Alice Miller Changed My Life

After college I discovered Alice Miller. I remember not getting off my couch until I had read all of her books! I didn't believe I was a reader until I found her books. That was about the same time that I discovered Linda Leonard's books.

“Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.”
― Alice Miller

“If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue”
― Alice Miller

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”
― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self


Alice Miller
Born in Lwow, Poland January 12, 1923 Died April 14, 2010

Website
http://www.alice-miller.com/en/home/

Genre:Psychology

Influences: Lloyd Demause, Jean Liedloff

Psychologist and world renowned author, who is noted for her books on child abuse, translated in several languages. In her books she departed from psychoanalysis charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies, which she described in For Your Own Good.

Miller was born in Poland and as young woman lived in Warshaw where she survived World War II. In 1953 she gained her doctorate in philosophy, psychology and sociology at University of Basel in Switzerland. For the next 20 years Miller studied and practiced psychoanalysis.

Her first three books originated from research she took upon herself as a response to what she felt were major blind spots in her field.

However, by the time her fourth book was published, she no longer believed that psychoanalysis was viable in any respect. Miller extended trauma model to include all forms of child abuse, including those that were commonly accepted (such as spanking), which she called poisonous pedagogy, a non-literal translation of Katharina Rutschky's Schwarze Pädagogik (black or dark pedagogy)

Drawing upon the work of psychohistory, Miller analyzed writers Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and others to find links between their childhood traumas and the course and outcome of their lives.

In 1979, she stopped practicing as a psychoanalyst after having studied and practiced psychoanalysis for 20 years and became critical of both Freud and Carl Jung.

She has continued to write and lecture on psychological issues.

Her most recent book, Pictures of My Life, was published in 2006; an informal autobiography in which the writer explores her emotional process from painful childhood, through the development of her theories and later insights, told via the display and discussion of 66 of her original paintings, painted in the years 1973 to 2005.

She died in April 14th 2010 in Saint-Rémy de Provence, France. (less)

The Drama of the Gifted Chi... The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
by Alice Miller, Ruth Ward (Translator)

For Your Own Good: Hidden C... For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
by Alice Miller, Hunter Hannum (Translator), Hildegarde Hannum (Translator)

The Body Never Lies: The Li... The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting
by Alice Miller, Andrew Jenkins (Translator)

The Truth Will Set You Free... The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self
by Alice Miller, Andrew Jenkins (Translator)

Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : S... Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : Society's Betrayal of the Child
by Alice Miller, Hildegarde Hannum (Translator), Hunter Hannum (Translator)

The Untouched Key: Tracing ... The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
by Alice Miller, Hunter Hannum (Translator), Hildegarde Hannum (Translator)

Banished Knowledge: Facing ... Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
by Alice Miller, Leila Vennewitz (Translator)

Breaking Down the Wall of S... Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth
by Alice Miller, Simon Worrall (Translator)

Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios
by Alice Miller, Andrew Jenkins (Translator)

Free from Lies: Discovering... Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs
by Alice Miller, Andrew Jenkins (Translator)