Birth trauma and psychedelics

Birth trauma and psychedelics
Monday August 06, 2007

Alice Miller,

I am interested in your opinion on the use of psychedelic drugs as a form of self-therapy to access repressed memories and feelings. I have noted that you have written in some places that LSD is “violent” and is “bad” because of that. However, I have also tried reading up on various different therapies and from what I understand, psychedelic drugs seem to be the most effective way by far in lifting repression and dealing with past trauma. People who had undergone proper psychedelic therapy in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, back when they were still legal, were able to access and clear out a whole host of childhood trauma and birth trauma and prenatal trauma.
I understand that there are dangers with the wrong “set and setting” and wouldn’t psychedelics be helpful in a proper therapeutic environment? I also understand that psychedelics do currently happen to be illegal but…

Also, what do you think about birth trauma? I notice that you hardly ever mention birth trauma in your writings even though for most people, it happens to be far more traumatic than child abuse, not that I am minimizing the awful affects of child abuse. Many people, like Stanislav Grof claim that true healing does not really happen until have accessed both the “perinatal” as well as childhood traumas.

J.

AM: I don’t know of ANY other issue that is so feared and so avoided as the story of our own abuse suffered in childhood, the pain of being exploited, humiliated, hated and terrorized by people whom we loved, trusted and needed to survive. So we had to learn NOT TO SEE what then happened to us, and most people would prefer to do anything else than to face the very painful truth of their story, even if they know that facing it could help them with their health problems. For that reason you can find a huge amount of suggestions of what you can do INSTEAD of feeling how you were treated by your parents when you were a small, defenseless child. If you really WANT to do this work you don’t need drugs because the knowledge of everything you had to endure is stored up in your body. I am not an expert for giving you advice about all these ways of avoiding the MOST TERRIBLE PAIN. I can only say that the truth can’t be replaced, but it CAN be FELT, if you are no longer afraid of your parents because NOW they are no longer dangerous to the adult you have become.