The Body Never Lies
: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
by
Alice Miller
£
In her latest book, Miller explores the physical effects
of
repressing our true feelings from a young age. She argues
that repressed emotional
responses to early humiliations and unfulfilled needs are inevitably
transferred to the body, producing long-term illness. She also
believes that the majority of therapists are bent on fostering an
attitude of
forgiveness, whereas what
survivors of parental cruelty need most is someone who shares their
feelings of
indignation. Miller traces the relationship between inadequate or
tyrannical
parenting and adult bodily illness, depression and suicide in pithy
biographies
of Dostoyevski, Chekhov, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and many
others.
From the publishers:
"World-renowned therapist Alice Miller has devoted a lifetime to studying the
cruelties inflicted on children. In The Body Never Lies Miller goes further,
investigating the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the adult body.
Using numerous case histories gleaned from her practice, as well as examining
the biographical stories of celebrated writers such as Marcel Proust, Virginia
Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others, Mil1er shows how a child's emotional
traumas, repressed humiliation, and bottled rage can manifest themselves as
serious adult health problems. In discussing the lives of these literary giants,
Miller explores the known or, in some cases, unknown traumas that haunted each
author's childhood. More important, Miller connects the writers' painful
childhoods with their later afflictions, which included depression, anorexia,
cancer, and even insanity.
While examining everything from parental spanking to sexual abuse and
emotional blackmail, Miller exposes the societal pressures that converge to harm
children. She explains that we have so many societal mechanisms to prevent us
from feeling anger or rage against our parents that we tend never to confront
our own feelings. To combat the debilitating effects of such jarring and often
contradictory emotions, Miller explores the benefits of using a therapist as an
"Enlightened Witness" to reaffirm the patient's repressed reactions to a
forgotten childhood experience.
Miller also discusses how institutionalized religion itself can contribute to
the crushing guilt that prevents us from being healthy and conscious adults. She
urges society to realize that the Fourth Commandment -"Honor thy father and thy
mother"- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argues, it is healthier
not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have
resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.
In a stirring rejection of the "Poisonous Pedagogy" that pardons even the
most brutal parenting, Miller examines the cyclical nature of violence and
abuse. Parents and guardians who abuse their children, both physically and
mentally, leave them embarrassed and hurt. The inability of most children to
properly express such feelings causes them to perpetuate the cycle by lashing
out at their family, friends, and, above al1, their own children, who will
inevitably do the same.
Throughout The Body Never Lies, Miller offers a calm and encouraging voice.
Indeed, The Body Never Lies, through its illuminating and provocative insight,
affords us a unique understanding of the immense healing powers of the adult
self and the body."
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