幸福童年的真正秘密：愛麗絲．米勒的悲劇

by Martin Miller

　　「我作夢也想不到要寫一本關於我母親的書，她對我來說是一個陌生到無法描寫的人……」　　

　　身為舉世聞名的兒童心理學家愛麗絲．米勒的獨子，馬丁．米勒與母親的關係卻疏離而緊繃，他甚至為此瀕臨崩潰。母親過世後，馬丁終於鼓起勇氣，藉著書寫本書重新認識母親這個人，才終於同理雙方的處境，也明辨了愛麗絲．米勒理論的價值及侷限。

　　愛麗絲．米勒以《幸福童年的祕密》等經典著作建立起兒童捍衛者的聲名，但她自己卻從未處理童年創傷，內心壓抑的憤怒塑造出極端、激烈的性格，兒子馬丁則成了最直接與長期的受害者。這應驗了愛麗絲．米勒自己的主張：父母的創傷會蔓延到子女身上。

　　「母親待我猶如敵人，真讓我覺得自己像隻怪物，而她想除掉牠……」

　　傷痕累累的馬丁透過訪查回溯，揭開母親絕口不提的早年經歷：在僵化保守的猶太家庭成長、經歷殘酷的納粹屠殺；他同時看見母子間因戰爭創傷而扭曲的情感互動，理解母親為何無法按她創造的知識對待兒子。這個歷程為馬丁自身的情緒找到出路，也讓同為心理治療師的他，親身體會到回溯家族歷史在創傷修復上的價值。

　　「當愛麗絲‧米勒的兒子並不好……即便如此，我的母親仍是個偉大的童年研究者。」

　　本書可說是馬丁在母親的立論基礎上，親身實踐了更具建設性的做法，不僅為米勒全球的舊雨新知分享了發人省思、勇氣十足的生命故事，也為心理治療貢獻了精彩絕倫的案例。

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Biography Memoir

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

ultimate catharsis


i wasnt raised by parents who had to survive a war, although that is most certainly the way theyve portrayed themselves. my father, an endlessly quoted and successful person who to this day monitors my name online and demands i take down anything that accidentally can be seen as connected to him and his reign of terror, began smear campaigns against his children when we were just babies. he was always the victim of his dysfunctional children and i remember being as young as 11 when my relatives judgments of me and my sister became obvious to me. both my sister and i can barely remember childhood as a result of what we endured and we have both suffered greatly with chronic illnesses and CPTSD.

this year i lost my sister to suicide. i have always hoped that i one day would be able to write a book to set the records straight of the horrors we experienced at the hands of the mercilessness of my fathers lack of conscience and my useless mother having children to use us as doorstoppers.
i hoped that i could do this in the peaceful mercy of the world without my parents, in the company of my beautiful sister. i hoped, like i have been told by others who got to experience it, that once our parents were no longer here the divide and conquer-trojan horses that seemed to lay the foundation of much of our communication would wither and disappear. there will not be time in this life for that and this book has helped me immensely to see what i can do and that starting anywhere is fine. it has given me something to live for, in a way, which is not at all what i thought would happen in the middle of this forest fire armageddon of grief.

i was encouraged to read alice millers work and stumbled on this, which is proving to be an incredibly cathartic experience. last year i underwent extensive trauma work and now rarely have flashbacks, my life near 30 is the first life i have ever lived without perpetual terror. as it turns out, joy felt alien because my parents abused the love for life out of me - how could anyone love me when even my own parents couldnt and all the other age regressions that appear as Objective Truth when youve never been safe enough to take a breath without criticism.
this book first bothered me greatly, it felt more like a son detailing his mothers successes than explaining what they actually were manifestations of. it was dry, and although i hate skipping pages i did because alice miller doesnt interest me in particular. her work is great, which i will not argue with, but it does not reflect the parent she was.
the additional chapter that Martin added left me breathless and i would recommend that anyone and everyone reads this - those of us who have somehow survived tyrants for parents and those that want to understand what it can look like. i read the letter to Martin from Alice out loud to my spouse and we spoke about how similar this is to my parents delusions. i then read the book and the last chapter i read out loud to my wife. it left us both breathless. it has given me something to wedge between the grief and the rage, a reminder that the truth will make her entrance one day. it wont be until my parents have gone because it isnt for them.

if Martin Miller ever reads the reviews of his books, i hope that he knows that he has gifted me something invaluable by publishing this book. it is incredibly healing to see someone born some years before my own tormentors set the record straight about his. this ends with me.

[Carrie Poppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mouth was literally hanging open by the end of this book. I didn’t even notice until my tongue began to dry out. Holy moly.

[Anna Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. I am very into psychology, it was right up my street. I was really angry with Alice, and her husband reading the book in the beginning. (Her son wrote the book he is a psychotherapist). Alice became very famous regarding her theories etc, yet seemed incapable along with her husband, of looking after their own son. At times he seems a mere inconvenience. Later on in the book (Do stick with it), you will find out the answer. If you are into psychology, and what makes people 'tick' in their brain you will get a great read. I highly recommend this book. I hope Martin can enjoy his life now, he done a great job writing this book about his Mum (Who he loved very much, she was incapable of returning it). Unfortunately he will never get the answers he wants. I know how that feels. I have experienced a similar situation. In the end you either drive yourself mad, or you learn to accept it. As I already said it will become clear in the end.

[Olga Tsvetkova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of Alice Millers books. She was a huge eye-opener for me. She was a Swiss psychoanalyst who left psychoanalysis (as a patient and a therapist) as she didn’t find it useful. She established the ideas of therapist being the “enlightened witness” to the client. She talked about the necessity of siding with your inner child in order to brake out of the prison cell in your head. She challenged the fourth commandment of honouring the parents as the undermining factor for adults who were abused by parents to side with their inner child. She analyzed the childhoods of dictators, artists and writers, which I find fascinating and very plausible.

By chance I discovered that Martin Miller is her son who is too a therapist and he wrote a book about his famous mother offering both her biography that she kept hidden from the world and his account of his own childhood. It shocked me to my core. It showed how even the most enlightened and self-aware of us still have our our blind spots.

Martin wrote and published the book only after his mother’s death. Decades of complex relationship with her and trying to figure her out and in fact he did.

I have compassion for them both as both of them were innocent children deeply wounded in their childhood. I both see her and his conflicting viewpoints on their relationship. It’s sad but once again it reminded me that ALL of us are only human.

The perspective of Martin Miller adds final shocking stokes to the comprehensive counterintuitive portrait of Alice Miller, the Holocaust survivor. The tragedy of Alice Miller and Martin Miller is beyond words. My heart goes out to both.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very, very clarifying.

I found out about Martin Miller right after I read my first Alice Miller book - The Body Never Lies. I was drunk on the validation Alice Miller offered in that book, as I myself am a survivor of severe parental abuse. So, it took me a while to accept that Alice Miller had had a son and that she had abused and neglected him.

Reading Martin's account of things, it all makes a great amount of sense and I see how it was possible for Alice to be a fierce advocate for abused children's rights but at the same time be completely cut off from her own child and not be able to see him, even treat him as a stranger or threat. I see it clearly.

And how very interesting that I had not realized before that Alice was actually a little against therapy and that she promoted real life confrontation of the parents as a cure. That is sure to fail in the vast majority of cases and yes, Martin is right - fighting your parents in real life means staying connected to them. It's far better to just set boundaries, I think.

And yes, Alice was not able to apply her own theories, as illustrated by her last attempt at personal therapy - she went to see a therapist because of unexplained pains all over her body. This happened years after she herself had written The Body Never Lies which talks about these kinds of symptoms.

I think Martin did a great job with this book, even if it's clear he's not a writer and the translation in English could have been much better. He is not bitter, he recognizes his mother's merits, but he also sheds light on the dark aspects of their history. In so doing, he not only gives himself some justice, but he also gives justice to his mother - he tells the story which she could never tell. Bravo!

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super spannende Biografie, die ganz wesentlich zu einem besseren Verständnis und einer angemesseneren Einordnung des eigentlichen "Drama des begabten Kindes" führt.

[Leah Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was an interesting, but painful reading from the child's perspective on growing up with abusive parents. I wish the memoir was longer. Also, it is an interesting read for people who wish to know more about Alice Miller, her circle, work and the history of psychoanalysis in Switzerland. It was only briefly touched upon and many subjects deserve longer explanations. I'm still thankful for this memoir as it is important to talk about childabuse. Alice, who wrote many books on this subject wasn't able to protect her own child as she was married for a very long time to a man who beat her son. Alice Miller also had a Holocaust trauma, but such horrible personal experiences can never be used as an excuse or explanation for hurting ones own child. The writer, her son, knows this too and the Holocaust trauma Alice Miller suffered is "the key" to understand her work. Sadly Alice Miller never was able to recover from the trauma, was narcissistic/false Self to some extent and seemed to have been very unhappy.

[Yasemin Dildar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the saddest thing I've read for a long time. I don't even know how to process it yet. Without knowing anything about her life story, it was pretty clear she was writing about her childhood in the Drama of the Gifted Child. She was the "gifted child" and there is no mother's perspective in that book. No wonder she kept writing from the perspective of the child, she of course could not even tolerate to look into matters from the perspective of mother as an abusive mother. Not being able to escape from the cycle of violence she so wonderfully analyzes is tragically ironic.

[Lese lust · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 Sterne

[kiho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indispensable companion to all of Alice Miller's work, not just deepening your understanding of her ideas but absolutely necessary for a true picture.

The writing is a little hit and miss, the book could do with a little editing, but stay til the end because it is both harrowing and remarkable, and only at the end everything comes full circle.

The most astonishing fact is how Martin Miller's book informs Alice Miller's work but the latter still manages to be valid, even after knowing how diametrically opposed the reality stands to her own writing. She manages to carve out a niche for her idealized self that still holds true, even if this truth now tastes more than a little bittersweet.

[Olívia Kazár · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning piece of writing, portraying post-generational trauma and how much damage can be done by the repression of emotions. Wonderful and painfully self-reflexive work about how suppressing our “true self” and not facing and connecting with our feelings traumatizes ourselves and our children and grandchildren for life. Shocking confrontation with himself, his own mother and his mother's past by Martin Miller. No one should be a child in wartime.

[Duncan Fraser · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was rather disappointed with this book. Not with the fact that Alice Miller turned out to be a terrible parent - I learned long ago that life is full of ironies - but with the way the book is written. Rather circumlocutory, the author is slow in tackling the issues that the reader is desperate to hear about. And perhaps the difficulty Martin Miller has in revealing in print the neglect and abuse he suffered as a child is magnified through the medium of a translation. I will probably have to read this book again. It is, in at least one way, a depressing book. That Alice Miller, a heroine for so many of us, someone who for so long seemed to possess unique insight into the needs of the child, should not be able to bond with her own son but instead, quite consciously, treats him appallingly, is a sombre realisation.

[Kalonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Balance

It means a great deal to discover a balance between an author and their real life. The need to see how one uses the information they teach. I applaud Mr. Miller for his bravery. His work balances the work of his mothers in the way a new bud grows on a branch after winter. He provides a needed perspective to his mothers work.

[Kimba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than my own therapy

I got a lot of insight into children of war survivors and also about good therapy tools and practices! Thank you SO much for writing this book!

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Miller is one of the greatest modern era psychology writers, she was perhaps one of the first to truly approach psychology from the child’s perspective without sacrificing anything in the name of the parents. She was fierce and uncompromising in her approach and her writings have permanently affected millions of peoples’ lives, including mine.

This is a book by her son, who became a psychologist himself, about what a person and what kind of a mother Alice Miller actually was in their private domestic life. Apparently she was exactly the antithesis of the good mother she wrote about in her books – sadistic, domineering, controlling, relentless, manipulating, lying and so on. It’s quite terrifying actually, reading his mother’s letters to him, the kind of power a mother has over her son. In this specific case and in general.

Martin Miller goes on to research her mother’s past during the war, which was always hidden from him and through a detailed biography of his mother, arrives at a deeper understanding of what was done to him in his childhood. I am a little disappointed in the end as he seems to exclusively blame the war and his father but claims he was never angry at her mother, even though she drove him to the brink of suicide through deliberate sadistic manipulation. Nonetheless he seems to have broken the trauma cycle, which is good enough.

This whole experience goes on to show how intellectual prowess doesn’t mean anything without proper work in therapy with one’s own history and traumas – if they remain hidden and disassociated, they will wreck your close relationships and especially your children. Doesn’t matter if one is a genius child psychologist. Same could be said about R.D. Laing and probably many other great minds in the field.

[Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody who read Alice Miller and thought of them finding an imaginary ideal mother figure in her should read this book! Read what her son Martin Miller has written about her. I am sad that this book is not so prevail as Alice Miller's.

From what Martin Miller described, I'd say Alice Miller was a narcissist, all most no doubt. She might brilliantly survive the WWII and persecution to Jews in Poland, but her behaviour patterns show her Narcissistic personality traits, including lying, hypocrite, can't take criticism etc.. Her son Martin showed great maturity in the book telling the family history and biography, yet, Alice Miller acted as if a child who she didn't grow out of.

I agree with Martin Miller that her books and theories have some beneficial points, however, I do not want to read a person's theory when I knew this person in real life only lied and almost killed her own son twice. She was very very antagonistic, and the way she chose to die is so vindictive I knew if she chose assistant death, she will definitely chose the month of her son's birth, and bingo! She did. Narcs are so predictable...

[Goth Gone Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generational trauma diary

The general idea that those studying psychiatry have their own house in order is proven wrong here. Alice stated this in her own words:

"Sometimes you treat me with such a palpable hatred, as if I had once been your persecutor. But this I was not. For sure, I did not meet your needs for security and protection, could not give you much of what you needed, and have suffered myself from this inability. Today I can see that, as an unloved child, I was incapable of giving you enough love."

This is a gracious understatement, with more specific details given by her son, Martin, clearly still traumatized and understandably emotional from his confusing, difficult childhood.

The book is a mixture of psychology, World War II history, and personal recounting of the family history. It delves into Alice's theories, groundbreaking at the time, of parental damage to their growing children. While she spoke of how to heal from this, she was incapable of seeing the true extent of the damage that she and her husband did to their son, even after he was fully grown.

In perhaps a silent plea for his mother's love and understanding, Martin chose to study psychology, and holds some of his mother's work in high regard. The synopsis of some of her work in this book are interesting, and will likely lead me to read more. He's also open, painfully so, in recounting his mother's failings and traumatic reactions to her own childhood.

I'm not sure that a single reading of this book can fully unpack everything within. I wish the author peace, as his troubled mind is obvious in this journaling of generational trauma.

[NellyBells · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4. There was a time in early 80s when Alice Miller was read by just about all of us in my feminist/radical therapy set. Especially The Drama of the Gifted Child. And now to learn that she was a Shoah survivor, kept it a secret, kept just about everything a secret. She was a deeply traumatized woman and I do wish her son were a better writer. How can someone with such profound insights about childhood trauma be herself so distanced and removed from the events of her own life.

[Shanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Respectfully honest

A true drama indeed. I read this book back to back from Alice Miller’s first book “The Drama of the Gifted Child” which I thought would be a great pairing and it was a good idea. To read about the ideas and to see how it is implemented in practice is uniquely valuable. It was neither an idealization nor it was a hateful one, it was human. Thank you for sharing your journey, you helped see me a way for me to do it myself.

[Sylvie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Have no doubt that Alice Miller's son Martin Miller was a 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. It is very sad to witness Martin Miller get together with the people that betrayed his mother while she was still alive. 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.
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 name, my ex’s 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 on how to help my Ex and I ended 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 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 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 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, 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. 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

[Dorothy Nesbit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book.

It strikes me that Alice Miller is the marmite of the world of therapy and psychoanalysis, with both ardent fans and passionate detractors. Reading her first book The Drama Of The Gifted Child for the first time, even after many years of personal development, I felt seen, championed, for the young child I was, for everything I experienced in childhood and for how that lives in me now as the child within. Since that time, I have been chomping through Alice Miller's books with interest.

At the same time, her writings left me with many questions and some disquiet. She seemed angry, unforgiving, and whilst I have some empathy for her idea that it's not for the child to forgive their abusive parent(s), it also seems to me that a lifetime of anger does not serve the abused child either.

You can't read Miller's work without becoming aware that her son wrote this book, something her detractors use to discredit her across the internet. I decided to read it.

The start was not promising. Frankly, my first impression was that the translation from German was truly awful. It got better and did not impede my reading, though I noticed markers that this was a translation throughout the book. Sometimes, too, the way different sections were ordered, with jumps between different periods of time, surprised me.

For me, though, the book as a whole had great value. It deepened my understanding of Alice Miller and her work in ways that helped me sift between her truly radical and highly valuable ideas and Alice Miller's personal trauma and "unfinished business". It seems to me that the book also exemplifies Alice Miller's work through her son's description of his exploration of his personal biography and the value it held for him. I also found his comments on her work - where he rated it, what he disagreed with and what it could combine with to create a truly effective therapy - helpful.

There was another wholly unexpected layer of value for me. This edition includes an afterword written by Otto Schubbe. Miller worked with Schubbe when she wanted to address the underlying psychological reasons for pain she was suffering and he was visited by Martin Miller twelve years later as part of Miller's research for this book. This section addresses the impact of war on survivors and their children which gave me, unexpectedly, insights into my own and my mother's biographies and psychologies.

I also found Miller's final letter to his mother, written some years after his mother's death and also after the publication of this edition of the book, of value, revealing both Miller's biographical excavation into his mother's life and its value to her son. This, in turn, tended to underscore - rather than undermine - the value of Alice Miller's theory, reflected in the title of one of her books, that "the truth will set you free".

As a PS, Alice Miller's biography has the makings of a novel or drama. It is truly extraordinary.

[Clau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Acabo de leer este libro sin haber leído ninguno de los escritos por la protagonista. Me invalida este detalle para emitir mis impresiones? No necesariamente, creo.
Lo leí como lo que es, la versión de un hijo sobre quien fue su madre y a decir verdad, me resultó bastante incómodo de leer.
Será porque aquellos libros que contienen correspondencia siempre me han parecido igual de macabros que desenterrar un cadáver para analizar sus huesos? Que aquellas letras que fueron destinadas a una persona en particular, a sus únicos ojos, sean expuestas como pescado en la feria, me produce un gran pudor.
Mas aún cuando este libro, a mi juicio exhuda resentimiento y un deseo poco maquillado de destruir por completo la imagen de una persona a la quien nunca lograste conocer, ni comprender, ni aceptar en su dimensión humana como un ser intrínsecamente imperfecto.
Siento que este texto lo único que busca es dejar mal parada a la madre, descalificándola no sólo como persona, como madre sino también como terapeuta. Inadecuada, violenta, desadaptada, es poco decir.
Fue una víctima de la guerra, logró sobrevivir a una masacre, vivió la perdida de integrantes de su familia y tuvo un matrimonio desdichado. Múltiples experiencias traumáticas dejan huellas, en ese caso profundas, sin embargo no mataron su lado creativo.
No se le pueden pedir peras al olmo, se dice en mis tierras y si fuese mi caso que un hijo mío creara algo así después de mi muerte cuando ya no tengo ningún derecho a réplica, sé que me revolvería en mi tumba.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this immediately after reading Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. This book, written by Alice Miller's son, who also became a therapist, recounts his childhood and reconstructs his mother's life that she fought to keep private while she was alive.

It's an emotionally difficult story to read. The world-famous psychotherapist that built her career on advocating for children and publicizing the harms of child abuse, was in many ways a perpetrator of the same harms against her own son and never truly managed to make amends with him.

The book also describes what Martin Miller was able to find out about his mother's upbringing, family history, and experiences as a young Jewish woman during WWII. Knowing this provides so much important context for her works, like Drama of the Gifted Child.

To me, this book is about intergenerational trauma, the lasting effects of the Holocaust, childhood trauma, and the difficulty of pursuing healing as an adult. Despite their training in psychotherapy, both Alice and Martin struggle to understand themselves and build their lives as adults, but in this book I think I can begin to understand how this journey was traveled by these two.

[Azra Atılgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yetenekli Çocuğun Dramı'na bir devam/cevap niteliğinde olan bu kitabı okuma fırsatı elde ettiğimde, düşüncelerimi tazelemek adına Alice Miller'in kitabını tekrar okuyarak başladım. Bu onun kitabında gösterdiği bazı sivrilikleri görmek adına iyi oldu. Yazar Martin Miller'ın Alice Miller'ın oğlu ve meslektaşı olarak kaleme aldığı bu kitapta, M.M'ın okuyucu olarak benim de rahatsız olduğum birtakım A.M fikirlerine karşı çıkışı, ve yer yer açıklama yapmasını çok verimli buldum. Kitapta da sıkça bahsedildiği üzere A.M dönemi için çok çığır açıcı ve cesur psikanalitik sonuçlara ulaşmış olsa da bunları aşırı nitelendirebilirdim. Nitekim M.M hem annesinin içinde bulunduğu durumu analiz edebilmesi, kendi hayatına dair çıkarımları bunun üzerinden yapabilmesi, hem de bu analizde okuyucu olarak bizi bilgilendirmiş olması, A.M'nin çocukluk travmalarına ve ebeveynin yerine dair yaptığı analizleri temellendirmek adına çok değerli bir çalışma olmuş. M.M'in bir antitez niteliğinde yazdığını sanarak okumaya başladığım bu kitabın özellikle kitabın 6. 7. bölümlerinden sonra bir antitez değil aslında bir sentez ve kapsamlı bir nedenselleştirme oluşunu şaşkın bir memnuniyetle karşıladım. Kesinlikle okunmaya değer bir kitap.

[GBooklover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was amazing. I work with children as well as adult survivors of life threatening child abuse and Alice MIller’s books have been tremendously helpful to me in actually helping people.

When I heard that her son wrote a book about her being a neglectful mother I was intrigued.

It was a difficult read at times because one had to wade through a lot of conjecture to get at facts. I would have preferred that they were more separated. I took one star off of my rating for that.

I’m so glad I persevered to the end of the book, especially the last added-on chapter - it reads like a thriller.

In the end, I felt so much compassion for both Martin and Alice. I also felt in awe of the extraordinary way human beings can do both so much good and so much harm.

Deep gratitude to Martin Miller’s bravery and clarity for writing this and especially for writing the additional chapter which puts it all into perspective.

[Anna Simbuerger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erfreulicherweise nicht die Abrechnung mit der Mutter, die ich erwartet hatte, sondern vielmehr eine aufschlussreiche Auseinandersetzung mit Biographie und Lebenswerk der Alice Miller - erhellt durch intime Einblicke in Briefwechsel zwischen Mutter und Sohn. Angefangen mit der Erzählung des Überlebens der von den Nationalsozialisten verfolgten jüdischen Jugendlichen Alicija Englard in Polen, nimmt uns der Autor mit zu ihrer Etablierung als Alice Miller in Zürcher Psychoanalyse-Kreisen und ihrer Teilhabe am dortigen "Kränzli" mit anderen namhaften Analytikern und gewährt uns schließlich Einblick in die angespannte Beziehung zu seiner Mutter, die von Grenzüberschreitungen und Uneinsicht geprägt gewesen sein muss. Trotz des persönlichen Bezugs schafft der Autor ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis zwischen Wertschätzung und Kritik am Werk seiner Mutter. Ein Literaturverzeichnis wäre schön gewesen (Herder Verlag).

[Sheila Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read

This book by Alice Miller's son is so revelatory but not surprising to me. It is astonishing how much he found out about his mother's past. If there is one complaint I have, it is that he didn't push parts of that story to their logical conclusions. As the daughter of a mother who wouldn't talk about her life during the war, I can empathize with Martin. To me, her 2nd book is more important than any other. It was revolutionary and still resonates with people who come to read it for the first time in the 21st century. That she couldn't practice what she preached is so sad. But our mothers both lived a hell we can barely imagine and we have survived their deficiencies. Anyone who is interested in understanding the genesis of child abuse could start here, then read For Your Own Good. A good place to start.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The irony of the situation of what Alice Miller developed in psychology vs her own life felt unfortunate, but maybe not surprising.

I read the title referenced book by Martin Miller's mom and felt convinced that she had an authentic grasp of childhood trauma. From the almost contradictory ways written about her in this book, I'm equally convinced that she put her own child through a degree of the drama she writes so expertly about.

It's a little bit of a dry and sometimes detached read which somehow further authenticates the story.

[Snowy Papaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be sure to read the US version, or the later publicized version of 2018. At the very end he reveals a big shocker. In fact, his father was not a student as he explains during the book, but was a nazi, Andreas was the polish black mailer, he didn't just have the same name. He organised their move to switzerland. He was highly antisemitic and treated Martin disgustingly while his mother looked on in silence and fear, he was also the reason that martin wasgiven away as a baby, because he did not want to have a jewish son.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot believe that this book is a factual account of Martin’s life. So much of this feels like fiction - that one person could go through or witness this much seems incomprehensible. When you reach the final section, Martin’s letter pulls his perceived reality with the details from his mother’s *real point of view. Her shallow attempts to protect him ended up having the opposite effect, and further distinguished her into the phantom Alice Miller vs the real Alice Miller. I feel that this book is very bravely written, and it was helpful to hear his story.