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Drama of the Gifted Child: | 
 enlarge | Author: Alice Miller
Creator: Kathryn Walker
Publisher: HarperAudio
Category: Book
Buy New: $44.95
New (1) Used (6) from $30.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 210943
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1559944293
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781559944298
ASIN: 1559944293
Publication Date: September 1, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Presents the landmark study of the special problems of parenting a gifted child, discussing how frequently narcissistic and unwittingly hurtful parents can affect talented youngsters. Book available.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 Everyone who comes in contact with a child must read this. December 16, 2008
I bought this book because I have given away all my previous copies. This stands with only a handful of books I consider seminal and required reading. The Bible, The ABC's, Etiquette, and this book.
This book is translated, and so some of the key words sound at first as if they mean less, or other than first appears. Read through it. We are setting our children up from day one. It had better be a good set-up, or they will not know how to set up their own children for whole and successful lives.
Abuse comes not only in the form of black eyes or broken arms or incest. Abuse comes in forms that we thought were "love" but turn out to be traps.
Read it. Read it. Read it. Think!
A classic. Groundbreaking truths still enlightening after all these years. And I can recommend October 3, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
a fascinating and remarkably candid memoir written by another brilliant and compassionate woman: That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist by Susan Rako, M.D. The title comes from a song by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rako was herself notably a "gifted child," -- actually a child prodigy on the piano who performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 14, and who became a psychiatrist to heal herself and others on the journey founded on courage to stand to one's own truth. Rako's memoir is wonderfully well-written and a great read. The writing just flows.
 for adults who were parentified as children by their own parents August 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great read for adults who were parentified as children by their own parents, and helping you to cope with and MOVE PAST the legacy and wounds your parents accidentally left you with. They learned it from their parents, and it's important to break the cycle if you don't want to pass it to your children too. You will, unless you work very hard to heal the wounds. It's inevitable.
Great book w good examples April 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Alice Miller explains how a lot of us have been affected from childhood. The book flows well and is a page turner when you see that a lot of the situations relate to you in some way. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to improve themselves!
A Significant Piece of the Puzzle March 26, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Reading books about psychology, especially books dealing with childhood trauma, is a bit like looking into a shattered mirror. Some parts will accurately reflect aspects of one's own psyche; other parts will be too distorted to have any relevance. As far as mirrors go, I think Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child" provides for excellent viewing.
The core of the book is about narcissism, or more precisely, the way that children are negatively affected by the emotional unavailability and/or abuse of their parents. These emotional wounds can create severe dysfunctions and personality disorders later in life - disorders over which the victim has absolutely no control, unless they begin the long and painful road towards breaking out of their "Inner Prison" (as Miller puts it).
Early editions of this book used a lot more psychological jargon, and the revised edition makes things quite clear and concise for the layman, without losing the essential concepts: the role and critical responsibility of the primary object (usually mother); the suppression/repression of feelings in favour of a need to please; the cycles of grandiosity and depression; contempt and its role in perversion and obsession; compulsion to repeat behaviours; the societal role in propagating psychologically diseased values through generations; the severe shortcomings of tradition psychotherapeutic methods (although this was first published in 1979), and the key to healing - consciously experiencing hidden emotional pain.
The case studies and quotes from patients are relevant and add an extra dimension to the theory. I found that some of the examples struck a stronger emotional chord than Miller's own observations, which is important if one is reading a book to gain insight rather than for simple curiosity.
Although a short book at approximately 126 pages, there is very little "fluff" or filling in it. Miller gets straight to the point and has little patience for "parental apologia", which is an approach I think needs to be taken. It seems from other reviews though that some parents bought the book thinking it would affirm their own notions of their child's "giftedness", and were a little "miffed" to find out that wasn't the case. In my opinion, parents like these are the exact reason professionals like Miller need to focus the lens directly on their behaviour.
While it is somewhat of a cliche these days to blame one's parents for one's neuroses, that isn't really the point; responsibility for healing rests with the victim, not the perpetrator. This is something Miller makes clear, although the point is better made in other books, notably Martha Stout's "The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness".
That the book is now still in print and in its 3rd revision is a testament to its long-term appeal. Despite having read it twice now, I still find revisits to be enlightening and worthwhile. I am very glad to have it on my bookshelf and consider it money well spent.
Readers with a deep interest in the subject may also find "The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment", "Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism", "Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves & Others" and the previously mentioned "Myth of Sanity" to be excellent sources of additional information.
Overall, an immensely valuable work and I thank Ms. Miller for her long-term efforts in sharing such important knowledge with the wider public.
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