کودک آزاردیده من
کو‌دک طرد شده من
ای منِ ترسیده و سرکوب شده!
تو بخشی از منی، تو خودِ منی و من تو را به رسمیت می‌شناسم، دوست می‌دارم و در آغوش می‌گیرم
هر چند قبلا کسانی که باید تو را دوست نداشتند.
بله منظورم از کسان پدر و مادر ماست.
دیگر تو را نادیده نمی‌گیرم و از مواجه شدن با دلهره های آن بخش از زندگی‌ام هراسی ندارم
هر چند سخت
هر چند دردناک
اما تاب روبه‌رو شدن و پذیرش تو را پیدا کرده‌ام
دیگر پتک سرکوبم را بر سر خودم نمی‌زنم
بر سر عوامل این آسیب ها هم نمی‌زنم؛ اما هیچ وقت آن‌ها را نمی‌بخشم و تا همیشه آن‌ها را محکوم و مسئول صدها سرخوردگی، یأس و پوچی امروز خود می‌بینم.
اگر سواد تربیت فرزند ندارید حق ندارید بچه دار شوید.
همان‌طور که اگر گواهینامه خلبانی ندارید اجازه ندارید هواپیمایی را به پرواز درآورید.
وقتی بتوانیم به عمق آسیب‌ها و کاستی‌های دوران کودکی شیرجه بزنیم دیگر بدون هیج تابویی می‌توانیم عملکرد والدین ناآگاه خود را نقد کنیم.
کاش والدین ما می‌دانستند چه تاثیری بر ما دارند و قبل از هر کاری بیشتر فکر می‌کردند.
احتمالا این کتاب شدیدا شما را تکان خواهد داد.
طوری که نتوانید مثل قبل فکر کنید. آگاهی‌بخشی صرف درباره آسیب‌های دوران کودکی در این کتاب نمی‌تواند مسئله را برطرف و حال ما را در بلند مدت بهتر کند. چرا که به گفته خود نویسنده باید درد در اتاق درمان ذره ذره حس شود. به طوری که ارتباط احساسی با لحظه آسیب برقرار شده و مراجع خود را در آن لحظه و‌ با حضور آسیب زنندگان تصور کند.
این کار بسیار رنج‌آور است. به طوری که در همین لحظه که این متن را می‌نویسم دستان و چشمانم می‌لرزد. اما تجربه‌اش برایم بسیار سودمند بود و از چیزها و کسانی توانستم گذر کنم که انجامش برایم محال بود.
روان‌درمانی باید طوری باشد که یاد بگیریم نسبت به خودمان دلسوزی کنیم تا یکپارگی شخصیت خود را بازیابیم.
برای همه کسانی که تحت درمان هستند، کسانی که روان‌درمانی را شروع نکرده یا در برابر آن گارد دارند و حتی روان‌درمانگران این کتاب یک ضرورت است.

Φοβερό βιβλίο!

This book is both brilliant and full of schlock. I know people with the problems she described, people who were never going to be loved for who they were, so either buried themselves in achievement or cut off important parts of themselves. These childhood traumas have crippled them in adulthood. The thing about these people, though, is that their parents were fundamentally flawed and repeated these actions over and over again. Unlike in Miller's book, these were not one-off events.

I think it is great that Miller decided to write about these people, but she took the ideas too far. Babies should have their needs catered to and children should be respected for who they are, but they should not be allowed to "order their mothers around like paschas." It is normal for good, loving parents to need a night off, and it is necessary for them not to indulge their child's every whim. It is called parenting. Also, I do not think it is neurologically possible for someone to remember being sexually abused once at three months old.

Conclusion: This book can give you some real insight if you are willing to wade through a lot of junk.

I have been recommended this book on numerous occasions by therapists and friends who are therapists. It is considered a classic. It is not about children of high intelligence which is the general use of the word "gifted" today and the title is misleading in that respect.

I began this book in 1996 and have now finished it. That it has taken me nearly twenty years to get through says something...about me, or the author, I'm not sure which. I am being facetious, but I want to make the point that although this book is revered in certain circles, it is not without criticism.

The first time I read it (before I had my own children) I didn't get past the first few pages. Too dry, abstract and lacking in concrete ways forward. Picking it up again now I have children, the first chapter depressed me beyond belief to the point that I dreaded picking it up to read further. The idea that I was damaged by my own parents and then passed this damage on to my children was excruciating.

However, as she went on and on reiterating the same theme, never giving any solutions to the presented problem, I found myself wearying of her position. And in the end, I became cynical.

We all do the best we can as parents. None of us had parents who were able to "mirror" us as sufficiently as the author seems to think they should have. They had jobs, money worries, rocky marriages, mortgages, other children, etc. In other words, they had lives.

Ms. Miller seems to espouse some utopian expectation of parents that can't possibly be fulfilled and never have been in the history of mankind. Yet somehow, we made it through. Sure, there are some truly terrible parents who ruin their children's lives but most do their best and are well-intentioned but still have children who split off parts of their personalities, become people pleasers or some form of narcissist. That it seems to me is the drama of childhood - that the mundane can cause the same result. And that to avoid it, is almost impossible.

In the end, it felt like a turgid piece of salesmanship for therapy. And while I'm a huge proponent of good therapy to build self-awareness, coping mechanisms and relieve depression, I really didn't need to read this to know that. The ideas are now outdated and rooted in victimhood. The hours I spent wading through this would have been better spent *in* therapy.

I read this book at the encouragement of my adult daughter who thought it might help me understand some anxieties and resentment in her younger brother. I read it with some other women which was a good thing to have their companionship as I found this book absolutely graceless. The author’s premise that all adults who suffer from anxieties or depression must do the work of recalling and recognizing the destructive actions of their parents, most often their mother, no matter how well intentioned they may be. According to her, from birth the mother has laid on expectations which have stunted the emotional growth of their children. They have used their children in a form of abuse to meet their own needs. Example after horrific example was given of mothers who abused, exploited, and damaged their children with their religion, their own damaged past, and with any and all expectations of behavior. Furthermore, all are doomed to repeat the pattern to the next generation. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

خیلی خیلی خوب و روشنگر. از کتاب‌هایی که زندگی آدم‌ها را تغییر می‌دهد. خواندن‌اش مثل چراغی است که نور می‌تاباند بر گذشته‌ی تاریک و پستی‌وبلندی‌های مسیری که پیش آمده‌آیم.
با این حال نقطه‌ی ضعف کتاب، تک‌بعدی نگاه کردن نویسنده است. نویسنده تمام شخصیت یک فرد را تقلیل می‌دهد به رفتار والدین با کودک، حال‌ آن‌که امروز دیگر می‌دانیم که دورانِ زندگیِ کنارِ والدین، تمامِ آینده را نمی‌سازد و محیط اجتماعی و ژنتیک و شاید چیزهای دیگر هم موثرند در شکل‌گیری روان.

با این‌همه، احتمالا خواندنش برای بیشتر آدم‌ها لازم و کمک‌کننده است.

Summer 2017 is apparently the 'summer of self-torture' for me, when it comes to reading. Though this book is a quick read (even for me), it felt a LOT longer than it actually was.

Other reviews have already covered the weakness of her theoretical/methodological foundations, as well as of her 'data' and argumentation. I would add that her tendency to univeralize (strongly influenced by her white, Western, cis, socioeconomically privileged identity) is problematic to the point of being comical. (If you were curious, this book must be partly to blame for the notion that 'mass murderers are such because mommy didn't hug them enough as a child.') Or at least, it would be funny if so many people didn't take it seriously. It seems positive when people find things that help them feel better, but what if the thing is a book that's like, "Mirroring between baby and mommy is so super important-- let's not talk about daddy"-- and people uncritically take that shit seriously? Is it really a positive if that stuff makes us feel better? Maybe this book is further evidence of the power of placebos...

There is a lot more to say about this book, but, dude, I deserve to spend some time reading something fun! We're done here.

Let us stay, rather, on Earth...
Where the unfit contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day -
With Darkness and the Death Hour rounding it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning


I wrote this review a bit too fast. I AM a gifted child who is STILL sacrificed on my own altar of ridiculously high expectations! I shoulda "stayed, rather, on Earth."

My parents, like these kids did, helped me BUILD that altar. It was a smoke screen covering the Truth.

An altar of self-immolation, and the REAL Reason I burned out at retirement, just like so many other frantically-driven managers.

Yikes - OK. Here's what I wrote a year or so ago...

"This wonderful book details the inner spiritual death suffered by little kids who are conveniently SACRIFICED ON THE ALTAR OF PARENTAL EXPECTATION - and thus of vicarious parental ambition.

An awful story, if it applies to any of you.

These kids, now grown up, relive their childhood nightmares of being put in a spiritual coffin by their controlling guardians.

And the result is a meaningless life of ‘going through the motions of living’ WITHOUT ever knowing their true selves.

And this awful outcome is now more and more the Rule rather than the Exception in our conveyer-belt lives. (I thought it would touch a real nerve when applied to the car wreck of my own life.) But in fact, it did not...

You see, in the spring of my thirteenth year I made a conscious decision to relive the memories of my early childhood to such an extent that they - as the record of my real self, likely soon to be submerged as I entered the regimental high school system - would henceforth be indelibly stamped on my mental identity.

I would generally walk the LONG way home from my nearby elementary school (no junior high back then!) and gradually tease these buried memory threads into my conscious wakeful mind.

And in such a way I amassed an inner archive of detail of the Living Self that had experienced them.

I musta been prescient. The adult world was waiting in the wings to do a number on my inner child!

But with this inner archive, I was later able to more or less easily restore my real self - after the arduous and uncompromising night of neuroleptic drugs eventually lightened into a jagged, broken dawn.

And talking on Goodreads helped enormously!

So, no - this book didn’t apply to me. "

So went my cock 'n bull story!

Like bally heck! I shoulda known better to have sent it to my sister, who knew I AM a "gifted child." She didn't quibble about my illusion. But she KNEW I DIDN'T KNOW the real story. I just didn't get it...

Till I read Eliza Morgan's book The Beauty of Broken again. In it, she baldly says our real life won't begin till we see WE ALL are broken people. A direct hit on my OCD.

So to those of us to whom the calamitously deleterious memories of vicarious adult ambition resulted in your spiritual death...

While your true self may remain a closed book to you...

Your vitality will be reborn, if you follow this book’s many stories into deep mourning for your lost inner child.

And REALLY start over at Square One, for it's there, in our murky beginnings, that we must shine the Bright Light of Reason.

And Right Now is ALL we have, you know...

For it's only in the Bright Light of Reason -

That we will see our Childhood Devils as a part of the too-real Stark Reality we live in today.

Le relazioni pericolose.

Al mio psicoterapeuta Alice Miller non piace molto.
In effetti non è piaciuta granché nemmeno a me, anche se devo riconoscere di aver letto questo testo in cerca di risposte che, probabilmente, sarebbe stato più facile trovare se lo avessi avvicinato da madre piuttosto che da figlia.
Quello su cui siamo d'accordo, il mio psicoterapeuta e io, è anche il fatto che la psicoanalista Miller, al di là dei casi limite raccontati e riconoscibili da chiunque anche fra noi profani, tende a colpevolizzare tout court l'esemplare genitore (tendenza che, in ogni caso, ponendosi in senso nettamente antitetico alla psicoanalisi, che tradizionalmente incolpa il bambino per assolvere i genitori, l'ha portata nel 1988 ad allontanarsi dalla Società Internazionale di Psicoanalisi), non tenendo praticamente conto dell'alto indice di fallibilità dell'essere umano, genitore incluso: insomma, il genitore perfetto non credo sia di questo mondo, Svizzera compresa.
A tale proposito, superata o meno che sia, mi piace sempre ricordare una frase attribuita a Sigmund Freud che, scritta da mia madre, campeggiava in cucina sulla lavagnetta di famiglia (lavagnetta che non è mai servita a null'altro, ma che per anni ha riportato, incancellata, quella frase e i successivi commenti di noi quattro figli): «Qualunque cosa un genitore dica o faccia comunque sbaglia».

[edit] nel frattempo ho cambiato psicoterapeuta, devo ricordare di chiedere alla nuova cosa ne pensa di questo saggio.

تعریف یک کتاب خوب گمانم این است: «کتابی که با خواندنش جهان را جور دیگری می‌بینیم». کتاب آلیس میلر از همین دست کتاب‌ها ست؛ اثری که مهم‌ترین اختلالات روانی را با کودکیِ هر فرد و به رابطه‌اش با والدین مرتبط می‌کند و از مخاطبانش می‌خواهد با خشم و انزجار و غم‌های آن دوران مواجه شوند تا اسیر آن نمانند

O carte care tratează problema abuzului psihologic pe care unii părinți îl au asupra copiilor săi. Și dacă violența fizică și abuzul sexual sunt fapte ușor de depistat, abuzul emoțional e unul din problemele greu de oprit sau de uitat, mai ales dacă ai fost victima unei asemenea situații în copilărie, pentru că dintre toate abuzurile la care poate fi supus un om, pe acesta psihologic lesne îl poți ascunde conștient și chiar inconștient. De aici apare depresia, grandomania și multe alte boli mentale.

Unii părinți ajung să nu-și dea seama de influența nefastă pe care o au asupra copiilor lor și asta din cauză că au fost traumați psihologic în copilărie. De cele mai multe ori, din depresie, amintiri urâte din copilărie, situații de abuz sexual, poți scăpa cu ajutorul psihoterapeutului, în urma la câțiva ani buni de consiliere.

O carte cu un subiect de carte foarte interesant. Și nu e doar pentru părinții cu copii mici, cartea poate fi citită și de adolescenți, maturi. Mai ales că fiecare din noi suntem copiii părinților noștri.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

-Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

Not the facile pop-psychology I was expecting, rather a book with some penetrating insights. As other reviewers note, "gifted" in this context does not refer necessarily to academic or artistic gifts (though these are common in the patient group Miller describes), rather a kind of emotional sensitivity.

Briefly, Miller describes the narcissistic personality disturbance. Here narcissistic is used not in the broad sense of vain, being in love with yourself etc. This narcissism is an internalisation of the great expectations of one's parents, the consequent lasting feelings of inadequacy and drive to greater and greater successes (that leave one hollow). Narcissus did not fall in love with himself, but with a false reflection of himself.

The twin manifestations of narcissism are grandiosity and depression. Each is a defence against the other. Grandiosity arises as a person feels their achievements render them superior to everyone else. Depression strikes when they realise they will never achieve as much as "necessary" to support their ego, or that all achievements are empty. Both these manifestations can be traced back to a failure to express one's true self and an idealisation of a false-self instilled by parental desires, pride, ambition, vicarious status-seeking etc. Grandiosity is characterised by contempt for others (who have not, as a casual example, read as many books or displayed as brilliant intellectual and artistic accomplishments). Depression is characterised by contempt for oneself, when one does not (cannot) meet one's own expectations. Anything less than world-historical greatness (and perhaps even that) is seen as failure, that is, pathetic mediocrity. Notably, parents do not have to be physically abusive to have these effects. 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. Thus a keen sensitivity as a child instils a cripplingly powerful super-ego.

Miller claims that the key to these feelings is the realisation that one was loved as a child not for who one was, but (in large part at least) because of one's achievements. This leaves the child always desperate to achieve more, to safeguard their parents' love. One's own personality, desires, needs and emotions are suppressed to create a projected perfection which attracts love and awe. Recognition of this allows the patients to be who they are for the first time and to experience their own emotions - both positive and negative. It is remarkably difficult for some people to even contemplate negative thoughts towards their parents. Childhood memories of abuse are among the most strongly suppressed or displaced. Miller references Ingmar Bergman who described in great detail the violent abuse his brother faced at his father's hands, but had no recollection of any mistreatment to himself. (Of course, it seems rather unlikely that he went through his childhood entirely unscathed).

This is all pretty simplified, the book is brief and well worth reading particularly if you see aspects of yourself or someone you know in the above. Though some of the book passed me by there were sentences that gutted me like a fish...

As I look forward to becoming a parent myself within the next few months (against Larkin's advice, if you know the rest of the poem) I can only hope to not fuck up my child, or at least to fuck them up as little as possible. That is, to avoid projecting my own desires and fantasies and personal conception of success onto them and to allow them to flourish as their own person.