The Light in Our Sky Series #7

A quote from Alice Miller

The Light in Our Sky

Volume #7

May 17th, 2025

“It is thus impossible for the grandiose person to cut the tragic link between admiration and love. In his compulsion to repeat he seeks compulsively for admiration, of which he never gets enough because admiration is not the same thing as love. It is only a substitute gratification of the primary needs for respect, understanding, and being taken seriously–needs that have remained unconscious.” Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, p. 40

PA: I read this book long before we had you, Zan. It was very helpful to me in trying to figure out certain things about my own childhood, and very helpful to me in raising you and Juliana. I’m intrigued by this idea that ‘admiration is not the same thing as love.’ I think admiration can be part of love, but in some people, as Miller notes, it is used as a substitute for love. And I like that she calls the primary needs ‘respect, understanding, and being taken seriously.’ People who need continual admiration, it seems to me, missed out on something important when they were very small, and so spend their adulthood looking for that important something, but in all the wrong ways.

ZAN: I also find the juxtaposition of admiration and love fascinating. One of the main differences between the two in my mind is the ‘understanding’ piece—to be loved is to be appreciated and cared for not because of your good qualities but in spite of your bad ones. Someone seeking admiration, then, may really be seeking an impossible version of themself in which there are no flaws. Or may be so painfully aware of their own flaws (and at a loss as to how to accept them) that they’re seeking admiration as proof that they are worthy of their own love. However you look at it, the two are connected in very interesting ways!

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