"Drama of the gifted child" &"The Wall

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If she does not consider parents responsible for narcissistic personalities in children, because after all that must ultimately be the responsibility of the child , WHAT does she believe it is that leads a child to construct such a self-damaging survival structure, if not some form of external /environmental stress ( if it is NOT some inherent genetically determined vulnerability , "weakness" , or susceptibility, like ASD)?

Why is her principal website called " Child abuse and mistreatment" ?


I have read " For your own Good"; it is a powerful piece of writing exposing the institutionalised cruelties of parents towards children. Of course she may be taking the position that as parents are "driven" by their own narcissistic constructs to inflict certain treatments on children then they can not be held responsible for something that was their parents fault and their parents before them all the way back to the first mistreated human. Is noone responsible for the " Abuse and Mistreatment" then?

NB: I know that her work is not about autistic children.
It is about Narcissistic Personality Disorder in people whose childhood lives were in some mysterious way very difficult, leading them to cut themselves off from their own and others feelings.

Indeed, it is because of the inability of those parents - to act differently then they do - that she does not want to blame them. Blaming is not the same thing as finding responsibility nor will seeking the truth imply one is seeking to blame someone.

I guess her site is named as such because she currently seeks to end common forms of child abus such as, for instance, the widespread use of corporeal punishment.

Because of my mother, I have read up on narcissistic personality disorder and the description and my observation of my mother is that narcissists are masters at playing people and appearing benign because unlike aspies they care about appearances and they do not have grooming problems. Narcissistic NTs are the slick ones who play aspies like a violin if aspies don't start making observations. Yes, it is exactly like making scientific research over a long period of time. You have to remember everything even if you don't figure out immediately whether something is relevant.

Ok, my mistake using the word "blame" , but using the word "responsible" still doesn't help.
For instance my parents were not "responsible" for my difficulties as an ASD sufferer, ( tho with better education they might have been better able to help me and understand me ,) whereas they were for how they treated me.
But I am now realising that how they treated me was not the thing that I suffered from the most.

Alice Millers books on the other hand continue to make it the main issue, to the extent that almost all parents' treatment of their children could be seen as "abusive/manipulative/neglecting/rejecting/hurtful" to the child.
I agree with the argument that schools and certain aspects of childrens position in the society can be very damaging , but reading her later books I get the impression it would be virtually impossible to avoid provoking a Narcissistic personality disorder in a child.
Simply wanting ,as a mother for example, to do your own thing from time to time, not finding your childs every remark fascinating ,being in a bad mood, not reflecting back faithfully the childs loveliness (!), but instead thinking they are a real brat from time to time ,etc etc would apparently lead to your child creating a narcissistic personality defence response! So that we could expect to see it in almost everybody!!
You would have to be a robot , or a saint, to mother the way she thinks acceptable.
I think this is not very useful, and leads to depression, or despair, or a grinding and inherently futile striving for the unattainable , for both the parent ,and the "child" that was!

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Oct 2007, 9:03 am, edited 3 times in total.

I had what is known as "Narcissistic personality disorder" till my breakdown, and yes , I did indeed care about appearances etc. They were super-important to me, in fact still are. In fact it's part of what makes life difficult for me ; this hyper-sensitive attention to and awareness of the socially "desirable"/"correct" in clothing, etc.
Pleasing,with laughs and smiles, and listening attentively etc ; I can do very well , at the expense of actually caring about the person I'm listening so well to ! ! I used to be very good at using those "tricks and tools" and never notice how drained felt afterwards. I now NOTICE how manipulative it is too, though not necessarily at all malevolent, simply doing "womans" job well,( of empathising, even when it's fake ! !) .

I couldn't cope with the huge amount of information needed to handle BOTH the mixed messages , fine nuances , and subleties of the surface appearance "rules" with all their associated ,appropriate, verbal and physical signals expected of me as a WOMAN , at the same time as paying attention to/caring about any feeling, sensing beings going on behind all that.
Western woman ; form is still more important than content !(I was born into a 60's family with full-time housewife mother . Feminine skills were valued, and even more subtle in my family cos mother never wore make-up or high-heels, rarely jewellery, etc , so it meant lots of body language,with no accessories to help!!)

When got to sixth form college,still struggling with the "feminine", I was, luckily ( or perhaps not )taken in hand by two girls that I admired; given clothes advice etc , and by the time I'd been to a few college parties and drunk a few drinks I had acquired the social-skills necessary to guarantee me 4 years at university getting pissed , stoned , and laid rather than doing my coursework.

I believe that there is already some research to show that the reason why there has seemed to be so few female aspies is because, experiencing different pressures to the males, they "learn" different things:develop different coping mechanisms. As Digby Tantam's article ( link on the "Malice and Aspergers " thread here) suggests ; girls/women may have different "kinds" of Autistic spectrum reactions and responses to the world.
There may be nothing at all "exclusive" about the two conditions ( ASD and Narcissistic PD).

I think that this also explains why my ASD "symptoms" got suddenly a lot worse,( spaciness, "stupidity" about other people, social isolation, photos showing me going from fit, tanned tomboy to pale hunched pasty blank-faced misfit ), just as puberty hit,( with periods and first bra etc ,) cos really had to accept was girl, with the extra attendant pressures which as aspie were particularly difficult for me, used to trousers and short hair; it was like having to learn a whole new set of codes.
Also why inside of my body was still a mystery at 19. Bodies didn't have insides!! I think it may explain why despite having perfect theoretical understanding of reproduction I got pregnant almost as soon as started having sex , because of not understanding that there really was something inside there/behind the surface!! (I had an abortion.)