Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Martin Miller the Son of Alice Miller Is a Double Edged Sword

I have no doubt that Alice Miller's son Martin Miller was the trigger for all of Alice Miller's books. And if he had not been born we would not have had Alice Miller's enlightened books to help us liberate ourselves from the emotional prison of our own childhoods. And I would probably be dead NOW or still living in an emotional prison.  He is just like a double-edged sword. 

Martin Miller's book is nothing but smoke and mirrors. So sad to witness that Martin Miller joined forces with all those that betrayed his Mother, while she was still alive, trying to stand on Alice  Miller's head to make a name for themselves. And didn't reach out to anyone that is standing by the side of his mother. 

All they accuse Alice Miller of, that's exactly what they themselves are doing. They don't take responsibility for their own unresolved childhood repression and  have mastered the art of projection and transference to perfection. 

Throughout Alice Miller's books, she gives windows into the struggles she had with her adult son and how she tried to help him, but once children reach adulthood it's too late -- and no one can help adults children, not even their own mothers. Once we reach adulthood we are responsible for our own healing and Alice Miller with her books gives us the enlightened information to guide us through our own healing.

"As a child, I had to learn to suppress my entirely natural responses to the injuries inflicted on me, responses like rage, anger, pain, and fear. Otherwise, I would have been punished. Later, at school, I was proud of the skill I had developed in controlling and restraining these feelings. I considered this ability a virtue, and I also expected my first child to achieve the same kind of discipline. Only after I succeeded in freeing myself of this attitude was I able to understand the suffering of children who have been forbidden to respond to injuries in an appropriate way and to engage with their emotions in a benevolent environment, so that in later life they can take their bearings from the feelings they actually have, rather than fearing them." Alice Miller

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/07/drugs-and-deception-of-body.html

“As I’ve aged, I’ve grown more tolerant and patient; I find it easier to wait and let people take the time they need to follow my trains of thought. What helped me to become accommodating was the fact that in contrast to twenty years ago, I no longer feel alone in what I know. Since then, both experts and lay people have been able to confirm my conclusions by their own experiences. I no longer have to prove anything.

And yet I still feel a need to share with others things that came to me only late in life. The result does not claim to be literature, we are not dealing here with “art for art.” For my stories are actually based on simple, conscious intentions to inform people and encourage them to think. For me, as for many women, it was very painful to realize that as a young mother I had missed so much, not only for my child but also for myself, simply because I did not know enough. It hurts to see how with more information many things could have turned out better and that much cannot be made good again. My stories arose from the wish to spare other people what I have suffered myself.” Alice Miller ~ Paths of Life, preface


Alice Miller liberated herself from the labyrinth of the psychoanalysis world in her fifties. Now I understand when Alice Miller shared in one of her books that her intense discussions with her adult son helped her stop her compulsions, because of these intense discussions with her adult son, she was able to see clearly and confirmed how psychoanalysis keeps people stuck in their childhood drama and seeing her NOW adult son lost in the labyrinth of psychoanalysis had to be hard for Alice Miller. 

Also confirms Barbara Rogers' IFS therapy does not work either, because if it worked she would not be stuck in her childhood drama anymore and would not be reenacting her childhood drama endless by exploiting others the same way she was exploited when she was a defenseless child. Just like Alice said: it takes courage to face and feel our painful truths, intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create a lot of seductive lies.

Barbara Rogers wrote on her website that she was "lost in a fog of admiration". It’s not Alice Miller's fault that she lost herself admiring Alice Miller, but the reality is, she did not lose herself, because she has never found herself, once we truly find ourselves we can never lose ourselves again, the little girl she once was still lost in the fog of admiration with her own mother now transferred into a substitute figure, Alice Miller.

It’s her problem if she is still a lost little girl and loses herself in admiration over others, she is another malignant narcissist that has memorized good knowledge hijacked from Alice Miller's books, but has not experienced it at a personal level and now is trying to cast herself in the role of parent figure over others and misuses this good knowledge to manipulate and use others as poison  containers to distract herself, so she does not have to face and feel the repressed excruciating emotions of the child she once was; reenacting her childhood drama all over again with the people she is trying to help, but now she playing the role of her mother and the people she is trying to help, playing the role of the child she and they once were and they all remain lost in a maze with no way out, staying prisoners of childhood for eternity.

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/08/daniel-mackler-and-barbara-rogers-came.html

I feel Alice Miller’s experience is very similar to mine. My love for Marty 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, now adult son, had problems, and how ironic they both have the same name, my ex’s name is also Martin! 

Alice Miller, like me, started lifting every rock 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 on how to help Marty and I ended up liberating myself in the process. 

And at the end, I had to let Marty 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 is 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 crucial 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 caused by trauma that causes long term damage and if parents became aware of the damage done before their children became teenagers or adults, then 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, like Alice Miller did, but it will be too late, because they can’t force the teenagers and adult children to remove the walls to face and feel their childhood repression, if they don’t wish to do so. 

To warn us, Alice Miller made herself very vulnerable to all the full-blown malignant narcissists, sociopaths, bad players,  psychopaths, assholes, or whatever you like to call NOW these very evil people in the world -- her courage is astonishing! 

As Alice Miller wrote in the answers below to one of her readers:

"I am also glad that you have the hope that we can pass on our knowledge to the masses. I had this hope 30 years ago when I wrote the Drama. I thought that showing the truth can change so much. Meanwhile, I became more skeptical or just more impatient after I discovered the fear of the beaten child in all of us that built up the omnipresent resistance against the truth." Alice Miller

(Me too I had the hope with the writing of my book would help pass this knowledge to the masses, but like Alice Miller, I have become skeptical and with the writing of my book I too learned that people's repressed fears at their parents build omnipresent resistance against the truth. And people rather destroy others than face and consciously feel their own repressed fears to see the truth. And this is why I have been harassed, prosecuted, and ostracized since I can remember and in the workplace by very bad players since I published my book. I understand people's fears of their childhood pain that have been trying to keep repressed all of their lives, but it is still disappointing that pretty much everyone I meet doesn't have the courage to face their fears and become real)   

Malignant narcissists, psychopaths/sociopaths always feed on people's weaknesses to advance themselves and don’t care who they hurt, step on and destroy in the process as long as they get what they want. 

In an interview Martin Miller gave, he was 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 as 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 situations 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 in his sixties and the older we get hard it gets to resolve our own repression. 

Alice Miller’s life is not a tragedy, because she broke free and died free, the beginning of her life was a tragedy, just like most people's lives, 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.
I am so glad I didn’t have children; otherwise, the sociopaths out there might try to use my children to get to me, to try to discredit me and my book, as they do with Alice Miller because if I had children without resolving my childhood repression first, me too, I would not have been a "perfect" mother and without a doubt, my children would have been wounded TOO and vulnerable to be exploited by sociopaths, like Martin Miller is being used by the sociopath Barbara Roges and Daniel Mackler to stand on Alice Miller’s head to make a name for themselves, so they don’t have to face and feel the painful repressed feelings of the child they once were. 
When we have children without resolving our childhood repression we will unconsciously transfer into our children our internalized childhood abusers, and then we will face them all over again in our children. Oh, I'm so grateful I didn't repeat this vicious circle. 
This is what happened to Alice Miller. she had to let go of her son to protect herself from the full-blown malignant narcissist her son had grown into.  
Alice Miller faced in her husband her childhood abusers and then faced them all over again in her own son. 
This comment made by Makus Roth is so true: “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
In her interview given with Ms. Noreen Taylor. Alice Miller says: "I have two adult children. I never hit them but I was sometimes careless and neglecting to my first child out of ignorance. Fortunately not so much as my parents had been to me. It is very painful to realize that but this realization can also be liberating from a self-deception. I think that the love for the own children can bear the truth and can even thrive on it while lies and denial seed cruelty for the next generation."
I read online somewhere Martin Miller complained that his mother disowned him and doesn't know what happened to her money. So he is still dependent on his mother and is mad at his mother for not giving him her money. 
Dependency breeds anger, as long we are dependent on the family's money; we remain stuck with them, in their emotional prisons, and hate instead of being resolved increases. We have to work to find our autonomy and not depend on the family or others standing in symbolizing our parents. As long we are dependent on the family or others financially, we remain prisoners of our childhood. Read my blogs Dependency Breeds Anger and Liberating Ourselves from Dependency that Breeds Hatred. 
Martin Miller saying is not an accusation that’s exactly what it is, disguised as wanting to understand deep-seated trauma. Anyone that has read all his mother’s books and worked 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 satisfy his own childhood narcissists needs and letting the unresolved repressed emotions of the child he once was, taking 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.
Nothing can anyone ever say take away from the pioneering, courageous, and honest work Alice Miller did. She was a true heroine. 
As Alice Miller shared in her article, “The Longest Journey” published on her website: “It has taken me all my life to allow myself to be what I am and to listen to what my inner self is telling me, more and more directly, without waiting for permission from others or currying approval from people symbolizing my parents.” 
It took her all of her life, but she did it and exposed the lies and hypocrisy of society. My experience has been the same as Alice Miller. 

A reader of Alice Miller wrote to her saying: “Books do not help to break open the prisons, it is true, but there are books that give us the courage to rattle at the prison gates with new courage. Your book is such a one to me.” 

--- That is exactly how Alice Miller's books are to me. It has taken me, too, all my life, but thanks to her books as my enlightened witness I was able to gather new and tougher courage to remove the invisible shackles and break free from the emotional prison I was born into.

The two reviews below on Amazon about Martin Miller's book, are most likely the only authentic reviews, all the other five-star reviews were written, most likely, by the cult leaders Barabara RogersDaniel Mackler, and their followers. Barbara Rogers is the very first five-star review!  What joke! 

Just as these two reviewers wrote on Amazon: 

"This book is shameful.

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2020

This may be the most peevish, callous, and unsympathetic biography of a Holocaust survivor ever written. Mr. Miller is clearly angry at his mother, and surely he has a right to be if, as he alleges, she was emotionally unavailable to him in his youth. But in recounting his mother's near-death and the destruction of her entire family during the Holocaust, he makes far more references to his own feelings than to hers. 

He uses words like "shocked", "stunned" and "amazed", but always in reference to his own reaction to the inevitable omissions and inconsistencies in her story. The death of his grandparents in the ovens does not stun him. The possibility of his mother having been raped by kidnappers at one point does not stun him. But the fact that she chose not mention all this in a blurb on her website in 2010? Stunning, he reports.

Clearly, Ms. Miller is an important figure in psychology, and it is understandable for readers to want to know the background that inspired her work. 

But while Mr. Miller is clearly well-placed to reveal that information, the job ought to fall to someone who possesses some iota of empathy and doesn't "identify with abusers", as Mr. Miller openly confesses to doing in his work as a psychologist.

Put more simply, any time you find yourself nitpicking how someone survived the Holocaust, even your own mother, you probably ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Piggybacking on his mother's fame, yet bringing her down. Pathetic!!

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2020

First of all, the fact that this "writer" was able to write a book using all her mother's techniques, indicates very clearly that said techniques actually work.

I am really sorry to hear that this guy had such a difficult life with a traumatized mother who seemed to have lacked the ability to implement her theories with her own son. [Alice Miller could not have implemented her techniques with her own son -- because she developed her techniques later in life -- when her son was already an adult in his thirties. Once we reach adulthood we are responsible for our own healing and Alice Miller with her books gives us the enlightened information to guide us through our own healing] That makes her a flawed and fallible human being, but that doesn't take away the merits of her brilliant writings.

Whatever this guy went through in his own childhood, I am really sorry to hear. But what he is choosing to do with his own pain is a coward and self-serving strategy to make a name for himself by trashing his mother, because he knows very well he doesn't even have 1% of the talent, the courage, the insight, the brilliance that Alice Miller had, both as a healer (since she didn’t like to be called a psychoanalyst) and as a writer.

To me, it’s very obvious that he is shamelessly piggybacking on his mother's success and brilliance to make a buck and a name for himself.

The only way he could attract any attention to himself was by saying "I'm Alice Miller's son". Otherwise, nobody would have stopped to read anything he wrote. That must be a hard pill to swallow for him, yet he'll have to swallow it for the rest of his life.

This "Martin the Martyr" guy may have been an innocent child once upon a time, but as an adult, in my opinion, he is an untalented, self-serving, and coward. He didn't even have the decency to preface his book by saying: "I acknowledge that my mother has helped millions of readers (myself included) overcome the tragic effects of trauma and of being raised by narcissistic parents. I also acknowledge that she was a brilliant writer. However, she, herself, didn't have the time or the awareness to implement her own techniques when she was raising me, so she caused me much pain. This is the story of my pain."

Instead, he chose to put his mother down (that, I respect), without taking the time to acknowledge the unquestionable, undeniable, impressive merits of the writer he's attempting to put down (that, I do not respect). Whatever he wants to say about Alice Miller, the mother is his prerogative. But how come he doesn’t have the objectivity to preface all his comments by acknowledging the merits of the writer he’s criticizing, i.e. his mother?? Furthermore, how come he cannot at least acknowledge that the mother he is so disappointed with is the same writer whose tools, techniques, and theories he’s using to heal his own pain??

Had he had any objectivity, decency, courage, humility, and more importantly, talent, he would have extensively mentioned, not only the greatness of his mother’s talent but also the smallness of his own.

If you are the son of Shakespeare, and you tell me that Shakespeare was a jerk, and all you do is badmouth Shakespeare, and try to sell books doing that (without acknowledging the brilliance of Shakespeare’s talent) then I can only entertain two theories:

1) That you are very hurt about what your father did to you. If this is the case, then, that means you are too emotionally wounded about the whole thing. It also means you haven't done the necessary emotional work to recover from your own traumas, either because A) You haven't been able to, B) Because you lack the courage to do so or C) Because you're in a hurry to try to extract a benefit from your father's fame and brilliance.

What a coincidence that this guy published this book after his mother died. He didn't have the courage to publish it while she was alive. Perhaps he first wanted to make sure he could get his hands on his mother's will before trashing her, thereby trying to capitalize on both his mother’s brilliance and success and his cowardly attacks of her. There's always method in mediocrity.

To me, it is very obvious that, apart from his legitimate trauma, the bottom line is that this is the drama of the son of a Genius who, when confronted with the fact that he doesn't even have 1% of his mother's talent, he felt the sting of envy, and instead of just processing his envy, he decided to attack the genius with whom he will never be able to compete.

For a person who claims to have such a deep knowledge about the complexities of people's psyches, I think he missed that small detail about his own conflicted inner world.

I understand that this guy was emotionally injured, but what he decided to do with his pain lacked objectivity, contribution, insight, and talent. He may have had a really bad mother (most of Alice Miller’s readers had the same experience), but he also happened to be the son of one of the greatest writers and healers of the 20th century. He forgot to mention that.

The facts still remain: Alice Miller was a brilliant writer. Her son is a mediocre writer at best. The other fact is that Martin has made no original contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. I doubt that he ever will.

If you want to read a valuable, insightful book, pick up one of Alice Miller's books and enjoy the brilliance of her talented and courageous mind and heart!!"

"you will never forget a person who came to you with a torch in the dark!"

Amazon deleted some of my book reviews because their algorithms thought they were made by friends from Facebook that I never met in real life, but most five stars reviews made on Martin Miller's book are authentic, Not! I'm so tired of the bias in this world. 


 


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