Review
Prisoners of Childhood

Ruth Rendell, New Statesman, 5 June 1987

The works of the great psychoanalysts are often as readable as fiction and the writings of Freud are like the best of biography. Alice Miller is another such Her field is the psychological abuse of children and what she has to say about it in “The Drama of Being a Child” (trans. Ruth Ward, Virago) and “For Your Own Good” (trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, Virago) is both illuminating and distressingly familiar. The reader has the complex experience of recognising a great truth simultaneously with revelation and the realisation of personal tragedy long and deeply suppressed. Childhood injury, whether subjectively experienced or unwittingly perpetrated, here appears the more awful because of its irrevocability.

‘Even the worst criminal of all time was not born a criminal,’ Dr Miller writes, taking Adolf Hitler as one of her subjects for examination. If Hitler had a loving mother even she was not free from the ‘poisonous pedagogy’ which is aimed at shaping children to their parents’ taste: her husband’s submissive serving maid, addressing him incredibly as ‘uncle’, she impassively witnessed the brutal beatings of her son. And a reason is found for Hitler’s euthanasia law and need to liberate Germany from the ‘plague’ of the mentally ill in his enforced daily exposure to the frightening behaviour of his mad aunt. His adult life was a long act of revenge.

Reviews
For Your Own Good

Robin Kittrelle, RNP, The Permanent Journal – October 2001

“The truth about childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill” —Alice Miller (1)

Alice Miller, PhD, is a German psychoanalyst whose mission in life is to make the world a better place for children by helping the adults who care for them understand their own childhood events. She has written ten books about the effects of childhood on the lives of adults. Her equally important other goal is to expand that responsibility to society^—ie, the villages that raise the children. For Your Own Good may be Dr Miller’s most renowned book, and this review doubles as a tribute to Dr Miller and to her firm and persistent voice.

Miller writes about a “helping witness”—someone who acts (routinely, or even once at a critical time) with kindness toward the child and who somehow, by looking into the child’s eyes, shows the child another way to live and be. This helper may have no idea of his or her role but nonetheless acts as a counterweight to the cruelty or neglect a child experiences. DR Miller says that a critical prerequisite for normal survival is that at least once in their lives, mistreated children come into contact with a person who understands that the environment, not the child, is at fault. This helping witness teaches the child that he or she is worthy of kindness. This lesson is the basis for resilience.

Dr Miller also describes a “knowing or enlightened witness”—someone who understands the importance of being a helping witness. This person recognizes the adverse effects of childhood trauma or neglect and is willing to give emotional support that helps a child understand and express true feelings. Sadly, the first (and perhaps only) “knowing witness” in most people’s lives is often a therapist—but readily could be any physician, nurse, or teacher who is willing to understand what the child sees every day.

In her struggles with the question, “What causes evil in the world?” Miller writes here about the childhood of Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, and other mass murderers. Most recently, she wrote about corporal punishment. (2) She documents a worldwide fact: Most of today’s parents and teachers were physically punished as children. Society’s argument to justify this phenomenon is that being beaten, especially by a parent, prepares children for life and helps them learn to be obedient; indeed, we are all familiar with the exhortation to “beat some sense into [him/her/them].” In disagreement with this viewpoint, Miller argues that being beaten and unable to defend themselves only teaches children that they are not worthy of protection or respect. Beaten children become humiliated and confused although soon are taught that the beating is “for their own good” and does no lasting harm. Much later, this type of beating becomes a part of their own so-called good parenting—forming the basis for much violence in the world. The events of September 11, 2001, have provided the world an additional example of anger, revenge, and ignorance expressed as violence toward oneself and others—and have brought Miller’s For Your Own Good back into focus.

References:
(1) Miller A. Thou shalt not be aware: society’s betrayal of the child. Translated from the German by H and H Hannum; with a preface by L deMause and a new introduction by the author. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1998. p 315.
(2) Miller A. The truth will set you free: overcoming emotional blindness and finding your true adult self. [Translated from the German]. New York: Basic Books; 2001.

John A. Speyrer, Primal Psychotherapy Page

Alice Miller is a Swiss psychoanalyst who seemingly writes from the perspective of a primal theorist rather than from that of a Freudian. Her writings have always reflected her own pain, and soon after writing For Your Own Good , she published Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-Six Watercolors and An Essay. It was the feelings triggered by the paintings, illustrated in that book, which ultimately led her into primal therapy.
But even though For Your Own Good is from her psychoanalytic days, you won’t read anything in it about the id, drives or complexes; nor does it contain psychoanalytic jargon. What it does have is much good material about the long term damage of early childhood hurts suffered by children as a result of abuse from their parents. For Your Own Good was on the bestseller lists in Germany for more than 120 months when it was published. It was translated into English about ten years’ ago.

The author feels that early mistreatment of children can result in neurosis, psychosis or psychosomatic disease but concentrates her efforts in showing how a damaged childhood can be the source of psychopathic violence. Since the end of World War II, she was haunted by the dual questions of the motivation of Adolph Hitler in not only gassing millions of people but also about how easy it was for German citizens to acclaim him and assist him in carrying out his plan. Her answer to this question forms the core of the book. Besides examining the childhood of Hitler, she also analyzes the childhood of a young prostitute and drug addict and a sadistic child murderer.

Alice Miller traces the history of child rearing in Germany for the past two centuries and concludes that the source of criminality and of war itself lies in the abuse of children by their parents. Books on child rearing written during that period are quoted extensively and illustrate how beatings were used to condition children.

Centuries ago helpful advice was given to parents to encourage them to eliminate obstinacy, defiance and natural exuberance from their children’s lives. Dr. Miller states that the parents’ motives then were the same as they are today: to condition and manipulate the child and then to rationalize that it is done for the child’s own good. This process she terms “poisonous pedagogy.”

The use of humiliation (which satisfies the needs of the parents) destroys the child’s self-confidence. To suppress crying and feeling, the parents were told to reward stoicism and self-control. Childhood excitement was considered a vice, and “inhibition of life” was extolled as a virtue. Even the expression of natural maternal feelings were characterized as doting.

In order to satisfy the normal childhood curiosity of the differences between the sexes, one author suggested the viewing of naked corpses in order to evoke solemnity and reflection and thus combat the sex drive. We may sum up these early instructions in child rearing thusly: The child must be made to understand that parents are always right and the needs of the child should not be responded to since it will not prepare them for the rigors of life.

The author delves into the background of Adolph Hitler’s henchmen. She notes that they had been successfully trained to be obedient so that feelings for the atrocities they performed never emerged. At their trials, all of the war criminals pleaded that they were simply following orders. The morality of their orders was never questioned.

Eichmann was able to listen to highly emotional testimony at his trial in Israel with no feeling whatsoever, yet blushed when it was pointed out to him that he had forgotten to stand when his verdict was read. Rudolf Hess, the commandant of Aushwitz, was reared to be a Catholic missionary. He was taught to be obedient to authority so it should have been no surprise that he ran the death camp as he had been ordered to do. Similar attitudes were held by Heinrich Heimmler who deplored the shooting of animals for sport but who had no feelings for those people who were not citizens of the Third Reich.

Miller believes that people with sensitivity to feelings could not be turned into mass murderers overnight. Only the children of authoritarian parents are able to believe that their parents are always right and must be obeyed. She theorizes that if Hitler had had children against whom to direct his feelings for revenge, World War II might not have happened. She considers but rejects Lloyd de Mause’s theory of war as a disconnected feeling of traumatic birth.

Hitler’s followers looked to him as a child does to a father who knows what to do. Hitler to them was God-like, all knowing and infallible. Non-Germans were never able to understand the power this prancing little man had on the masses. His weaknesses were easy to see. But the Germans could not see through his theatrical gestures. The more pompous he become, the more he was admired. His inadequacies were not seen by children reared according to the precepts of strict obedience.

Miller feels that present-day German parents still believe that “sparing the rod spoils the child” since two-thirds of the people recent polled in Germany believe that corporal punishment is necessary, good and correct for children. She states that 60% of modern-day German terrorists are the product of Protestant ministers’ homes.

The author believes that during their lives, most people go through five psychological stages:

As a small child to be hurt and not recognizing the fact.
Failing to react to suffering with appropriate anger.
Showing gratitude to the parents for their supposedly good intentions.
Forgetting everything.
Discharging the stored-up anger onto others in adulthood or directing it against oneself.

Like most psychoanalysts, Dr. Miller feels that insight (which she terms the “aha” reaction) is sufficient to stop the parent from continuing the chain of neurosis to the next generation. She feels (I should say she felt, since the book was written before she went into primal therapy) that the solution to the problem of criminality is education and that there is power in knowledge. There indeed is power in knowledge but the problem is not there is even more power in unfelt repressed Pain.

When insight battles primal Pain, insight will lose every round. After the parent mistreats his child he might offer an apology based on his newly acquired insight. So now the child must try to understand and forgive his parent. How can the child be hurt or angry at such an insightful, well intentioned parent?

Miller ends the preface to the American edition of her book with these words: “And if we are courageous enough to face the truth, the world will change for the power of that ‘poisonous pedagogy’ which has dominated us for so long has been dependent upon our fear, our confusion, and our childish credulity; once it is exposed to the light of truth, it will inevitably disappear.”

Unfortunately, it just isn’t quite that simple. However, it is the beginning.

Ruth Rendell, New Statesman, 5 June 1987

The works of the great psychoanalysts are often as readable as fiction and the writings of Freud are like the best of biography. Alice Miller is another such Her field is the psychological abuse of children and what she has to say about it in “The Drama of Being a Child” (trans. Ruth Ward, Virago) and “For Your Own Good” (trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, Virago) is both illuminating and distressingly familiar. The reader has the complex experience of recognising a great truth simultaneously with revelation and the realisation of personal tragedy long and deeply suppressed. Childhood injury, whether subjectively experienced or unwittingly perpetrated, here appears the more awful because of its irrevocability.

‘Even the worst criminal of all time was not born a criminal,’ Dr Miller writes, taking Adolf Hitler as one of her subjects for examination. If Hitler had a loving mother even she was not free from the ‘poisonous pedagogy’ which is aimed at shaping children to their parents’ taste: her husband’s submissive serving maid, addressing him incredibly as ‘uncle’, she impassively witnessed the brutal beatings of her son. And a reason is found for Hitler’s euthanasia law and need to liberate Germany from the ‘plague’ of the mentally ill in his enforced daily exposure to the frightening behaviour of his mad aunt. His adult life was a long act of revenge.

Review
Paths of Life – Seven Scenarios

Steven Khamsi, PhD, IPA Newsletter, Fall 1999

Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios is Alice Miller’s optimistic project about human interactions and their potential for healing. This new book is the first in seven years, and the eighth overall, by the former psychoanalyst and author and an unbroken string of primal classics. The seven scenarios consist of seven chapters of imaginary encounters between mature adults, and illustrate honest communications based on new awareness. The characters describe their lives—their environments, their successes and failures—and how they came to terms with them. Also included are expert opinions on parenting, psychotherapy, gurus and cult leaders, and the nature of hatred.

Dr. Miller’s seven scenarios are about handling life and changing things for the better, and are intended to inform people and to encourage them to think. These imaginative encounters illustrate ways in which tackling sensitive interpersonal issues directly can clear the air and bring a feeling of liberation for both sides—and sometimes make the unexpected happen. Miller freely admits that this latest project arose from a wish to spare others what she herself has suffered, and reflects her old yearning for a genuine form of communication. Her intention is to explore how early experiences of suffering and love affect people’s later lives, and the ways they relate to others: her hope is that this material will serve as a stimulus for organized inquiry. Embedded in the text are many timely teachings, reflecting her notion that “information is everything” (p. 35)—that information, at the right time, can set off a valuable process of reflection.

Should adult-children forgive their parents for maltreatment during childhood? As mature adults we can feel our pain and thereby increase authentic understanding—of ourselves, of our parents, and of the complexities of life. Feeling and understanding, argues Miller, differ markedly from blaming and forgiveness. We need to take full responsibility in our relationships, including those with our parents. As adults, we are autonomous. No longer are there any real dangers in confronting one’s parents. The “gift of truth” can sometimes, though not always, change things for the better.

Concerning the primal therapies, Miller displays an informed and cautious optimism. She rightfully condemns those charlatans who would claim complete cure via regression, and their “theories” which—despite their scientific facade— have absolutely nothing to do with science (p. 147). The goal of genuine therapy is, quite simply, the liberation of individual patients from their suffering. Resolving one’s childhood issues is essential. Old patterns need to be properly worked through in a safe and reliable relationship, in the presence of someone who is genuinely sympathetic and willing to listen. It is entirely unacceptable for therapists to blame patients, or to create destructive dependencies.

There are positive aspects of the primal approach which can be salvaged, argues Miller, once it is acknowledged that primal therapy has distinct limitations and that it can have negative effects. Fortunately, primal therapists have increasingly moved away from the “initial absolutism.” Many have jettisoned both the Intensive and the darkened office, having discovered better methods to enable their patients to feel (pp. 147-8). The original primal techniques are increasingly combined with those of other approaches. Still there is a need to revise old concepts in light of these new techniques. And finally, there are grave dangers where the power of the primal approach is used to manipulate and exploit, as has been demonstrated all too often by unscrupulous “therapists,” gurus and cult leaders.

As in all her books, Dr. Miller again demonstrates how the violence done to children devolves back on society as a whole (p. 155). Children who are beaten, for example, become emotional time bombs (p. 169). Still, child-victims can almost always develop trust if they are shown an understanding environment, and if the harm is identified as such, not disavowed or played down. Such children benefit from a “helping witness” who extends honesty, affection and love (if not protection); or a “knowing witness” who actively helps one to become conscious of their maltreatment and to articulate their sorrow (pp. 155-6). In some cases, a confrontation with the past is unavoidable in order to change things for the better (p. 178). Remember—it is the denial of our sufferings that is the breeding ground for hatred, an act of self-deception and an impasse that is deflected onto innocent victims (p. 186); the only factor separating rescuers and persecutors is the quality of parental nurture (p. 174). But here again is cause for optimism. We live in an age where far more people than ever before are growing up free of physical abuse, and these people can help to counteract the tradition of destructive violence that has plagued us for thousands of years (p. 186).

In this, her most recent work, Alice Miller states that she has grown more tolerant and patient as she’s aged; that she no longer feels alone in what she knows; that she no longer has anything to prove. Her current volume supports such assertions. Who could argue that Miller’s core contributions—The Drama of the Gifted Child (a.k.a. Prisoner of Childhood), For Your Own Good, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, Pictures of a Childhood, The Untouched Key, Banished Knowledge, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, and now Paths of Life—have failed to increase our individual consciousness of self psychology, or to raise our collective awareness of significant social issues? We are fortunate, then, to receive this latest offering about the paths of ordinary life, about new understandings based on real feelings, and about genuine love that can face up to such truth (p. 186).

Excerpt
The Truth Will Set You Free

Prologue: Thou Shalt Not Know

When I was a child, the story of Creation was for me above all the story of the forbidden fruit. I could not understand why Adam and Eve should not be allowed to have knowledge. To me knowledge and awareness were wonderful things. So I failed to see the logic behind God’s decision to forbid Adam and Eve to recognize the essential difference between good and evil.

My childhood stubbornness on this point lost none of its vigor when I later encountered other interpretations of the story of Creation. At an emotional level I simply refused to see obedience as a virtue, curiosity as a sin, and ignorance of good and evil as an ideal state. To my way of thinking, the apple from the tree of knowledge promised an explanation of evil and hence represented redemption – good as opposed to evil.

There are countless theological explanations for the motives behind God’s inscrutable counsels, but in all too many of them I see a terrorized child trying hard to interpret the mysterious actions of the parents as good and loving, even though the child cannot fathom them – indeed, has no possible chance of fathoming them. The motives behind them are unfathomable even for the parents themselves, hidden away as they are in the dark recesses of their own childhood.

I have never understood why God would tolerate the presence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden only if they remained ignorant and why they were punished so severely for their disobedience. I never felt any yearnings for a Paradise where obedience and ignorance are the conditions for beatitude. I believe in the power of love, but for me love is not synonymous with being “good” in the sense of being obedient. Love has something to do with being true to oneself and one’s feelings and needs. And the desire for knowledge is part of that. God obviously set out to deprive Adam and Eve of this loyalty to themselves. But why? My conviction is that we can love only if we are allowed to be what we are: no pretense, no disguises, no façades. We can genuinely love only if we do not deny ourselves the knowledge available to us (like the tree of knowledge in Paradise), if, instead of fleeing from it, we have the simple courage to eat the apple.

I still find it difficult to summon up any kind of tolerance when I hear it said that children have to be beaten to make them “good” and to ensure that God will take pleasure in them. The story of Creation has long prevented us from opening our eyes and recognizing that we have been misguided.

I can remember as a child causing my parents embarrassment by asking questions they found difficult to answer. I bit back the questions that were on the tip of my tongue. But they come back again and again, and I intend to make use of my freedom as an adult to let the child within finally ask the questions she always wanted to ask.

Why did God plant the Tree of Knowledge right in the middle of the Garden of Eden if  He didn’t want the two people He had created to eat the fruit? Why did He, the almighty God who created Heaven and Earth, lead His creatures into temptation and force them into obedience? If He was omniscient, He must have known that in creating humans He had made beings who would be curious by nature and that He would be forcing them to be untrue to their nature. Why might He have done that? And what would have happened if Eve had not partaken of the fruit? There would have been no sexual union, so Adam and Eve would never have had any children. Would the world have stayed barren and empty? Would Adam and Eve have lived forever, alone, without children?

Why is having children bound up with sin? Why is the act of giving birth so painful? How are we to understand that God planned these two human creatures to be infertile, although the story of Creation talks of how the birds and the beasts are actively enjoined to go forth and multiply? God must have had a concept of reproduction. Later we are told that Cain married and had children. But if there was no one else on earth except Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, where did his wife come from? Why did God reject Cain for displaying jealousy? Had He not forced him to be jealous by giving obvious preference to Abel?

Whenever I asked these questions, I aroused indignation for having the temerity to query God’s omniscience and omnipotence and for dismissing the information I did get as illogical and inconsistent. Usually the response was evasive. I was told not to take the Bible so literally, that it was symbolic. Symbolic of what? I asked, but got no answer. Or I was reminded that the Bible contains much that is fine and true, something that I had never denied; but I did not see why I had to accept the things I found illogical.

Children want to be accepted and loved, so in the end they do as they’re told – which is precisely what I did. But that did not mean that I had lost the need to understand. Unable to fathom God’s motives, I set out more modestly to inquire into the motives people might have for so readily accepting these contradictions.

With the best will in the world I could find nothing evil in what Eve did. If God really loved those two he wouldn’t want them to be blind, I thought. Was it really the serpent that seduced Eve into a desire for knowledge? Or was it God Himself? If an ordinary mortal were to show me something desirable and then say I must not desire it, I would find that positively perverse and cruel. But when it came to God, one wasn’t even allowed to think such things, much less say them out loud.

So I was left alone with my reflections, and my search for enlightenment from books was equally fruitless. Then I made a simple discovery that put the contradictions in a whole new light. The Bible was written by men. We must assume that those men had been through some unpleasant experiences at the hands of their fathers. Surely none of them had had a father who took pleasure in their inquiring minds, realized the futility of expecting the impossible of them and refrained from punishing them. That was why they were able to create an image of God with sadistic features that did not strike them as such. God as they saw Him devised a cruel scenario in which He gave Adam and Eve the tree of knowledge but at the same time forbade them to eat its fruit – that is, to achieve awareness and become autonomous personalities. He wanted to keep them entirely dependent on Him.

To me, a father who takes pleasure in tormenting his child is sadistic. And punishing that child for the effects of his own sadism has nothing to do with love, but a great deal to do with Poisonous Pedagogy (the Bible is full of it). This was how the authors of the Bible saw their “loving” father. In his Epistle to the Hebrews (12: 6-8), Paul makes it clear that it is chastisement that bestows the certainty of being the true sons of God and not bastards: “But if ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” I can imagine that people whose childhoods were lived in an atmosphere of respect, without physical punishment and humiliation, will believe in a different God when they grow up – a loving, guiding, explaining God, giving them an example they can live by.

Either that or they may do without an idea of God altogether, preferring to get their bearings from human models they can look up to as embodiments of love in the true sense of the word.

This book is the expression of my identification with Eve. Not with the infantile Eve palmed off on us as a kind of Little Red Riding Hood, easy prey to an animal’s cunning temptation, but with an Eve who saw through the injustice of her situation, rejected the commandment “Thou shalt not know,” set out to understand the difference between Good and Evil and was prepared to assume responsibility for her actions.

In these pages I offer the insights that have become accessible to me since I found the courage to listen to what my body was trying to tell me and in this way to decipher the meaning of the very beginning of my own life. The journey back through childhood to that beginning enabled me to discover and describe the subtle mechanisms of denial that operate in us but that we rarely perceive because the commandment “Thou shalt not know” gets in the way.

I sincerely believe that we not only have the right to know what is good and what is evil; we have the duty to acquire that knowledge if we hope to assume responsibility for our own lives and those of our children. Only by knowing the truth can we be set free. Only in this way can we free ourselves from the fears and anxieties we knew as children, blamed and punished for sins we did not know we had committed, the fateful fear of the sin of disobedience, that crippling anxiety that has wrecked so many people’s lives and keeps them in thrall to their own childhood.

Given the right help, we as adults can free ourselves from that terrible spell. We can procure vital information and realize that we are no longer forced to search for some profound logic in everything our educators and religious instruction teachers passed to us as the gospel truth – and which was nothing other than the product of their own anxieties. You will be amazed at the relief you will feel when you step out of that stifling role. Then, at last, you will claim your right to face reality head-on, to reject illogical justifications, and to remain true to your own history.

Reviews
The Truth Will Set You Free

Michael Pastore, ePublishersWeekly.com

How Adults Can Survive A Childhood of Violence and Untruth

“Fear and love cannot live together … Blows are used to correct brute beasts.”
—Seneca (Roman philosopher, author, politician, 4 B.C.E. to C.E. 65)

Two thousand years ago, the people of ancient Rome cheered enthusiastically as they watched gladiators fight each other to the death, and saw innocent persons torn to pieces by wild beasts. In that same era, Roman teachers practiced corporal punishment on a daily basis. The Roman schools were stocked with a variety of instruments used to beat children, including the ferula (a bundle of switches made from birch branches), the scutia (a whip made of leather straps), and the flagellum (a whip made of straps from ox-hide, the hardest available leather).

Although feeding slaves to lions and beating children in schools were acceptable practices to the mass of Roman citizens, occasionally a voice of protest cried out. The rhetorician Quintilian (C.E. 35 to C.E. 95) wrote: “I am entirely against the practice of corporal punishment in education, although it is widespread … In the first place it is disgusting and slavish treatment, which would certainly be regarded as an insult if it were not inflicted on boys. Further, the pupil whose mind is too coarse to be improved by censure will become as indifferent to blows as the worst of slaves. Finally, these chastisements would be entirely unnecessary if the teachers were patient and helpful.”

After blaming teachers for failing to induce students to do what is right, and then asking how corporal punishers could possibly handle boys who cannot be influenced by fear, Quintilian adds: “And consider how shameful, how dangerous to modesty are the effects produced by the pain or fear of the victims. This feeling of shame cripples and unmans the spirit, making it flee from and detest the light of day.”

Most Americans would condemn the Roman practices as backward, barbaric, and cruel. To me, it is remarkable that a similar savagery – the child abuse in our own homes and schools – is discussed so rarely, coldly, and superficially in American newspapers, television programs, and books. Our culture is poisoned by violence against children. In the year 2000, the US Department of Health and Human Services received 3 million reports of child maltreatment involving 5 million American children. Approximately 879,000 children (of the 5 million reported) were confirmed victims of child maltreatment, comprising neglect and medical neglect (63%) , physical abuse (19%), sexual abuse (10%), and psychological maltreatment (8%). These numbers do not include the 400,000 children who were paddled that year – legally paddled – in American schools.

How can we explain the lack of private awareness and public action regarding the way we bruise and bully our beloved boys and girls? Where is the outrage from our authors and university professors who specialize in these fields? … It appears to me that these thinkers have failed to understand the one most important thing: the essence of human nature. Like the church, too many writers have bellowed that children are inherently evil, and therefore – outside of heaven – there is little chance for individual fulfillment or social progress. This most dangerous myth – that babies are born with evil genes and children are by nature violent creatures – yielded a Nobel Prize for Literature to the author of that puerile fable, Lord of The Flies.

Fortunately, we can still find authors who believe that children are born good: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, A.S. Neill, Erich Fromm, Ashley Montagu, Abraham Maslow, Colin Wilson. One more writer must be added to this prestigious list. Throughout the past twenty years, the psychiatrist Alice Miller has been the most passionate and articulate advocate for every child’s natural goodness, and for each child’s right to live free from violence. Miller’s previous books include For Your Own Good (1983); Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (1985); The Drama of the Gifted Child (revised edtiton,1996); Banished Knowledge (1997); and Paths of Life (1998). Miller’s latest work – The Truth Will Set You Free – draws on the wisdom of the earlier volumes, but also introduces many new ideas.

Miller’s argument, in The Truth Will Set You Free might be summarized as something like this:

1. Many adults manage their children with parenting and teaching methods which employ physical or emotional violence against the child.
2. Because of this violent treatment, the children grow up blind to the dangers of violent parenting, and out of touch with their true feelings and needs.
3. When these children grow to become teachers and parents, they will practice these same violent methods against their own children.
4. This cycle of “violence breeds more violence” can be broken, and abused adults can heal themselves and become nonviolent parents.

Miller begins by explaining, with many examples, how and why childhood reality is avoided “in six fields where we should expect precisely the opposite: medicine, psychotherapy, politics, the penal system, religion, and biography.” … Miller’s next section, ‘How We Are Struck Emotionally Blind’, offers an explanation for the remarkable and often-repeated story: “A father will beat his son and humiliate him with sarcastic remarks but not have any memory whatever of having been similarly humiliated by his own father.’ … In the third part of the book, Miller offers examples of courageous adults who have healed themselves despite long histories of parental abuse.

Miller offers a stunning explanation about the mystery: “Why do people refuse to see and change their actions which are harmful to themselves and others?” … In a previous book, Paths Of Life (1998), Miller says:

“People subjected to mistreatment in childhood may go on insisting all their lives that beatings are harmless and corporal punishment is salutary, although there is overwhelming, indeed conclusive, evidence to the contrary.”

Written from the heart, this book explains the causes of our problems, and provides jargon-free solutions that work. Miller writes: “As a therapist I know that we can free ourselves from inherited patterns if we can find someone to believe us and stand by us, someone who instead of moralizing wants to help us live with the truth.”

Along our road to individual freedom it is necessary for us to find what Miller calls an enlightened witness: a therapist, teacher, lawyer, or writer who is well-informed, open-minded, and willing to listen to the painful personal truths we need to tell.

In focusing on self-revelation as the key to freedom, Miller reminds me of the brilliant but neglected psychologist Sidney M. Jourard. In The Transparent Self, Jourard writes:

“We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price. When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the “lonely crowd.” Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms.”

Jourard died in an accident at age 48 – only three years after the 1971 revised edition of The Transparent Self – too young to nurture his theory with the kind of real-life examples that make it more potent and therapeutic. Alice Miller has done this: filled her works with numerous examples of individuals who struggle and succeed in expressing their true selves in words and deeds. Miller’s book is so honest about the lives of specific individuals, it reveals the inner life of us all.

The Truth Will Set You Free is a Alice Miller’s masterpiece, which shows us how we can face the darkest secrets of our painful childhoods, and emerge with hope, courage, and insights for living our lives more genuinely – more tenderly – with ourselves, and with the family and friends we care about. In my copy of the book I have marked scores of passages, passages that corroborate my intuitions and personal experiences working with children and adults of all ages and backgrounds. The book, with its stream of brilliant observations and profound ideas, moved me in ways that are too deep to express in words.

“Trust men,” writes R.W. Emerson, “and they will be true to you.” … Inspired by Miller’s book, I now understand much more clearly how to listen, and how to help other persons to free themselves by sharing the depths of their hearts and souls. And there is one more essential lesson that this book may teach. Happy children with healthy childhoods are an endangered species. All of us involved in the helping professions must actively work to create a culture where violence against children, in all forms, is replaced with the three most beautiful human gifts: reason, sincerity, and love.

Michael Pastore, Editorial Director, Zorba Press

Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D, IPA Newsletter, Spring 2002

Thou Shalt Be Aware: a Review of The Truth Will Set You Free – Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self (Alice Miller, 2001, New York: Basic Books)

The terrorist, the mass murderer, the anorexic . . .

At the very beginning of human history, well before the Ten Commandments, we were presented with a supreme and destructive commandment. “Thou shalt not be mindful of the things done to you or the things you have done to others.” For thousands of years, this “commandment of ignorance” has undermined our education and our childrearing, and has prevented us from telling good from evil. And although evil is learned and not innate, it is reproduced with each new generation. When we deny our childhood wounds, we inflict them on the next generation – unless and until we act in favor of knowledge. “Only by knowing the truth can we be set free.”

Alice Miller continues to impress and inspire. The Truth Will Set You Free (published in Europe as Eve’s Awakening) challenges us to reflect on our secrets and shortcomings. Miller exposes one of society’s dirtiest secrets – that we are “emotionally blind” to abuses suffered by prisoners of childhood. Innocent children, no matter their country, class, or generation, are neglected, humiliated, and abused. Small children cannot survive such truths and can only repress them. But, because “the body never forgets,” one’s cauldron of pain seethes in the unconscious.

Fortunately for these young victims, psychological defenses offer partial protection against pain and anxiety. But repressing childhood traumas leaves mental barriers, an inner void, and the emotional blindness that prods them to harm themselves and others. These young victims become the suicides and psychopaths, the criminals and killers, the prostitutes and self-mutilators… as well as the everyday parents who abuse us “for our own good.” All are trapped in unconscious compulsions to reenact their destructive childhood dramas on themselves and others.

Throughout this work, Miller questions the Bible. She notes that the Bible contains much that is fine and true, but much “poisonous pedagogy” as well. We must have the courage to eat the apple from the tree of knowledge, to question that which is illogical. Is obedience a virtue? Is curiosity a sin? Is ignorance of good and evil an ideal state? Miller argues that it is our duty to overcome childhood wounds and acquire knowledge – by overcoming our defenses and our “emotional blindness” – so that we may come to know good from evil, and thereby become more fully responsible for our actions. We are also responsible for future generations, so we must love and protect all children, no matter the hostility, condemnation, or ostracism that we may encounter.

But how can we overcome our “emotional blindness”? Not through medication, not through meditation, not through relaxation training. Only by embarking on an indispensable journey of self-discovery, in which we confront our childhood traumas and uncover our early emotions. Telling the stories of our childhood allows us to break down walls and reclaim banished knowledge – but only in the presence of an enlightened witness. We benefit from simple regressions, and even from momentary glimpses, into our childhood experiences. A picture of our childhood gradually emerges. And when we discover personal truths, we regain our vitality, our sensitivity, our ability to love.

Many of these ideas, suggests Miller, are supported by recent brain research. There is new knowledge about psychobiological defenses and about the damage caused to individuals by stress, trauma, and neglect. She credits Joseph LeDoux, Debra Niehoff, Candace Pert, Daniel Schacter, and Robert Sapolsky for the discovery that early emotions leave “indelible traces” in the body.

But despite these scientific discoveries, we have yet to change the way we treat children. Miller is optimistic that legislation and parental education can and will reduce violence to children. This “principle of prevention” will cause our mentality, and our society, to change in stages. Such legislation has already advanced in Sweden, Germany, and South Africa.

Throughout this important new book, we are reminded of Miller’s previous and seminal insights: that every criminal was humiliated, neglected, or abused in childhood; that only people beaten as children feel the compulsion to beat their own children; and that the world’s worst tyrants had childhoods marked by extreme cruelty and humiliation. They had no empathic helpers, no enlightened witnesses. Dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, Ceausescu, and Mao, for example, unconsciously reenacted their childhood situations on the political stage. They defended against their pain first through denial, and then through the idealization of their parents. They came to glorify violence and eventually took revenge on whole nations and peoples as a way of getting even for the cruelty they had once experienced. At one very important level, it is society’s blindness to suppressed childhood pain and rage that makes war possible.

Also included in the current volume are brief critiques of the avoidance of childhood in six fields – medicine, psychotherapy, politics, the penal system, religion, and biography. Several new case studies (including the psychoanalyst Harry Guntrip) appear, and important insights are offered into corporal punishment, eating disorders, and circumcision. Finally, several important new books and web sites are recommended to readers.

Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D., has practiced primal psychotherapy in northern California since 1977, and he also teaches psychology at the collegiate level.

John A. Speyrer, Primal Psychotherapy Page

“If you abide in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” —John 8:31-32

Alice Miller has written another great book and you can read its engaging Prologue for free on her website. She begins by telling us that as a child she questioned the Bible. Why did God prohibit Adam and Eve from having knowledge by prohibiting their eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge? The acquisition of knowledge should not be accompanied with such huge penalties. Why was God both loving and yet vengeful?

He seemed to be more maladjusted than his human creatures. Why were the first couple punished so severely for disobedience; for showing natural curiosity. It was explained to her that Genesis was symbolic. Symbolic of what, she wanted to know. Alice Miller decided early in life that the Bible was written by man; probably by men who had been mistreated by a parent. That was her explanation of God’s sadistic behavior as described throughout the Old Testament.

(…)

Dr. Miller discusses the prevalent concept that some of us are just born “bad.” In spite of overwhelming evidence, this myth, she writes, just refuses to go away. She believes that “The capacity for empathy… cannot be developed in the absence of loving care.” And the effects of unmet essential needs are not all psychological since neurobiologists have determined that severely traumatized children have “severe lesions affecting 50 percent” of their brains. Psychologically, these adults have a need to react to the violence done to them in their youth. This, Dr. Miller believes, is the origin of the psychopathic individual – the person with few feelings and no conscience.

In spite of the abundant scientific knowledge which explains sociopathy there is almost a built-in avoidance of the implications of these findings. Miller devotes a goodly portion of her book examining the whys of this evasion in certain important areas of society where its professionals seemingly should know better. Each of these areas are examined in detail and contain case histories which support her conclusions. These avoidances, she writes, exist in the fields of medicine, psychotherapy, politics, the penal system, religion and biographical literature.

The Avoidance of Truth In Medicine and the Media

Instead of handling feelings by having an opportunity to talk about them, we are given medication to quieten their effects. Therapies have been around for a long time which allow patients to experience the early repressed feelings driving their symptoms, yet we never hear about them from the media. It is as though these findings are unimportant. Dr. Miller believes that one reason is because of the blame which the publicity would place on parents. Because of this taboo many seeking help are not receiving it.

Even if empathetic physicians had the time to listen to their patients, most lack the understanding of the “language of emotions.” Doctors have an unconscious fear of uncovering their own childhood hurts which keeps them from being as useful to their patients as they could be.

She believes that in order to heal what is needed is an inner confrontation of the early repressed abuse and the uncovering of the defenses encasing those memories. Miller believes that if physicians were at least interested in hearing about their patient’s personal histories that this could help. Even recognition of one’s own limitations and some knowledge of psychosomatic medicine can be of some benefit. The widespread knowledge of the reality of the childhood of most people should be incorporated in medical training. Currently, to the patient’s detriment, this information is more or less completely ignored.

How Knowledge of the Reality of Misery In Childhood Is Evaded in Psychotherapy

When one thinks of psychotherapy one thinks of childhood feelings. But it isn’t necessarily so, Alice Miller writes. Instead, many schools of therapy tend to avoid those feelings as much as possible. Some therapists feel that such information can be harmful since their patients may then begin to think of themselves as victims. They don’t want to encourage the “poor me” syndrome and believe that it is better and nobler to consider themselves as responsible adults in spite of their reality. The least they should expect from therapy is to gain an understaining of why they feel as though they were victims. Too many psychiatrists rush to give medication when instead exploration into their patient’s past should be made.

Dr. Miller does not support combining medication with therapy since she believes that the medicine interferes with the patients interest in the reality of their past. Even specialists in post traumatic stress symptoms rely too much on medication. Yet the author insists that not everyone needs to go into profound regressions. Many only need “momentary glimpses of childhood reality” in order to improve. Understanding those early repressed feelings can provide an opportunity for growth, Alice Miller writes.

How Political Ideological Stances Are Affected By Early Chilhood Abuse

In this section Alice Miller examines the childhood and parents of Adolph Hitler. The author believes that the early childhood of many inspire them to seek a political goal from where they might have an opportunity to project the injustices of their home environment on to their subjects. The author believes that “racism, anti-semitism, fundamentalist fanaticism and ‘ethnic cleansing.’ ” can all be traced to early parental neglect and cruelty.

Besides the use of case studies to illustrate her points the book also contains short but excellent insightful observations into the lives and childhoods of Stalin, St Augustine, Gorbachev, Pope John Paul, Milosovec, Equatorial African Familes, Rudolf Höss, Frank McCourt and psychoanalyst Harry Guntrip.

The Penal System As A Container For Detrimental Acting Out Behaviors

The area comprising the penal system is one in which its professionals seem to have an extraordinary need to deny the reality of early childhood suffering. Why people become criminals is a question which is too infrequently asked by those working in this system. Even prison psychotherapists do not use the opportunity they have to really help their charges. Adjustment to the present is the keyword rather than an emphasis on discovering the past . The author believes that a shift of this emphasis could prevent a great deal of recidivism.

Why Are the Churches Silent?

The author believes that the schools of many religious denominations justified the use of sadistic practicies as though they were revelations from God. Alice Miller wrote a letter to Pope John Paul asking him to exhort Catholics worldwide not to physically punish their children. [For a copy of the correspondence to the Pope and to world leaders see her website.]

She wrote in The Truth Will Set You Free about the inadequate reply she received from the Vatican. She was not expecting a proclamation by the church in an attempt to change attitudes of parents in child rearing, but, at minimum was seeking some form of acknowledgment by the church about how serious the problem is. Miller wonders why her appeal was ignored. She asks, “(w)hy do they choose to ignore the sources that have been pointed out to them?” She believes that Catholics “. . . accept the authoritian attitude of the church because it is something they are only too familiar with from their own childhood.”

People who are taught to obey without question are the types who “display an astounding willingness to espouse the most abstruse ideologies of religious sects, neo-Nazi groups, or fundamentalist communities, and at the command of others (commands from others are indispensible!) will think nothing of destroying human lives and trampling on human dignity.” This was written before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States but her statement well explains the ultimate origins of this catastrophic event! We already know the sources of violence. How long will it take to change childrearing practices?

Alice Miller believes that both the churches and government are fearful of bringing up the topic of violence in childrearing because they don’t want to disturb their congregations and voters. Perhaps, she writes, it is an unconscious fear of retribution from their parents! She believes that there are individual priests who know and understand the latest scientific truths. Miller wrote how St Augustine is known for his love of God, and that he was able to overcome the beatings he received as a small child. However, it is true that he did encourage child beating and wrote about how children were innately bad. He rejected his only child who was “born out of sin” and some believe that Augustine probably caused his son’s early death.

The Myopic Authors of Biographies

Alice Miller bemoans the reality that generally it is only psychohistorians who examine in detail the infancy and childhood of the subjects of their biographies. Thousands of books have been written about the lives of Hitler and Stalin yet their authors have almost completely ignored their subject’s childhood. Even when they did mention significantly cruel upbringings they most often ignore its potentially horrendous implications.

Miller contrasts the upbringing of Stalin with that of Gorbachev. Stalin was the child of an alcoholic father who administered daily beatings to his only son. His mother was distant and nonsupportive. She was away from home quite frequently. As head of the Communist government his paranoia directly resulted in the deaths of millions whom he falsely suspected of being traitors and thus enemies to his well being. Miller writes that perhaps if Stalin had known the real origins of his distrust of others, multitudes would have saved from imprisonment, torture and death.

Gorbachev, on the other hand, was from a family which had no tradition of child beating. His career in government was marked by respect for others, relative openness, and the lack of hypocrisy. The author believes that although Gorbachev’s family was very poor, his early needs for love and affection had been met. She writes: “(P)overty may have no adverse effect on the character of a child as long as that child’s personal integrity is not damaged by hypocrisy, cruelty, abuse, corporal punishment, or psychological humiliation.”

In recent autobiographical literature there has been of late less of a tendency to romanticize one’s early upbringing. Alice Miller writes that even though realism is expressed in such writings the pain and suffering endured is made to appear less significant than it really was. No rebellion is displayed. Even when humiliation and pain are written about, they are often downplayed. In Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt describes such injustices in disheartening detail, yet the childhood tragedies he and his siblings suffered are written about in a humorous fashion which denies their significance both to him and his readers. Biographers are thus neglecting an important way of insightfully informing their readers about the true knowledge of the origins of much of the sufferings in the world.

* * *

In answering the question of what is the most important issue of psychotherapy today, the author responds that it is “the emotional and cognitive recognition of the truth” as it relates to our present sufferings and the importance of the presence of an “enlightened witness” to help us reduce these sufferings.

Miller defines “enlightened witness” as “therapists with the courage to face up to their own histories and thereby to gain their autonomy rather than seeking to offset their own repressed feelings of ineffectuality by exercising power over their patients.” Therapists should not be neutral, she insists, but instead be on the side of their client in championing their child who once was.

So how do we discover who we once were? How do we uncover our histories? Even without psychotherapy some are able to extricate themselves from their repressions and projections. In the Chapter entitled Talking It Through, she examines how others have shuckled off their childhood pains in therapy, simply by coming to understand the origin of their unhappiness. If only it were that easy! Perhaps, for some with mild neuroses – those who were not seriously damaged – behavioral changed can be made relatively easy.

(…)

Alice Miller ends her book with an Epilogue, continuing her dialogue with the problem posed by the tree of knowledge of Genesis. We must make a decision, she writes, in favor of knowledge. We must be able to recognize the evil both done to us and evil we do to our children.

Miller draws on the image of the family of Jesus as ideal. Loved even before his birth, Mary and Joseph viewed themselves as his servants. The result was not an unruly selfish child. To the contrary, he became obedient, aware, and empathic. She writes, “The image of God entertained by children who have received love is a mirror of their very first experiences. Their God will understand, encourage, explain, pass on knowledge and be tolerant of mistakes. He will never punish them for their curiosity, suffocate their creativity, seduce them, give them incomprehensible commands, or strike fear into their hearts.”

Unfortunately, the churchmen, themselves being deprived of a happy childhood could not follow these values as the Crusades and the Inquisition were later to clearly show. “Two thousand years after Christ, we can in fact say that his teachings have yet to find their way into the church.”

Children brought up in love “will be immune to the teachings of those biblical authors representing the father as a jealous God, unpredictable and unjust, even downright cruel.”
But children forced to overlook the cruelty born of irresponsibility and indifference on the part of their parents are in danger of blindly adopting this attitude themselves and staying bogged down in the fatalistic ideology that declares evil to be the way of the world. As adults they will retain the perspective of the helpless child with no alternative but to come to terms with its fate. They will not know that, paradoxically, they can only grow out of this childlike attitude if they lose the fear of the wrath of God (their parents) and are willing to inform themselves about the destructive consequences of repressed childhood traumas. But if they do become alive to this truth, they will regain their lost sensibility for the suffering of children and free themselves of their emotional blindness. —p. 190.