The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

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because in a way I had always been living a life that wasn't mine, that I didn't want, and that I was ready to throw away. More than anyone else, Miller put people in touch with their "inner child", encouraging them to own "their own truth" - by which she meant the truth of their abuse. One woman contacted the author needing guidance with some struggles she was having trying to love her kids.

For women who had no independent income, no vote, no say in governance, and who could lose all custody of their children if they left an abusive husband, a primary way to try to keep their children safe from violence was to try to keep their husbands out of taverns. this is not the psychopop of twelve-step, i-got-in-touch-with-my-anger-today, neurosis-no-more books. So all in all, with its misogyny and its erroneous insistence that adult depression has to be rooted in trauma inflicted by parents on children in early childhood, I think this book does as much harm as good. What’s common to them is the sense of strength it gives to the adults who can’t control their own fears, so they control fear in another person.Miller observes that it is those parents who felt like they had to put away their own authentic selves to meet their parents’ needs that pass on this pattern to their children. When the other girls in her class came in, they would squeeze together at another table to avoid sitting with her.

And the result is a meaningless life of ‘going through the motions of living’ WITHOUT ever knowing their true selves. As she frequently states, "any parent who abuses a child," knowingly or otherwise, "has himself been severely traumatized in his childhood, in some form or another. A small child, entirely dependent on its parents for all its needs, will do anything to ensure their attention and will take careful note of the smallest expressions of admiration or derision. I read this book at quite the fitting time in my personal life, so expect it to make an appearance in my future memoir/writing.I would recommend it for anyone that has issues w their parents that they want some perspective on or anyone concerned about possibly passing on the legacy of their own difficulties to their children, however inadvertently. In reality Lady Randolph, the American-born Jennie Jerome, was a beautiful, shallow, diamond-studded panther of a woman who neglected him shamefully. Since then, Miller has authored numerous follow-ups, whose titles speak for themselves - Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries, The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness - to name a few. Initially Alice Miller's claims about the extent of damage done to us by our parents seemed exaggerated to me, and I felt that one should not say such things about parents.