As charming performers who skillfully reflect their parents
expectations, far too many children grow into adults driven to greater
and greater achievements by an underlying sense of worthlessness. Never
allowed to express their true feelings, and having lost touch with their
true selves, they act out their repressed feelings with episodes of
depression and compulsive behavior. They in turn inflict the same legacy
of repression on their own children.
This poignant and thought-provoking book shows how narcissistic parents
form and deform the lives of their children. "The Drama of the Gifted
Child" is the first step toward helping readers reclaim their lives by
discovering their own needs and their own truth."A book that patients
prescribe...the therapists are reading it because their patients are
recommending it." "--Washington Post Book World"
"Full of wisdom and perception."--Anthony Storr, "New Republic"
"Rare and compelling in its compassion and its unassuming
eloquence...her examples are so vivid and so ordinary that they touch
the hurt child in us all." "--New York Magazine"