How to Overcome Your Childhood

Outlines the ways in which our upbringings - good or bad - have had a significant impact on our current emotional condition.

Offers constructive solutions for moving on from our childhoods, drawing on the psychological teachings of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott.

Explores concepts such as "The Golden Child", splitting and emotional inheritance.

Includes practical tables to clearly present crucial ideas.

Beautifully produced, premium gift format.

Part of a series of giftable essays from The School of Life. Other titles include: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person; Why We Hate Cheap Things; How to Find Love; On Confidence; Self Knowledge.

Introduction

The Forgotten Past

The Secrets of a Privileged Childhood

Emotional Inheritance

Childhood-Derived Challenges

Attraction to Difficult Partners

Snobbish Parents

People-Pleasing

Criticism

The True and the False Self

Shame, Dread and Anxiety

The Golden Child Syndrome

Over-Achievement

Jolliness

Splitting

Ways Forward

The Importance of a Breakdown

Why Psychotherapy Works

Knowing Things Intellectually vs. Knowing Them Emotionally

What We Owe to the People Who Loved Us in Childhood

On Soothing

Beyond Compliance

The Tragedy of Childhood

Becoming an Adult

The Bittersweet Past