The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting | 
|  | | | Title: | The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting | | Author: | Alice Miller
Andrew Jenkins (Translator) | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 21 August, 2006 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0393328635 / 9780393328639 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
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Product Description
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."
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Customer Reviews:
• Good Points Spoiled By Exaggerated Claims 21 August, 2008
The book was recommended by an Irish friend who came from what she felt was a repressive background. Unfortunately mine is different and I found this book hard going. It actually made me feel physically unwell to read it.
What's the problem? It's hard to tell the facts from the hypothesis in the this book. The author do offer some food for thoughts, but the way she expressed it was so unbalanced that I found it hard to take her seriously. I felt like chucking the baby out with the bath water.
The author & her supporters would no doubt accuse me of not having access to my true self. Believers always have a way to explain away any contradictions. She accuses society at large and the psychoanalytic community of this, but she does it herself. Everything has to fit neatly into one grand theory. There has to be one explanation for all the ills of the world and one panacea. Unfortunately that distracts from the real contribution that she has to make.
Her Afterword section should probably have been put before the Preface. For there there was an admission that made rest of the book a bit more balanced, namely that she meant "introjected parents" rather than "real parents" and took care not to label them "evil parents". Actually, I don't recall seeing that distinction in much of the book at all. And without the distinction, her words could be abused, as she approbates blames and rails against forgiveness. Someone who has unintegrated rage could easily interpret this as sanctioning revenge.
But not everyone understand forget and forgive as repress and give in. In fact I'd say what she seems to be promoting is in fact a type of forgetting and forgiving. She does not talk of revenge as the outcome, but of acknowledging real emotions - a reality - so that they can run their course and the patient moving beyond the hurt and dependency to nurturing themselves. As far as I'm concern, being no longer affected by a past hurt is forget and forgive. Forget because you're no longer repeating the dependency and forgive because you no longer have to hate because of unfulfilled needs.
True, many people do end up repressing rather than forgiving. And to be told from the outset that you must move to forgiveness put undue pressure on someone whose repressed emotions haven't surfaced completely and been allowed to run their course in a safe environment. So to that extent I can understand the author's need to write without restraint regardless of the consequence - that floodgate is quite hard to prey open.
But it's just such a shame that exaggerated claims have to be made and all societies and religions tarnished with one stroke without close examination of what they actually preach. By her reckoning, a nation like Japan should either be very violent or have low life expectancy, for it is a very restrained society. But it's no.3 in average life expectancy, and some areas of it have highest life expectancy in the world. Had she restricted herself to her own experience and what had worked for her, her patients, and other with same predicament, the book would have been so much more valuable. But restraint is definitely not the byword for this book.
And that annoying refrain about the Fourth Commandment...not everyone is Judeo-Christian. Where I was born traditionally you're not expected to love your parents - love? what's that! You're just expected to pay your due because they brought you up & thus made sacrifices for you. So it's your turn to make sacrifices when they are old & frail. Not that children do nowadays. Poor parents. Especially those women with post-natal depression. I'm glad I'm not one. Definitely not after this book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A222OBUMGPBC7U
• One Of Her Best! 09 January, 2007
It is time for us to believe in this work.
I look forward to a world of people who have healed from childhood abuse.
Can you imagine an adult praising and honoring a stranger who attacked them? Handing out shame to quiet vicitms has been our way too much of the time.
It is time for us to stop honoring our abusers which Miller says is unnatural and destructive.
I really respect her consistent willingness to discuss her own misconceptions on things. She is insightful, well experienced and well educated on the subject. It is time to listen to her.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2OR4QUQSUMOW7
• Impressive 22 March, 2008
Alice Miller was recomended to me by my terapist. Her ideas have been truly enlightening.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3IUIWJAEEMVE0
• The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects Of Hurtful Parenting 19 May, 2007
Excellent book for individuals who struggle with chronic illness. Alice Miller points to illnesses to childhood emotional disorders.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3JGA7BZKHC9Y1
• The Siren For Early Abuse 08 March, 2007
I have been reading the author's books since the early 80's. Mrs Miller has some very important things to say about what most people consider to be a "normal" childhood experience. Being older I experienced much of the more extreme examples in her new book and I can attest to the debillitating affects she describes. She writes very well and the translators in all of her books are very good.
My only criticism is that she is still only writing about the problem and offers no solutions. I felt sad that she knows exactly what I went through but can not offer me any help beyond the knowing that I am not alone in my experience. But her purpose is sounding the alarm so I can not fault her for that.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A387NLQLT2YHK2
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