“Spiritual therapist”

“Spiritual therapist”
Monday June 26, 2006

Dear Alice Miller,

I have just finished reading For your own good and I have to tell you that it had a very profound affect on me and somehow I feel that my life will never be the same.
I am a spiritual psychotherapist in Toronto Canada so the information in your book only confirms my own believes, it’s just the way it’s written that affected me so much, it’s almost as if all the thoughts I have been having (from my experiences with my clients and my own healing experiences) came out of my head and were neatly organized in this book.
It’s really interesting that I read this book in this exact time, let me explain – my husband is an alcoholic (who is trying to recover) and so was/is my father. Ever since we had our own children, my husband’s disease gotten worse (the drinking), which I suppose is not surprising. See my husband was very abused as a child, he even reffers to his step-father “the Nazi”. Even though I know a lot, because I am a psychotherapist and because I have done tons of personal healing, emotional releases etc. I still struggle major in regards to alcoholism and I play the “enabler” very well. The chapter in your book “The search for the self and self-destruction through Drugs” and life of Christiane profoundly affected me and I am very greatful for that for I have literally felt the torture my husband is putting himself through, another piece of the puzzle fit together and I can no longer see him as the person how is wrecking my life, new wave of empathy came over me and also feeling the suffering he lived through via Christiane F. The way you explain addiction just added new dimention to my knowledge and theories.
I also share the same view at Hitler if you look at it from the eyes of severely hurt child, I have never read anything about him, although suspected that something totally screwy happened to him. I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia in the Sudeten region only a few km from Germany so this topic really fascinates me. In Hitler’s family history I see names that most likely have czech/slavic origin. Poisonous pedagogy was also and still is practiced in Czech and it had and still has a different twist for the country was communist.

Anyway I could go on and on and on. The whole book was amazing, chapter about Jurgen Bartsch also fascinating, my question is how can our society NOT look at the history and NOT see the pattern? It outrages me.

Lastly I would like to thank you, for reading this book only confirmed that I am on the right path with my practice as psychotherapist and I so agree that in order to heal we must reexperience the painful and repressed emotions in order to move on and heal. That is what I focus on in my practice, I mostly practice body psychotherapy and the results are amazing.
And something has to be done differently in our school systems and in the prison systems, I have been thinking about it for a long time, but I do not know what to do and I would like to do something.

Thanks for listening and for your wonderful book and I sure will read more of yours.

Warm regards,
S. M.

AM: Thank you for your letter, I am glad that my book could help you to see more. You write that you are a spiritual therapist and I wonder what you have in mind by calling yourself this way. Can you please let us know?