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 book shows how narcissistic parents form and deform the lives of their children. The Drama of the Gifted Child can help readers reclaim their lives by discovering their own needs and their own truth.