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"