I’m busy picking my jaw up from the floor. I just found a review of a book by Martin Miller, the son of the famed Alice Miller, author of “The Drama of the Gifted Child”, the book that influenced my journey to connect with my authentic self and inspired me to write “The King of Average”. The book is called “The True Drama of the Gifted Child”. It appears that his mother Alice Miller victimized him in the way she describes in her own book! It’s as shocking as if Sigmund Freud slept with his mother! There’s no denying their contributions, but give me a break!

In searching for interesting things to blog about, in order to promote my book, I came upon the author of the book “Screams from Childhood” Barbara Rogers. 

Barbara Rogers was a personal friend of Alice Miller’s and broke with her a few years back. I just ordered her book.  “Screams from Childhood”. The stories of adults who’ve overcome the drama of a gifted childhood, are often horrific and unsettling. Her stories and poetry echo that feeling and it is brave and needed, in order to help those so afflicted with a less-than-ideal childhood.

From Oliver Twist on down through the ages, we celebrate children overcoming adversity, but we never go under the hood, so-to-speak to see what damage might have been done to the soul of such children. What if Henry Miller wrote Oliver Twist? We’d see the shadowy doubt and psychological motives for Oliver’s actions, which would be a very different story indeed.

I suppose, I covered over the horror of my own life with humor. It became my shield, my calling card and my salvation and my way of coping. And though I support and empathize with anyone who’s endured privation in childhood, describing the horror sometimes makes it hard to look at.  There is a need for provoking such feelings and I respect anyone who can tell the truth.

“The King of Average” is my attempt to put into a form that is both entertaining and fun, a journey that many children of neglect have never taken and should take. For me, I still use humor to communicate the same message. I celebrate in my own way my triumph in my book “The King of Average’ and I hope I will have added another way to look at “The Drama of the Gifted Child”.

Gary Schwartz, North Bend, WA