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 Rogers, Daniel Mackler, and their followers. Barbara Rogers is the very first five-star review! What joke!
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.
"you will never forget a person who came to you with a torch in the dark!"
Read my blog Martin Miller the Son of Alice Miller Is a Double-Edged Sword
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/08/martin-miller-son-of-alice-miller-is.html
There are two kinds of people, those that think: I don't want others to suffer as I did. And those that think: I suffered and I want others to suffer too.
If someone is telling a lie consciously or unconsciously it’s abusive. A lie is always abusive because it confuses people. Lies are confusing! Not to me anymore, because I can recognize a lie from a distance even if is hidden behind, pretty, and coated with a little bit of truth.
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