First Impressions: The drama of the gifted child by Alice Miller

 I will dive right into the portion that gutted me: "I think that our childhood fate can indeed enable us to practice psychotherapy, but only if we have been given the chance, through our own therapy, to live with the reality of our past and to give up the most flagrant of our illusions.. This means tolerating the knowledge that, to avoid losing the "love" of our parents, we were compelled to gratify their unconscious needs at the cost of our own emotional development. It also means being able to experience the resentment and mourning aroused by our parents' failure to fulfill our primary needs."

Alice Miller is a psychoanalyst whose main work (or at least what she is known for) is parental child abuse. In this book, she covers various aspects of this abuse and, interestingly, how it relates to psychotherapists or healers or anyone who wants to 'help other people'. 

The book covers several broad themes. Parents themselves are prisoners of their own unhealed wounds. These wounds get projected onto their child - and this projection is even more dangerous because it seems to be 'sanctioned' by society. There is obviously a very skewed balance of power between a parent and child (Miller focuses a lot on the mother). The child, when abused or manipulated - often with good intentions or ignorance on part of the parent, has no say. Then this child grows up without having the emotional language to explain or understand that what happened to him or her was wrong. The child, now an adult, does not see the point of confronting the parent. And the lie becomes so deep that the person does not even entertain the possibility that the parent was using the child to feel important, safe, relevant, validated (everything that the child, in fact, should be expecting from the parent). The child internalizes this lie so completely that he starts believing that he had a great, happy childhood. 

In the book, Miller cites one of her patients who is 42 and seems to be exhausted in his search for his true self. He says," I lived in a glass house into which my mother could look at any time. In a glass house, however, you cannot conceal anything without giving yourself away, except by hiding it under the ground. And then you cannot see it yourself, either."

The book has several examples that are, frankly, a little creepy because they seem to be innocuous. 

A father enjoyed telling gruesome stories to his daughter. When she got scared and cried, he would cajole her by saying that it was only a story. This father is manipulating his daughter this way because he had a mom who was schizophrenic. He would himself be scared when she would have one of her attacks. But he was too small to know how to handle it and the adults in his life responded by hiding the truth from him. So he wants to take back control for that little boy by behaving a certain way with his daughter.

There's a mother who grew up in a very strict household where sex was taboo. She sees a penis for the first time after marriage, in the context of conjugal relations. She is scared. Later, when her baby boy is an infant, she explores his private parts - not as abuse or anything - but curiosity. She feels safe only around an infant to get the information she wants. This was denied to her as a kid and then later as a wife. So as a mother with absolute control over her child, she gets her way. Of course, such behavior has ramifications on the child's auto-erotic tendencies. (He can't get aroused unless there is some shame involved.)

Miller also presents some moving psychological portraits of great artists - Henry Miller, the painter, who had to rub iodine on his mother's back as a child. So a major part of his ouevre involves reclining ladies with exposed backs. 

There's Herman Hesse who was institutionalized by his family because they found him too 'difficult' - and 'difficult' mainly because he was different from his religious parents. There's Ingmar Bergmann who used to watch his father beat his older brother. He never really talked about whether he was subjected to such violence (chances are that he was). But his movies involve the theme of being powerless against authority. 

Speaking of power and authority, Miller postulates that a lot of people who have built the myth of a grand childhood in their heads (to avoid the pain of confronting just how mean their parents were) have staunch nationalistic ideologies. Their ideology will necessarily involve obedience, abject allegiance to a greater common good, etc. A lot of this stems from the fact that as kids, they were not allowed to stand out. They were not allowed to complain for basic things like food or attention or love without censure. These things build up.

The other side of the delusion coin is the psychotherapist itself (or, in my opinion, one of the many 'healers' one finds in the alternative healing space). They themselves are very deeply messed up. To avoid the work of ripping their identity to go to the truth of their pain, they decide to 'help others'. Consequently, much of their advice is a projection of their own pain and aspirations.

This book was a tough read. But an important one. I came across this book because I once chanced upon Miller's son's interview. Her son is also a psychoanalyst and he has written a book that basically states that his own mother subjected him to emotional neglect, the same things she articulates so well in her theories.

At some point in the book, I did feel that we are all just doomed. Who here has parents who were not in pain themselves? I am sure that every parent, unless they are really cruel, want a better life for their kids - or if not better, then one that is devoid of whatever trauma or pain they themselves went through. Yes, it's reasonable to assume that people rarely take the time or effort to truly work on themselves. It's easier to look at your baby and try to give the kid a blank slate. But then what? What's the way out? 

The book does indicate that one has to really confront one's parents, tell them that they were cruel or dominating, then feel whatever powerlessness or shame you went through to finally close one chapter. But I don't know. I was not entirely convinced. I am a little skeptical that this can become like a blame-game with nobody getting the peace or closure they need.

It's a valuable book, though. Made me question my own upbringing, made me think about my parents' childhood, their dynamics with their parents...It's fascinating to see how the genesis of an emotional wound you have now - the story of that wound would have begun somewhere else altogether.

In the book, Miller quotes Pestalozzi who neglected his own son but was very warm towards orphans. (We find that Pestalozzi himself was neglected by his parents). "You can drive the devil out of your garden but you will find him again in the garden of your son."

So, if the story has to change, there's that much brute force and courage to muster up.