Alice Miller

Polish-Swiss psychologist who argued that childhood emotional abuse and neglect are the root of adult psychological suffering — and that psychotherapy often recapitulates the original abuse by requiring the patient to protect the therapist's feelings.

The Drama of the Gifted Child: gifted children develop highly adaptive false selves by learning to meet parental emotional needs — suppressing their own authentic feelings. Childhood trauma is not overcome by understanding the parents' own wounds but by mourning one's own lost childhood. Against conventional therapy's requirement to forgive parents.