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Alice Miller, born as Alicija Englard (12 January 1923 – 14 April 2010), was a Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin, who is noted for her books on parental child abuse, translated into several languages. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. Miller, Alice. Prisoners of childhood. Translation of Das Drama des begabten Kindes. Bibliography: p. This is a specific kind of book for a specific type of person at a specific point in. #61 The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, 1, 3, Jun 08, PM.
Professional Psychology:Debating Chamber · Psychology Journals · Psychologists
Alice Miller (born 1923) is a psychologist noted for her work on child abuse and its effects upon society as well as the lives of individuals. She was born in Poland and in 1946 migrated to Switzerland. She gained her doctorate in philosophy, psychology and sociology in 1953 in Basel. In 1986, Alice Miller was awarded the Janusz Korczak Literary Award by the Anti-Defamation League. She has two adult children.
Miller’s worldviewEdit
The introduction of Miller’s first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, first published in 1979, contains a famous line that summarizes her views: “Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood”.
Miller became strongly disenchanted with her chosen field of psychoanalysis after many years spent in practice. Her first three books originated from research she took upon herself as a response to what she felt were major blind spots in her field. However, by the time her fourth book was published she no longer believed that psychoanalysis was viable at all.
Drawing upon the work of psychohistory, Miller has analyzed writers Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and others to find links between their childhood traumas and the outcome of their lives. She maintains that all instances of mental illness, crime and falling prey of religious cults are ultimately caused by childhood trauma and inner pain not processed by a helper which she has come to term an 'enlightened witness'. She extends this trauma model to include all forms of child abuse, including those that are commonly accepted (such as spanking) which she calls poisonous pedagogy (schwarze Pädagogik).
In the 1990s Miller strongly supported a new method from Konrad Stettbacher, who was later charged with incidents of sexual abuse. Since then she has refused to bring forward therapist or method recommendations. In open letters, Miller explained her decision and how she originally fell for Stettbacher but in the end distanced herself from him and his regressive therapies.
In our culture “Sparing the parents is our supreme law” wrote Miller. Even psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists are unconsciously afraid to blame parents for the neuroses and psychoses of their clients. According to Miller mental health professionals are also creatures of the poisonous pedagogy internalized in their own childhood. This explains why the command “Honor your parents” has been one of the main targets in Miller’s school of psychology.
Miller calls electroconvulsive therapy —a treatment occasionally used for severe cases of depression— “a campaign against the act of remembering”. She also criticizes psychotherapists’ advice to clients to forgive their abusive parents. For Miller this can only hinder the way to recovery: to remember and feel the pain of our childhood. “The majority of therapists fear this truth. They work under the influence of destructive interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child”. Forgiveness does not resolve hatred but covers it in a very dangerous way in the outgrown adult: displacement on scapegoats, as she discussed in her psycho-biographies of Adolf Hitler and Jürgen Bartsch, both of which she describes as having suffered atrocious parental abuse.
A common denominator in Miller’s writings is to explain why human beings prefer not to know about their own victimization during childhood: to avoid unbearable pain. However, the unconscious command of the individual, not to be aware how he or she was treated in childhood, leads to displacement: the irresistible drive to repeat traumatogenic modes of parenting in the next generation of children.
WritingsEdit
The following is a brief summary of Alice Miller's books.
The Drama of the Gifted Child (Das Drama des begabten Kindes, 1979) Edit
In her first book (also published under the titles Prisoners of Childhood and The Drama of Being a Child) Miller defines and elaborates the personality manifestations of childhood trauma. She seeks the truth about her own childhood experiences and in so doing defines the model that has become widely accepted in psychotherapeutic circles, such as the Tavistock Institute. She addresses the two reactions to the loss of love in childhood, depression and grandiosity; the inner prison, the vicious circle of contempt, repressed memories, the etiology of depression, and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult. From this book flow the others.
For your own good (Am Anfang war Erziehung, 1980) Edit
Miller proposes here that German traumatogenic methods of childrearing produced Hitler and a serial killer of children named Jürgen Bartsch. In this work Miller introduces the term “poisonous pedagogy”. Children learn to take their parent’s point of view against themselves “for their own good”. For Miller, the traditional pedagogic process is manipulative, resulting in that the grown-up adult is deferential to authorities, even to tyrannical leaders or dictators like Hitler. Miller even argues for abandoning the term “pedagogy” in favor of the word “support”, something akin to what psychohistorians call the helping mode of parenting.
This book is (legally) available online here.
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (Du sollst nicht merken, 1981) Edit
Unlike Miller’s later books, this one is written in an academic style. It is her first critique of psychoanalysis, charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies that she described in For Your Own Good. Miller is critical of both Freud and Jung. She scrutinizes Freud’s drive theory, a device that blames the child for the abusive sexual behavior of adults. Miller also criticizes Kafka, who was abused by his father but fulfills the politically-correct function of mirroring abuse in metaphorical novels, instead of exposing it.
The Untouched Key (Der gemiedene Schlüssel, 1988)Edit
This book is basically a psychobiography of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz and Buster Keaton (in Miller’s latest book, The Body Never Lies published in 2005, she includes similar analyses of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Schiller, Rimbaud, Mishima, Proust and James Joyce).
According to Miller, Nietzsche did not experience a loving family and his philosophical output is a metaphor of an unconscious drive against his family's oppressive theological tradition. She believes the philosophical system is flawed because Nietzsche was unable to make emotional contact with the abused child inside him. Though Nietzsche was severely punished by a father who lost his mind when Nietzsche was a little boy, Miller does not accept the genetic theory of madness. She interprets Nietzsche’s psychotic breakdown as the result of a family tradition in Prussian modes of childrearing.
Banished Knowledge (Das verbannte Wissen, 1988) Edit
In this more personal book Miller confesses she herself was abused as a child. She also introduces the fundamental concept of “enlightened witness”: a person who is willing to support a harmed individual, empathize with her and help her to gain understanding of her own biographical past.
Banished Knowledge is autobiographical in another sense. It is a pointer in Miller’s thoroughgoing apostasy from her own profession, psychoanalysis. She believes society colludes with Freud’s theories in order to not know the truth about our childhood, a truth that human cultures have “banished”. She concludes that the feelings of guilt instilled in our minds since our most tender years reinforce our repression even in the psychoanalytic profession.
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer, 1990)Edit
Written in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Miller takes to task the entirety of human culture. What she calls the “wall of silence” is the metaphorical wall behind which society —academia, psychiatrists, clergy, politicians and members of the media— has sought to protect itself: denying the mind-destroying effects of child abuse. She also continues the autobiographical confession initiated in Banished Knowledge about her abusive mother. In Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay Miller says that painting helped her to ponder deeply into her memories. In some of her paintings Miller depicts baby Alice as swaddled, sometimes by an evil mother. [1]
- I betrayed that little girl [..]. Only in recent years, with the help of therapy, which enabled me to lift the veil on this repression bit by bit, could I allow myself to experience the pain and desperation, the powerlessness and justified fury of that abused child. Only then did the dimensions of this crime against the child I once was become clear to me.
See alsoEdit
- Poisonous pedagogy – further explanation of Miller’s theories
BibliographyEdit
Miller’s published books in English:
- The Drama of the Gifted Child, (1978), revised in 1995 and re-published by Virago as The Drama of Being a Child. ISBN 1-86049-101-4
- Prisoners of Childhood (1981) ISBN 0-465-06287-3
- For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983) ISBN 0-374-52269-3 (available on line)
- Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child (1984) ISBN 0-374-52543-9
- Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood InjuriesISBN 0-385-26762-2
- The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and DestructivenessISBN 0-385-26764-9
- Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an EssayISBN 0-374-23241-5
- Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios (1998) ISBN 0-375-40379-5
- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful TruthISBN 0-525-93357-3
- The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness (2001) ISBN 0-465-04584-7
- The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting (2005) ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller's essays include:
- Childhood Trauma
- The Political Consequences of Child Abuse
Book reviewsEdit
External linksEdit
- Child abuse and mistreatment - Alice Miller official website
Critical:
- 'An Analysis of the Limits of Alice Miller' – biographical criticism by Daniel Mackler
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Preview — The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer--and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.
Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own fe..more
More lists with this book..
this is not the psychopop of twelve-step, i-got-in-touch-with-my-anger-today, neurosis-no-more books. 'gifted' here has nothing to do with what your school counselor/teacher told was gifted or talented. rather, the original german word refers to the ability to empathize and meet the needs of a parent figure--at the loss of your true self. while this gift might enable one to survive his/her childhood, the gifted person's unmet need to..more
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
-Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse
Not the facile pop-psychology I was expecting, rather a book with some penetrating insights. As other reviewers note, 'gifted' in this context does not refer necessarily to academic or artistic gifts (though these are common in the patient group Miller describes), rather a kind of emotional sensitivity.
Briefly, Miller de..more
This creates two 'selves' - the 'true self' - that is, the child's own 'genuine' personality and needs, and the 'false self', complying,..more
Alice Miller wrote her second b..more
Drama Begabten Kindes Pdf Free Youtube
The author believes that depression really comes from the separation of your real self with yourself..in other words, kids who grow up in..more
Alice Miller, a Swiss psychologist with twenty years in clinical practice, had come to reject traditional forms of analysis and broke from the theories of Jung and Freud - concluding the standard approach to such emotional injuries left too much power in the parent's court. The primary caretakers (most freque..more
Psychology writer and therapist Alice Miller's classic book is a must read for anyone who has a interest in psychology and childhood trauma/abuse. Written in 1978, it is brilliant and life-changing at little over one-hundred pages.
The author, Alice Miller was forced to live in Warsaw as a Jewish girl living under a false name in World War Two. She was a victim of the holocaust a..more

The author's thesis is that child abuse is carried forward generation after generation, if only unconsciously, and that child rearing that does not respect the child's needs and feelings, will add to this cycle. The child in order to earn the parent's love, will suppress its rage at not being respected, as well as any other feelings or impulses deemed inap..more
I think it is..more
Naturally, I downloaded the book the next day.
Self-help it is not. Well, not exactly; and I mean that in a good way. But it is a quick read, and only $5 on Kindle!
If you're even thinking of having kids, you must read it, or not, because..more
Should be required reading for every psychologist. I liked it even more when, in the third section of the book, the author used Hermann Hesse as an example! I learned something about my favorite author--and, more importantly, gained some highly valuable insights that I hope I can put into practice in integrating my own self.
the person she really was will crave this respect from her child as a substitute; and she will try to get it by training him to give it to her.
-The parents have found in their child's 'false self the co..more
Drama Begabten Kindes Pdf Free Trial
I would like to give this book only 1 star for the pain it caused me in unlocking repressed memories from..more
This book is an eye opener! I've read some of it a few years back and just now have gotten to reading it fully. The gist of it is that parents' expectations of their children can be projected in such a way on them, that it robs them from their 'true feelings' and 'true self', trying to become the 'perfect' child that will meet their parents approval and gain their love.A lot of times, the children ignore/shut off/re..more
Re: the evolution of psychotherapy, I was struck by the focus on mothers and what they do wrong. You wou..more
I can't and won't try to summarize this book in a few trite sentences. Suffice it to say that Dr. Alice Miller is a pioneering psychologist with great insight into the human problem. Dr. Miller states her objective, in the i..more
Yet, the main argument (how we learn to suppress feeling and expressing emotion because of our parents' parenting) is worth a look. Although I'm guessing there are better and more recent books that incorporate the same line of reasoning.
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Madison Mega-Mara..:#61 The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller | 1 | 4 | Jun 08, 2014 07:31PM |
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Psychologist and world renowned author, who is noted for her books on child abuse, translated in several languages. In her books she departed from psychoanalysis charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies, which she described in For Your Own Good.
Miller was born in Poland and as young woman lived..more