The Drama of the Gifted Child

But I had just been in a relationship with a cult leader prior to social work school, and I wasn't satisfied with that way of thinking about the cult leader.

And when I read first Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child, which was the first psychoanalytic book that described how parents could traumatize children.

when they parented from a narcissistic perspective, and then further went on to read Eric Fromm's work in Escape from Freedom and also in The Heart of Man.

Those texts specifically, and others as well, but very much those, drew my attention to narcissism in an important way because that was what made sense to me about the cult leader.

However, when they disappoint us, what happens is we develop these awful core beliefs thinking they're great, we're not.

So instead of saying, "Oh, they have bad parenting skills, and they name-call me and hit me and abuse me and neglect me," well, a little child doesn't really think that way because, I will refer to Alice Miller, Drama of the Gifted Child.

She says that the child would rather feel that the child is the bad one in a good world because if they're not in a good world, that's a damn dangerous world.

Okay? So Dorothy and clan are in this good world, except that they're in an illusory world.

So yeah, perhaps that's why I'm drawn to working with them.

There's a great book and it's called, I'm just looking at it now, it's called The Drama of Being a Child by Alice Miller.

I always think I've decided at one point that I was going to become a psychotherapist and did my training and then coaching, which was a bigger, better fit for me.

But the book is all about how our personal stories impact our desire to do this type of work and it's fascinating.

It's survival-based manipulation.

Now, if you want to read a book that will inevitably ruin your entire weekend in the best way possible, go ahead and pick up Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child.

Now, don't let the title fool you.

In Miller's terminology, gifted doesn't mean that you had an IQ of 140 and did differential calculus in third grade.

Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson.

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.

Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung.

These aren't just books.