The case Henry Guntrip
Thursday October 01, 2009

Dear Alice Miller,
I really have to thank you for the words I found in your book ” Dein gerettetes Leben. Wege zur Befreiung” because they put me in crisis again.
Only a few days ago, my psychoanalist and I were saying goodbye to each other after a twelve-years- therapy. I cannot cry, free and happy, to the world “worked out with my phobias!!” ..but I joined a fair level to control them. Just a little handicap. Life is possible with some limits, isn’t it?. A therapy can’t do myracles so I was quite satisfied.
But after having read your book and recently also the works of Alexander Lowen about Psychoenergetics, I feel more and more that I didn’t really go into the nucleus of my childhood truth to meet my forgotten fears, disgusts and angers. And I feel that I still cultivate lies inside me.
Reading your words, it seems to me that my therapy has been bland and this makes me sad because I had trusted my therapist, I have spent a lot of energy, time and money.
I would like to rest from therapy and the money it costs for a period of time.
But what I have read doesn’t pass unnoticed to me. One of these nights, for example, after some pages of your book, I had a very meaningful dream that brought to the surface a souvenir of my childhood when my father hit me violently in a treacherous attack. I was extremely surprised to discover from this dream where exacltly my father had probably given me the stroke and that was in the nape of my neck.
Do you think I could join some of my truths by working alone for a time, I mean without the presence of a therapist, only followed by books, my dreams and me and having a result? Is it useful to me to put into writing my self-analysis?
Thanks for your attention.
Yours truly
M

p.s. no problem for me if you want to publish it in your website, signed Maura

AM: Yes, I am sure that you can help you more by WRITING and reading than by therapists who help you only to deny even more the truth of your childhood. Your dream gave you already the answer to the question you are asking for. Try to find my book The Truth Will Set You Free (Basic Books) and read the chapter about the story of the analyst Henry Gantrip who was analysed for many, many years by two very famous anylysts. They couldn’t help him, and it was only after the death of his second analyst, Winnicott, that Gantrip had a serie of dreams, which revealed him his true but denied story of his childhood he suffered from terribly his whole life. Unfortunately, it was too late to safe his life because he already suffered then from cancer.