Status Updates From Het drama van het begaafde ...

Knowledge of theory is essential, but knowledge of the theory must not have a defensive function: It must not become the successor of a strict, controlling mother, forcing the therapist to accommodate himself to it.

A mother cannot truly respect her child as Long as she does not realize what deep shame she causes him with an ironic remark, intended only to cover her own uncertainty. Indeed, she cannot be aware of how deeply humiliated, despised, and devalued her child feels, if she herself has never consciously suffered these feelings, and if she tries to fend them off with irony.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having Lived up to their parents' expectations.
This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty
to satisfy his parent's needs.

The newly won capacity to accept her feelings opens the way for the patient's long-repressed needs and wishes to be actualized. Some of these needs cannot be satisfied in reality, since they are related to past situations. The urgent wish for a child…may express among other things the wish to have an available mother. Unfortunately, children are too often wished for only as symbols to meet repressed needs.

There are other ways of exploiting the child apart from the sexual: through brainwashing, for instance,
which underlies both the "anti-authoritarian" and the
"strict" upbringing. Neither form of rearing takes the child's own needs into account. As soon as he is re-
garded as a possession for which one has a particular goal, as soon as one exerts control over him, his
natural growth will be violently interrupted.

Cruelty was the familiar air he had breathed from early on, so why should cruelty and disdain for others
, such as he witnessed in the Nazi upward mobility, have caught his attention?

..suffering remains inaccessible and thus forms the hidden source of new and very subtle humiliation for the next generation. Various defense mechanisms will help to justify their actions: denial of their own suffering, rationalization (I owe it to my child to bring him up properly), displacement (it is not my parent but my son who is hurting me), idealization (my father's hurtful lessons were good for me), and more.

It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior.

Someone who slaps or hits another adult or knowingly insults her is aware of hurting her. Even if he doesn't know why he is doing this, he has some sense of what he is doing. But how often were our parents, and we ourselves toward our own children, unconscious of how painfully, deeply, and abidingly they and we injured a child's tender, budding self?

Many adults first become
aware of their feelings of
helplessness, jealousy, and loneliness through their own children, since they had no chance to acknowledge and experience these feelings consciously in childhood.

*Suppression is a conscious act, in contrast to repression.

These feelings can be experienced in therapy. When they are understood, they open the door to our inner world that is much richer than the "beautiful countenance"!
Narcissus was in love with his idealized picture, but neither the grandiose nor the depressive "Narcissus" can really love himself.

Modern science shows that human brains are fundamentally wired for co-regulation. We do not heal in a vacuum. A person who completely isolates themselves and claims, "I only rely on myself, I need no one," is often not experiencing "maturational health"—they are running a defense mechanism called hyper-independence, which is just another frozen trauma response designed to protect against the danger of trusting…

How often depressive patients are aware that they have reacted oversensitively, and how much they reproach themselves for it. It is precisely their oversensitivity, shame, and self-reproach that form a continuous thread in their lives, unless they learn to understand to what these feelings actually relate.

“It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I had fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful, or confused; and, above all, sad and lonely. It was precisely through these experiences, which I had shunned for so long, that I became certain that I now understand..”

“Therapy helped her to find orientation, again and again. And she found repeatedly how important it was to her just being able to love, to express her Love without being afraid that she could be betrayed, exploited, violated.”

Many modern clinicians find Miller's stance here a bit too bleak, arguing that while we cannot change the past, a deeply caring, unconditional therapeutic relationship in the present has the power to structurally rewire a person's nervous system. This is just scientifically proven. Read: The Body Keeps the Score, etc.

The grandiose person is never really free; first, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.

And is he not bound to carry pent-up rage within himself, against those who have made him afraid to walk without stilts? He could also be envious of healthy people because they do not have to make a constant effort to earn admiration, and because they do not have to do something in order to impress, one way or the other, but are free to be
"average."

“..she was able to find in her child: someone at her disposal who could be used as an echo and could be controlled, who was completely centered on her, would never desert her, and offered her full attention and admiration. If the child's demands became too great (as those of her own mother once did), she was no longer so de-fenseless: she could refuse to allow herself to be
tyrannized…”

If there was abuse in childhood and then continued mistreatment during a vulnerable period, it makes a lot of sense that your mind would hold anger, disgust, and harsh thoughts toward them now. Those reactions don’t come out of nowhere…they’re usually tied to something that actually really hurt you.