Books - The Favorite Child

For over thirty years veteran clinical psychologist Ellen Weber Libby has been helping successful, often-powerful Clients in Washington, DC - a place known for its outsized personalities - deal with their personal problems. One pattern that has emerged out of some 60,000 hours of therapy is what she calls 'the favourite child complex'. In this groundbreaking book, she describes in intimate detail how being the favourite child can confer both great advantages and also significant emotional handicaps. While many of Dr Libby's clients are successful because of their favourite-child status - they have been brought up to believe that they can do anything and are unafraid of challenges - they suffer from an array of personality problems. Behind the outward appearance of money, power, charm, and attractive looks, they feel an intense pressure to maintain the facade at all costs. Sometimes their ability to tell the truth becomes shaky; sometimes intimate relationships are elusive. In a series of chapters that offer insightful vignettes from actual therapy sessions (the identities of clients carefully disguised), Dr Libby explores why parents, consciously or unconsciously, choose a favourite child as well as the long-term effects of being the favourite son or daughter of either or both parents. She also discusses family situations where parents have successfully made each of their children feel favoured and have instilled in their children a healthy emotional balance. She details parental skills and family processes that increase the likelihood of this type of success and that, most importantly, reduce the risk of the favourite child's curse - power corrupted. Illuminating for adults trying to come to terms with their own emotional baggage as well as young parents seeking the best way to rear their children, this book makes for rewarding reading.

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