The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition (Paperback)

Alice Miller's ideas are based on her experiences as a psychotherapist who practiced for 20 years, and her own self-analysis. Her reasoning draws on some basic Freudian ideas: if the subconscious is brought to consciousness, the illnesses caused by the suppression can eventually be contained; the life of a person is rooted in her childhood and childhood experiences shape who a person 'is'. In the last part of her book she adds a theory derived from her work experience: when children whose needs have been denied in their childhood grow up and have children of their own, they can 'get rid' of their pain by inflicting the pain on their own children. She calls it the vicious circle of disdain, and the handing down of destructive attitudes from one generation to the next like a chain reaction.

'The Drama of the Gifted Child' is a powerful book and it is worth reading even after 20 years. It is not a scientific book in the sense that it contains testable findings, it presents a practitioner's conclusions gained from personal experience. You may call it an informed speculation, or an interim report from 'the search for the true self' as it is subtitled.