P: I just read the first article and I think the whole debate whether she failed on her son is absurd because when he was small his mother was not fully aware of how abusive education can be. She was a traditional mother as anybody else, and as a therapist she followed the traditional Freudian psychoanalysis of her time....only when she found out that this type of therapy does not really solve the problem but intensifies it, she started developing her own, very different theory....but by that was not until the 1970, resulting in her first book, the drama, in 1979...by that time her son was about 30 years old, so how could she protect him from a violent father??? So this criticism is bloody BS!!”
Hi P,
Thank you for writing. I completely agree with everything you wrote. This comment made by Makus Roth on the article you sent me, says also almost the same thing you just said above: “Alice Miller's life cycle is comparable to the conversion of Sau to Paul, from the unconscious to the conscious mother. when she wrote the first of her 13 books (drama dbk= Das Drama de begabten Kiindes, The drama of the gifted child), 1979, when her son was already 29 years old and she kept on developing every time clearer and clearer. Already years ago she apologized to her son for her misbehavior in his childhood, whereas her son had and still has trouble with it.” Makus Roth
I feel Alice Miller’s experience is very similar to mine. My love for my ex and my desire to help him made me look for help so we could save our relationship and in the process I freed myself. Alice Miller too saw that her son had problems, and how ironic they both have the same first name, my ex’s first name is also Martin! Alice Miller like me started lifting every stone to look for clues to help her son and in the process resolved her own repression and freed herself, just like me that I went out looking for clues how to help my Ex and I end up liberating myself in the process. And at the end, I had to let my ex-go, and Alice too had to let her son go because once a person is an adult, no one, not even the mother, can make up for what we need as children and we didn’t get. Once we are adults only we can save ourselves and anyone that tells us otherwise are fooling us with false hopes and promises.
Alice Miller was driven to write her books to warn society of the dangers of childhood repression to save the children of the future and help us to face and resolve our own repression. This is why it’s so important for people to face their own repression before having children or at least become aware of their own childhood repression before their children become teenagers and adults, because it’s not the trauma itself that causes long-term damage, but the repressed emotions that causes long-term damage and if parents become aware of the damage done before their children become teenagers or adults they can help their children express their true feelings of anger, fear and hurt, because the children are still emotionally dependent on their parents, but once the children become teenagers or adults the defense mechanisms and walls have been built and it’s out of the parents hands, they can become the most conscious parents, but it will be too late, because they can’t force the teenagers and adult children remove the walls to face and feel their childhood repression, if they don’t wish to do so.
Alice Miller made herself very vulnerable to all the psychopaths in the world to warn us, her courage is astonishing. Psychopaths always feed on people's weakness to advance themselves and don’t care who they hurt, step on or destroy in the process as long they get what they want. In the interview Martin Miller is giving in the link you sent me, he is speaking in German and of course I don’t understand what he is saying, but the body never lies and the language of the body is universal, his body is telling his truth and you can see how this man has been repressing all of his life with the aid of food and probably also with all kinds of medications, and never allowed himself to consciously feel the full range of the repressed feelings of the child he once was within the context of his own childhood. And as long we go on repressing our feelings the compulsion to abuse ourselves, others or both will go on endless overtly or covertly and you can see he has been abusing himself by overeating to numb his feelings when present triggers trigger him because he is extremely overweight.
The title of his book is “The true drama of the gifted child- the tragedy of Alice Miller” but the title of his book should have been: “The Drama of the gifted child - the tragedy of my life” because his life is the real tragedy and sad beyond words, because he still stuck in his childhood and probably will never break free, because he is already 63 and the older we get the harder it gets to resolve our repression. Alice Millers’ life is not a tragedy, because she broke free and died free, the beginning of her life was a tragedy, but not the end of her life, she became honest with herself and others and that is the most important achievement anyone can reach in this lifetime, not like most people in our society that are stuck in their childhood pretending and acting as if personality their whole lives, fooling themselves and others.
As Alice says in her book The Body Never Lies, page, 86: ““… For how can I prove to someone that freedom is within reach, if all his life he has clung to the constraints that were necessary for his survival, and if he cannot imagine life without those constraints? I can say that I myself have achieved such freedom by getting to the bottom of my own story, but I have to admit that I am not a good example. After all, it took me over forty years to arrive at the stage I have reached now. But there are others. I know people who have succeeded in unearthing their memories in a much shorter space of time, and the discovery of their own truth has enabled them to emerge from the autistic hiding place that used to be their only refuge. In my case, the reason the journey took so long was that I was on my own for most of it.”
Alice Miller made herself very vulnerable to all the psychopaths in the world to warn us, her courage is astonishing. Psychopaths always feed on people's weakness to advance themselves and don’t care who they hurt, step on or destroy in the process as long they get what they want. In the interview Martin Miller is giving in the link you sent me, he is speaking in German and of course I don’t understand what he is saying, but the body never lies and the language of the body is universal, his body is telling his truth and you can see how this man has been repressing all of his life with the aid of food and probably also with all kinds of medications, and never allowed himself to consciously feel the full range of the repressed feelings of the child he once was within the context of his own childhood. And as long we go on repressing our feelings the compulsion to abuse ourselves, others or both will go on endless overtly or covertly and you can see he has been abusing himself by overeating to numb his feelings when present triggers trigger him because he is extremely overweight.
The title of his book is “The true drama of the gifted child- the tragedy of Alice Miller” but the title of his book should have been: “The Drama of the gifted child - the tragedy of my life” because his life is the real tragedy and sad beyond words, because he still stuck in his childhood and probably will never break free, because he is already 63 and the older we get the harder it gets to resolve our repression. Alice Millers’ life is not a tragedy, because she broke free and died free, the beginning of her life was a tragedy, but not the end of her life, she became honest with herself and others and that is the most important achievement anyone can reach in this lifetime, not like most people in our society that are stuck in their childhood pretending and acting as if personality their whole lives, fooling themselves and others.
As Alice says in her book The Body Never Lies, page, 86: ““… For how can I prove to someone that freedom is within reach, if all his life he has clung to the constraints that were necessary for his survival, and if he cannot imagine life without those constraints? I can say that I myself have achieved such freedom by getting to the bottom of my own story, but I have to admit that I am not a good example. After all, it took me over forty years to arrive at the stage I have reached now. But there are others. I know people who have succeeded in unearthing their memories in a much shorter space of time, and the discovery of their own truth has enabled them to emerge from the autistic hiding place that used to be their only refuge. In my case, the reason the journey took so long was that I was on my own for most of it.”
Me too just like Alice Miller it took me over forty years to break free because I was alone in my journey most of it.
Comments from the blog The Pain of a Mother
Liliane: I totally agree with your words and I feel sad that her excellent and very important work is brought into discredit by people like DM, BR, and MM. In their writings and words, you can read how they idealize, devalue and show signs of grandiosity. As you can read in the interview with Die Welt-15.10. MM says that it was thanks to his therapeutic work and with his book that the theory of his mother survives! However, it is clear to me that they are stuck in the repressed feelings of their childhood and that brings others in confusion and pain.
Sylvie: I am glad to see that are other people out there that can see it too. Sometimes I feel alone in my perceptions, how BR, DM, and MM are twisting Alice Miller’s work to manipulate the perceptions of others and deceive them. It’s very clear to me too that they are stuck in their repressed feelings and suffer from grandiosity. And they allow the fantasies of revenge of the child they once were into actions that bring others confusion and pain. It’s sad beyond words.
Hi P,
Have you seen this? It’s in German! You don’t have to use Google translate like I had to, I am jealous you can read German because you lose a lot in translation, but I think it was enough for me to see where Martin Miller comes from. I guess Martin Miller has finished his book! I feel so sad that this 63-year-old man is still stuck in his childhood and never found his own way in the world and got trapped in the labyrinth of psychoanalysis. It took his mother most of her adult life to free herself from the labyrinth of psychoanalysis. Just as his mother wrote below. With his book, he is transferring his childhood confusion into many people that still, like him, are stuck in the confusion of their own childhood and they too, like him, have fell victims of the labyrinth or traps of many seductive therapies that keep them stuck endless reenacting their own childhood dramas, where they either play the active role of mother/father to others or are endless stuck in the role of the child.
“, is not an accusation. But an attempt to understand deep-seated trauma.” I have learned that when people deny something that’s exactly what they are.
The fact he is saying is not an accusation that’s exactly what it is, disguised of wanting to understand deep-seated trauma. Anyone that has read all his mother’s books and work through their own repression understands deep-seated trauma and how hard it is to resolve it. He is being a great example of how difficult it is to resolve deep-seated trauma. He is still stuck in his childhood fighting and competing with his mother to make a name for himself by unconsciously attempting to destroy the great discovers and accomplishments his mother made late in life by stepping on his mother’s head to satisfies his own childhood narcissists needs and letting the unresolved repressed emotions of the child he once was, take revenge on his mother for the wrongs she did to him when he was a small child by attempting to kill his mother in a symbolic way in the public arena with his book, creating a smokescreen confusing many people already confused looking for a way out of their own labyrinths.
The fact he is saying is not an accusation that’s exactly what it is, disguised of wanting to understand deep-seated trauma. Anyone that has read all his mother’s books and work through their own repression understands deep-seated trauma and how hard it is to resolve it. He is being a great example of how difficult it is to resolve deep-seated trauma. He is still stuck in his childhood fighting and competing with his mother to make a name for himself by unconsciously attempting to destroy the great discovers and accomplishments his mother made late in life by stepping on his mother’s head to satisfies his own childhood narcissists needs and letting the unresolved repressed emotions of the child he once was, take revenge on his mother for the wrongs she did to him when he was a small child by attempting to kill his mother in a symbolic way in the public arena with his book, creating a smokescreen confusing many people already confused looking for a way out of their own labyrinths.
He mentions that his mother’s first three books are the most valuable, of course, he likes his mother’s first books, because when his mother wrote her first books, she had not broken free completely from the labyrinth of psychoanalysis, a labyrinth he still trapped in. In Alice’s first books she was still writing with the precepts of the labyrinth of psychoanalysis and still had hopes or the illusion psychoanalysis could help people break free. His mother’s last books are much clear and are the books that helped me understand and feel my own feelings within the context of my own childhood and finally break free from my emotional prison no longer be lost in projections reenacting my childhood drama with people symbolizing my parents or my parents substitutes, in my own case my older sisters, and prevented me from being trapped in the labyrinth of many seductive therapies out there.
As Alice Miller said: “…On the other hand, what has radically changed is my hopeful attitude towards psychoanalysis, from which, in 1988, I officially broke away by resigning from the Swiss as well as the International Psychoanalytical Association. I was forced to take this step when I realized that psychoanalytical theory and practice obscure—i.e., render unrecognizable—the cause and consequences of child abuse, by (among other things) labeling facts as fantasies, and furthermore, that such treatments can be dangerous, as in my own case, [and obviously in the case of her own son] because they cement the confusion deriving from childhood instead of resolving it. Ten years ago I was not yet so clear about this, my study of philosophy as well as my training in and practice of psychoanalysis having long prevented me from recognizing many facts. Only when I was prepared to end my repression, to liberate my childhood from the prison of pedagogic notions and psychoanalytical theories; when I reject the ideology of forgetting and forgiving, allied myself with the abused child, and, thanks to my therapy, learned to feel: only then did I gradually discover my hitherto concealed history.” From the book Banished Knowledge, from the edition 1990, vintage point
“This book [the drama] was written sixteen years ago in keeping with the precepts of psychoanalysis, precepts that I have long since moved beyond and today regarded as misleading. I, therefore, have had to revise the text thoroughly, salvaging those parts I still regard as valid and useful while clarifying certain points more than I was able to in 1978” From the Drama of the Gifted Child, edition 1994, introduction, page 1
Comments from the blog The Pain of a Mother
Liliane: I totally agree with your words and I feel sad that her excellent and very important work is brought into discredit by people like DM, BR, and MM. In their writings and words, you can read how they idealize, devalue and show signs of grandiosity. As you can read in the interview with Die Welt-15.10. MM says that it was thanks to his therapeutic work and with his book that the theory of his mother survives! However, it is clear to me that they are stuck in the repressed feelings of their childhood and that brings others in confusion and pain.
Sylvie: I am glad to see that are other people out there that can see it too. Sometimes I feel alone in my perceptions, how BR, DM, and MM are twisting Alice Miller’s work to manipulate the perceptions of others and deceive them. It’s very clear to me too that they are stuck in their repressed feelings and suffer from grandiosity. And they allow the fantasies of revenge of the child they once were into actions that bring others confusion and pain. It’s sad beyond words.
Also, read my blogs in the links below:
Then Pain of a Mother
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