The Body Never Lies The Lingering Effects Of Cruel Parenting

This is an empowering work from a world-renowned psychoanalyst that enables readers to come to terms with their repressed emotions and break the cycle of violence.

An examination of childhood trauma and its surreptitious, debilitating effects by one of the world's leading psychoanalysts. Never before has world-renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller examined so persuasively the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the body. Using the experiences of her patients along with the biographical stories of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Miller shows how a child's humiliation, impotence, and bottled rage will manifest itself as adult illness—be it cancer, stroke, or other debilitating diseases. Never one to shy away from controversy, Miller urges society as a whole to jettison its belief in the Fourth Commandment and not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives. In this empowering work, writes Rutgers professor Philip Greven, "readers will learn how to confront the overt and covert traumas of their own childhoods with the enlightened guidance of Alice Miller."

Collects therapeutic answers to hundreds of reader letters, in a volume that explores the controversial connection between childhood trauma and physical illness, drug use, crime, and future cycles of abuse.

More than twenty years ago, a little-known Swiss psychoanalyst wrote a book that changed the way many people viewed themselves and their world. In simple but powerful prose, the deeply moving Drama of the Gifted Child showed how parents unconsciously form and deform the emotional lives of their children. Alice Miller's stories about the roots of suffering in childhood resonated with readers, and her book soon became a backlist best seller. In The Truth Will Set You Free Miller returns to the intensely personal tone and themes of her best-loved work. Only by embracing the truth of our past histories can any of us hope to be free of pain in the present, she argues. Miller uses vivid true stories to reveal the perils of early-childhood mistreatment and the dangers of mindless obedience to parental will. Drawing on the latest research on brain development, she shows how spanking and humiliation produce dangerous levels of denial, which leads in turn to emotional blindness and to mental barriers that cut off awareness and the ability to learn new ways of acting. If this cycle repeats itself, the grown child will perpetrate the same abuse on later generations -- a message vitally important, especially given the increasing popularity of programs like Tough Love and of "child disciplinarians" like James Dobson. The Truth Will Set You Free will provoke and inform all readers who want to know Alice Miller's latest thinking on this important subject.

For Your Own Good, the contemporary classic exploring the serious if not gravely dangerous consequences parental cruelty can bring to bear on children everywhere, is one of the central works by Alice Miller, the celebrated Swiss psychoanalyst. With her typically lucid, strong, and poetic language, Miller investigates the personal stories and case histories of various self-destructive and/or violent individuals to expand on her theories about the long-term affects of abusive child-rearing. Her conclusions—on what sort of parenting can create a drug addict, or a murderer, or a Hitler—offer much insight, and make a good deal of sense, while also straying far from psychoanalytic dogma about human nature, which Miller vehemently rejects. This important study paints a shocking picture of the violent world—indeed, of the ever-more-violent world—that each generation helps to create when traditional upbringing, with its hidden cruelty, is perpetuated. The book also presents readers with useful solutions in this regard—namely, to resensitize the victimized child who has been trapped within the adult, and to unlock the emotional life that has been frozen in repression.

"A clarion call from one of the great psychological mins of our time." Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco --

"Provides practical and compassionate guidance on dismantling the childhood defenses of repression and denial."Contemporary Psychology.

In this volume nineteen biblical scholars collaborate to provide an informed and focused treatment of biblical perspectives on children and childhood. Looking at the Bible through the "lens" of the child exposes new aspects of biblical texts and themes. Some of the authors focus on selected biblical texts -- Genesis, Proverbs, Mark, and more -- while others examine such biblical themes as training and disciplining, children and the image of God, the metaphor of Israel as a child, and so on. In discussing a vast array of themes and questions, the chapters also invite readers to reconsider the roles that children can or should play in religious communities today. Contributors: Reidar Aasgaard David L. Bartlett William P. Brown Walter Brueggemann Marcia J. Bunge John T. Carroll Terence E. Fretheim Beverly Roberts Gaventa Joel B. Green Judith M. Gundry Jacqueline E. Lapsley Margaret Y. MacDonald Claire R. Mathews McGinnis Esther M. Menn Patrick D. Miller Brent A. Strawn Marianne Meye Thompson W. Sibley Towner Keith J. White