of ourselves that we learn to deny. Alice Miller writes of her discoveries of herself. In so doing she is the antithesis of the detached researcher who studies such sensitive matters with intellect only, thus missing the experience itself, since it is by its nature a deeply emotional one. Yet she brings to it the experience of a seasoned, schooled, therapist while exhibiting her own gift of eloquence and efficient phrasing. A short summary of the root causes of many of our individual and societal problems.
Rating:
Summary: Eerily Accurate and Immediately Helpful
Review: A very insightful book. It felt like Alice Miller had written these pages for me. I even found myself reading whole sections of text out loud! I was also surprised when I handed the book to my girlfriend, and she also remarked that the book applied to her as well.A quick note... For you to really use the material in this book, you must be willing to look into yourself and into your past. If your defense mechanisms are out in force (or if you don't realize that you even have defense mechanisms), then you will not be able to see what you have to do. (In fact, some of your defense mechnisms are there specifically to prevent access to the very content you need to get to.)
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Summary: Alice Miller Tells It Like It Is
Review: Ah. Are you An Adult Survivor of Child Abuse?
If so, you can very much benefit from this book. It can make clear issues that are painful and difficult to look at (for us survivors). And you are NOT alone! We are not alone.
If you are doing therapy, the book can help you to more quickly process through. It has for me.
There is clarity most literature in the "field" of psychology lacks. However, you really need grounding in psychoanalytic theory to fully understand what Alice is talking about.
If you lack that understanding, the book could be frustrating in places.
With that kind of background this book is beautiful and cuts through the psychobabble so often trouted as wisdom by those hiding from their own shadows.
God bless your seeking, and enjoy!
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Summary: The Voice of Truth on a Taboo Topic...
Review: Alice Miller has written a tremendous book; children ARE born innocent---but parents are not! Freud didn't know what he was talking about; Miller does! She also gives hope by offering practical methods of overcoming what society has condoned for centuries; the wholesale soul murder of our children through "acceptable" child rearing methods. We need more books by more authors like Miller! Mary in Northville, MI (Hi friends!)
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Summary: A Wise & Perceptive Book That Changed My Life!
Review: Alice Miller's "Drama Of The Gifted Child," was originally published as "Prisoners Of Childhood; The Drama Of The Gifted Child," in 1981. I read the book over 20 years ago, and recently reread it. I find that it is just as relevant, wise and perceptive today as it was then. Ms. Miller was a practicing psychoanalyst, who gave up her work with patients to write books, for the layperson, primarily dealing with early childhood abuse. In a new Forward, Miller continues to disavow psychoanalysis. Although I am not in agreement with her on this, she continues to be one of my heroes. Ms. Miller, who writes an elegant and easily understandable prose, discusses here the issue of children raised by a narcissistic parent(s). She explains that this book is not about high I.Q. children, but about those who were able to survive an abusive childhood because they developed an adequate defense system. At a very early age the child intuitively apprehends the parent's needs. Since the parent, especially the mother, is the child's soul source of survival, the child strives to please, fearing disapproval, or abandonment. Thus, the child sublimates his needs for the parent's. Roles reverse and the child frequently takes on the parent's responsibility as emotional caregiver. This impedes the growth of a child's true identity, and a "loss of self" frequently occurs. The child adapts by not "feeling" his own needs, and develops finely tuned antennae, focusing intensely on the needs of the all important other. Ms. Miller writes, "An abused child, (emotionally), does not know it is being abused, and in order to survive and avoid the unbearable pain, the mind is provided with a remarkable mechanism, the 'gift' of 'repression,' which stores these experiences in a place outside of consciousness." Although, later in life, these "prohibited" feelings and needs cannot always be avoided, they remain split off and the most vital part of the true self is not integrated into the personality. The results are often depression, and tremendous insecurity. Alice Miller makes her readers aware of the unexpressed sufferings of the child and the tragedy of the parent(s) own illness. As she frequently states, "any parent who abuses a child," knowingly or otherwise, "has himself been severely traumatized in his childhood, in some form or another." Gifted children are often the products of emotional abuse by a narcissistic parent. However, if the child's great need for admiration is not met, for his/her looks, intelligence or achievements, he/she falls into severe depression. Miller says one can only be free from depression "when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of one's own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities." Children need a great deal of both emotional and physical support from the adult. According to Miller, this adult support must include the following elements in order for a child to develop to his or her full potential: "Respect for the child; respect for his rights; tolerance for his feelings; willingness to learn from his behavior." Miller also writes about the "origins of grandiosity as a form of denial and its relationship with depression." Another interesting chapter deals with the "process of parental derision" and how it results in humiliation and possible psychic trauma of the child. Alice Miller's extraordinary book, along with consistent psychoanalytic psychotherapy, enabled me to understand my past, modify behavior, forgive, and finally, best of all, to heal. I cannot recommend "The Drama Of The Gifted Child" highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Alice Miller knows what she's talking about.
Review: Alice Miller's departure from Freud parallels Heinz Kohut's departure from the fatalistic in psychoanalysis to an acceptance of the Ulysses archetype, one that addresses the future with hope and reason, with vitality and promise. What a gifted and insightful writer Alice Miller is!
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Summary: Wonderful, Insightful. It describes half the journey
Review: As others have said, if you take this book word for word then all you need is therapy and you'll be fine. Therapy is half the solution to a happy life. I believe combining the benefits of therapy to understand some of the 'learned feelings' that are a fallout from childhood, with some intellectual research into society and human nature, and a bit of understanding of the power of positive thinking is important. I find myself now quite well off in the latter two having done a lot of introspection into my life and trying to understand others behaviours, which leads to acceptance and reduces damaging expectations. Optimism is something I have always had. But having gotten to this point there was something missing: that is the ability to feel joy in some of the things I do in life. I trace this back to my childhood where in the absence of sufficient validation I was unable to appreciate self created joy. If no-one feels that joy with you (even if the opportunities are there), then how do you know?. To this point I would have given the book 5 stars for its thorough dealing with the topic, but I given it four because the book implies that a therapist is necassary to revisit these feelings. But the objectivity of the therapist can be a hindrance to some. Its here I feel that introspective meditation exploring all the same feelings may be beneficial, and may be enough for some people in lieu of therapy. If you know where to go, you can conceivably do it yourself too, or have it as a useful accompaniement to expensive therapy.
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Summary: A book for everyone to read
Review: Drama of the Gifted Child addresses the abuse that most all of us have endured as children. This is the kind of abuse that is more subtle than the obvious physical or verbal assaults. This is the kind of abuse that has kept us from being who we truly are because we wanted to please our parents so much. This book is a way for us to get in touch with the truth that is within us all.
Rating:
Summary: Healing
Review: DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD is a lucid account of how children are used to meet the needs of their parents, and how this affects their development and manifests later in life in diffuse and confusing depression and anxiety, often awoken by romantic relationships gone inexplicably sour. Alice Miller has written one of the few vital psychoanalytic texts of our time. This book will be around forever: unlike some (arguably better, certainly more complex) theory, this book speaks clearly and makes sense to the average educated adult; and sadly, the problem of narcissistic parenting doesn't seem to be going away.
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Summary: An Extremely Brave and Insightful Work
Review: I am on my second reading of "Drama" and am finding it even more riveting. It seems written for me personally. Miller takes on the reigning Freudian methodology with the heretical insight that even well-meaning parents can contribute to the suppression of their children's true selves. It is common knowledge that Freud initially determined that his "hysterical" female patients had often been sexually abused by men in positions of trust and power in their lives, but that the medical society of the time refused to believe this. In order to not be thrown out of the Viennese Medical Society, Freud came up with ingenious but destructive theories (Oedipal complex, etc.) to explain his patients' symptoms. Miller takes us back to the truth - that early childhood trauma and betrayal causes peculiarly destructive symptoms in adult life, and that the situation is further complicated by the psychological process of denial and suppression. The victims even feel positive about their tormentors, so that they can survive (the "Stockholm syndrome"). Miller relates this process to the now well-documented "post-traumatic stress syndrome", but argues that it is even more difficult to understand and undo when the trauma happens not to fully formed adults, but to pre-verbal children, who can only feel the pain, but cannot express its cause. The memories can be suppressed, but the feelings and their effects cannot be eradicated without witnessing them as an adult. This is a very liberating discovery for one who has been traumatized as a child, and leads to methods of recovery that provide hope for adult sufferers. Interestingly, in the preface to the 1994 edition, Miller enthusiastically credits the methods of J. Konrad Stettbacher with helping her overcome her own symptoms of childhood abuse. In the 1996 version, this forward is omitted, as is any reference to Stettbacher's work. I wonder if that is because Miller has changed her mind about his methods, or if there was some kind of proprietary struggle? In any event, "Drama" is a seminal work, and will likely reverberate in the psychotherapy community for a long time to come. A must-read for anyone struggling with the effects of their childhood - and who isn't? Give a copy to your shrink, your parents, your kids, your significant other...but be prepared for some interesting dinner conversations!
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