Summary

The “Drama of the Gifted Child” should be renamed to “The Silence of the Sensitive Child”. It would be a more accurate reflection of the content.

The author starts from the premise that children need to be able to become real people through being emotionally accepted for who they are. The failure of such, most notably in emotionally sensitive children, leads children to surpress their “true” tendencies and put on “as if” identities in order to please the parents. They grow up being attentive to the needs of the parents and later by extension, those around them, because satisfying the “needs” of others has become the association they have with “love”. This leads to the development of often times, high functioning adults (the author refers to them as grandiose identities) that despite all their accomplishments have trouble expressing emotions and feel dead inside. Often times, these people will become depressed once they can no longer “achieve” and at the same time, they are unable even to identify the cause of their depression. These individuals will often spend much of their adult hood, either conciously or unconciously, looking for the love and acceptance that they’ve never received as a child. This will forever be a quixotian endeavor as the sort of unconditional love that they seek can only be received as a child. And so the quest for love is not a homecoming but rather the discovery of something that was never made available.

Takeaway

• sensitive children develop “as if” identities but have none that is intrinsic to them
• there’s no unconditional love for adults and that is not what we need
• its not joy but vitality that is the opposite of depression

Quotes

What would have happened if I had appeared before you sad, needy , angry , furious? Where would your love have been then ?