"Drama of the gifted child" &"The Wall

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Anyone else read this ?
By Alice Miller .
( Originally published , in the early 80's, under the title " the drama of the gifted child"now publ. as " drama of being a child". At the time she was beginning her rejection of psychoanalysis , which was her training and profession.)

Seems to me , now that i am here (! !) , to be a brilliant book about an asperger survival tactic , all of it without using the word aspergers.
One of my favourite books of all time anyway, and which describes my own experience up to and including the breakdown which exposed my ASD , after all the various grandiosity-inducing and numbing defence systems ( of simplification of data) that I had constructed fell to bits.

In another of her books , " For your own Good " ( haha) in which she examines institutionalised cruelty of adults towards children she makes many references to Pink Floyds "The Wall", which I understand only too well , having experienced just those extremes , of super grandiose arrogant superiority ( based on not believing were feelings behind peoples faces ) and utter frozen-out living-dead/walking dead simalcrum of a human without connection to anyone.
( Does anyone else remember how he lays out all those bits of things,that he had broken in a massive fit of rage, in neatly ordered rows?! !)

Anyone else been there done that , seen the film , or read the book ?

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Oct 2007, 8:53 am, edited 14 times in total.

Hi, Ouinon, never read the Miller book (and how typical of the PC to change the gifted tag), but I may have to check her out on the basis of your claim that she rejected her own profession. (I'm looking to study psychology myself, but had reservations for years because of Thomas Szasz.)

But I am very familiar with THE WALL, and the scene you described. The Wall is rich with psychological issues. I read that it was a trait of schizophrenics to try to make sense of their situation, and much of that character was based on Syd Barrett, of course, who was pronounced incurable by R.D. Laing, oddly enough. You might also know that Wilhelm Reich had a theory of "armoring," which was very Wall-like. There's a book coming out in November called PINK FLOYD AND PHILOSOPHY, I believe it will deal with a lot of these topics.

Unfortunately I've just googled her in co with aspergers and discover that she seems to be calling it by a trad psychoanalytical term , Narcicissist personality disorder. And refutes a connection with aspergers, which apparently people have already been making because it is so clear to many(to anyone prepared to accept the reality of loss of shining brilliance for being ASD) ! . Might have something to do with not wanting to accept that her younger "brilliance", her very successful giftedness in fact , the product of various distancing mechanisms now exploded , is not recoverable.
Very sad.
Alice Miller seem to have gone back to the explaining-away of the "gifted" child which she had overturned in her middle-adulthood.
I didn't realise there was such a war going on over this exact issue.
It is parents' "unconscious/involuntary" "mis"treatment of child which is responsible for such defence formation in a child!!
As a result of theories like that
I spent a long time hoping, expecting in fact , that I would recover some gloriously gifted inner me after coming out from the breakdown ,now that I was freed from so much rubbish, but instead found myself slower and "duller" and ( what I saw as ) "boring" , which I took to be lingering depression. Now I realise is the "true" me , who needs time for things , is easily overwhelmed etcetc , and I recognise that I have ASD .
Which is ok acyually, better than thinking I'm terminally depressed!!

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Oct 2007, 8:59 am, edited 4 times in total.

Who is it by?

Are there any exerpts available on the net ?

I bought and read her book "The Drama of Being a Child", hadn't realised the other stuff she'd written, the book I got seemed to be a bit of a rant more than anything really practical (I like practical books), asides from that it was an interesting read, her point of view about the way that children are treated is certainly interesting.
Actually now checking the Amazon page on this, I'm guessing that some AS/Narcissistic stuff is in the book I have, I think I'm going to re-read it now, lol, see what it said again.

Bugs

I can't remember where, but I did read that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is sometimes misdiagnosed in patients who actually have AS. It has to do with how superior a person with AS can feel intellectually and morally, and how there can be a broad range of knowledge -- the "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome. The main shtick of a narcissist is manipulation of "lesser able" or "enabling" people and they have a high incidence of abuse towards loved ones.

The misdiagnosis reveals itself at a certain point, but rather than misquote, I'll just say, "Look it up."

I guess my point is that AS and NPD can be very similar depending on the individual, but other psych professionals (not Miller apparently) do still perceive differences. Maybe NPD is yet another comorbidity?

I have a few friends who love "Drama of the Gifted Child." I'm sorry Miller has decided to supply more "drama" for us.

Now that's an interesting way of putting it. NOT that NPD is Aspergers , but that NPD can frequently occur in association with/as a survival mechanism in those with , ASD. Hmm!?! Thank you!

Feel better now!

That's interesting. I've always associated manipulation with social skills. For example, I don't think I have the social skills to manipulate anyone. I'm not good at understanding other people or lying. It takes me a while to figure out that I'm being manipulated because it's hard for me to pick up on those subtle signs of honesty or dishonesty.

They say that people with Antisocial Personality Disorder are often good at manipulating people. In some ways, APD is the opposite of AS--these people express emotions and empathy but don't experience them internally. Both have a disregard for social rules, but for different reasons. Maybe some people with APD are mistakenly diagnosed with AS or vice versa? Maybe for some people, manipulation is actually a way to compensate for deficits in social skills?

Well for me it was that I was able to "cope", function apparently correctly in the world ,( even brilliantly at times , especially on alcohol and drugs ! !) until the wall came crashing down anyway , by "pretending" to myself from a very early age ( infancy , so far back was unconscious of it ) that there were no real feelings behind peoples faces.
And when I had my breakdown and breakthrough what I realised , as if for the first time , was that there were ; for instance that the people I had thought were the most scary were very often the most scared. I had not understood that before, because for me there was nothing real in the way of feelings behind a face. ( even my own ! !)
This denial/ignoring/exclusion of "data" to be processed had made it possible for me to function very well , well , a bit oddly , spacily, selfishly, inconsiderately, naively,(as well as recklessly and adventurously in the later stages) etc, but otherwise FINE , until had my first ever TRULY intimate adult relationship , which began to put a strain on this construct , at which point cracks appeared , and when the dust settled after the crash ( aged 29) I was exposed in all my "feeble" ASDness, slow and "over"-sensitive .
Took me a while to realise that I wasn't just depressed!!I'm 44 now!!

Last edited by ouinon on 16 Oct 2007, 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ounion, the book is published by Open Court Press, edited by George Reisch, but it's a series of essays by different people. It's the same series that published THE SIMPSONS AND PHILOSOPHY, Seinfeld, Harry Potter, Sopranos, etc. and Philosophy books.

Here's a link:
http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/pink_floyd.htm

Not sure about your second question; expertns on the web on what?

Thank you, Spaceplayer!
I looked to see if there were any excerpts/extracts but couldn't find any . I think the angle seems mainly philo rather than psycho (!). Thanks anyway!!
It got me looking at a site on Barrett and schizophrenia and someone saying that an aspergers diagnosis wouldn't explain such a suddden collapse/crash from functioning to wrecked. I disagree ; I think that an ASD sufferer who'd developed a NPD to cope with the disability at a very early age could well , as I did, go to bits in a couple of years. AND seem much less interesting afterwards!!

No problem, Ouinon. I will be reading that book the day it hits the shelves, so I'll let you know what extent they talk about psychology. My gut feeling, despite the title, is that there will be a bit of psycholgical delvings; it's unavoidable, given the nature of Pink Floyd's history and subject matter. Dark Side of the Moon, madness, it's a given. And the two fields have a lot of overlap, when you consider that psychology grew out of religion, which is an early form of philosophy. (Freud is the one who tried to medicalize the mind, and Jung is the one who insisted that what they were doing was closer to religion than to medicine.)

Syd is said to have been schizophrenic, but I've seen a couple mentions of possibly being an aspie, wierd, though, since he's often described as an extrovert. And who knows what the drugs did or did not do to exascerbate things...it's all retro diagnosis now, so who knows...

I remember reading "Drama of a Gifted Child" years and years ago. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was a university book in one of my teacher training classes. I can 't really remember what it said specifically about AS related things, but I remember being able to relate to a lot of it.

Alice Miller didn't refer to special children who have a 'gift' in some way, but about a 'gift' that all - or most - children seem to have.



I assure you, Alice Miller's work is not specifically about Asperger's Syndrome, but - indeed - about the emotional survival - of all children.




I've read several of her books, but not his one. If you are interested in this line of thinking you might find J. Jensen and I. Bosch interesting as well.

[quote="Zwerfbeertje"]Alice Miller didn't refer to special children who have a 'gift' in some way, but about a 'gift' that all - or most - children seem to have.]quote

Nevertheless the book was originally titled " The drama of the Gifted child" and she refers repeatedly to the problems faced by" sensitive children" ( which def implies existence of other, less sensitive , children!!) aswell as addressing most of her analysis at "the gifted adult" experiencing "sensations of emptiness and alienation" .

For example she says " One serious consequence of this early adaptation [ narcissistic] is the impossibility of consciously experiencing certain feelings of his own ( such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, impotence, anxiety) either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic since we are here concerned with lively people who are ESPECIALLY capable of differentiated feelings", and "It is remarkable how THESE attentive , lively and sensitive children who can , for example ,remember exactly how they discovered the sunlight in bright grass at the age of four, yet at eight might be unable to notice anything or to show any curiosiy about the pregnant mother .."... the child with "UNUSUALLY powerful antenna"! and "What does exist is children like this: intelligent, alert,attentive,extremely sensitive,...;above all they are transparent, clear, reliable, and easy to manipulate .."

But , very sadly , she continues to blame parents, rather than seeing that if a child is born ASD there is noone to blame for the "sensitive" childs difficulties, nor for their parents' difficulty either (! !) ,nor for their subsequent construction of a survival/coping structure ( Narcissistic personality) if they were able to get sufficiently out of their bodies ( poss as result of glutens effect on gluten sensitive systems ) to be able to live like that.

I believe she has got stuck on making parents responsible. She is suffering from black-and-white thinking in fact ! !!

PS: Spaceplayer; I don't know about Syd but i was a rather dreamy spacey quiet type until I hit the bottle at sixth form college , after which I became increasingly extrovert until mania hit ! !

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Oct 2007, 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Alice Miller does not use terms like 'gifted' and 'sensitive' to differentiate between different types of children, eg gifted vs. non-gifted or sensitive vs non-sensitive children, but as traits that all children posses. When she writes about sensitive children, she writes about children as sensitive humans, she uses 'sensitive children' to emphasize that trait, this sensitivity that children, all children, posses.

Alice Miller also does not blame the parents and in at least one of her books (the one about Poisonous pedagogy, "For Your Own Good") she explains how she does not blame the parents. I remember it as one of the more difficult concepts to warp my mind around.

Alice Miller's work is not about autistic children, but about all children.