To be fair, I'm going to start with the caveat that I'm not a huge fan of Freud, on whose theories of psychoanalysis Alice Miller seems to rely quite heavily in constructing her own. But while I admit my personal bias against the foundation for her psychological theory, I still believe the construction of her general arguments to be weak as well. She seems to depend far too heavily on isolated instances as evidence of the childhood "abuses" that have crippled her patients in their adulthood, while dismissing more pronounced examples of abuse as too extreme for the case she wishes to make. Furthermore, it seems that her entire exploration of the "gifted child" -- not one who is overly bright, but rather a child who is able to empathize with his parents as they struggle through their issues -- is based on her own mama-drama rather than on more objective studies. It seems that Miller is grasping at examples to justify her own childhood frustrations. While surely cathartic, this doesn't strike me as a sound basis for a psychological treatise.

I might be able to forgive all that, had the writing been more compelling or better organized. I cannot excuse the poor construction of this text, or Miller's failure to adequately support her points or tie together the various threads of her argument. Without a conclusion, her complaints fall flat and her thesis remains unsound. I'm not really sure of what, if anything, she's believes she has proven, or what substantial evidence she has given to back her claim. I come away feeling that a parent can't possibly do right by their child, as any attempt at a reprimand is considered borderline abuse. Miller might have done better to include suggestions for positive parental models or success stories, to better indicate the goals of her methods or the point of this book. Her other texts may be more compelling, but this one is a definite must-miss.

اولین کتابی که از آلیس میلر و به توصیه تراپیستم خوندم،کتاب روان شناسی خوبیه مخصوصا برای افرادی که در شروع یا در تصمیم حل مشکلات و چالش ها و گره های کودکی خودشون هستم توصیه میکنم

تا زمانی که ما نسبت به رنج و عذاب کودکان حساسیت به خرج ندهیم، استفاده از قدرت به دست بزرگسالان همچنان یکی از جنبه های عادی زندگی انسان ها دیده خواهد شد، چون به ندرت کسی به آن توجه می کند یا آن را جدی می گیرد. از آنجا که قربانیان در این موارد فقط بچه ها هستند، رنج آنها ناچیز شمرده می شود. اما در عرض بیست سال این بچه ها تبدیل به بزرگسالانی می شوند که به شدت حس خواهند کرد باید تمام رنج های خود را به کودکانشان برگردانند. آنها ممکن است خودآگاه و با تمام قوا با ظلم و ستم موجود در دنیا مبارزه کنند، در حالیکه درون خود تجربه ظلم و ستمی را دارند که ممکن است آن را ناخودآگاه بر دیگران تحمیل کنند. تا زمانی که چنین تجربه ای در پشت تصویری خیالی از یک دوران کودکی شاد مخفی است، آنها از وجود آن آگاهی نمی یابند و در نتیجه قادر نخواهند بود از انتقالش جلوگیری کنند.

once again a parent has given me a book meant to change my life that’s really about my partner

I was on fire to discuss this book with people and I had so many place saving stickers all over it I realized I simply wanted to talk about every sentence! I read it 20 years ago and I felt like I finally found explanations that made sense! Since then I've read many other good books discussing the same issues which also were excellent so the fire became a little light. It's an excellent book of possible truth, and definitely should be near the top of that book list if you have an interest in this subject.

اتمام..
۳۰ آبان ۱۴۰۰
ساعت ۱۸:۰۷

قرأت كثيراً عن العلاقات السامة والمؤذية التي يكون أحد طرفيها لديه سمات نرجسية، وكيف تؤثر على العلاقة وتمتص وتستهلك الطرف الآخر، بعض الكتب كانت تميل لشيطنة النرجسية وأخرى تشرح ديناميكيتها دون تشويه، ولكن ذلك أول كتاب أقرأه يتحدث بشكل مبسط عن "كيف بدأت النرجسية؟!"..

يتحدث الكتاب من وجهة نظر المدرسة التحليلية التي تستهويني عن النرجسية كمرحلة تبدأ كمرحلة طبيعية من مراحل الطفولة والتي تتحدث عنها الكاتبة بلفظ "الاحتياجات النرجسية"، الرغبة الأصيلة في الرؤية والتقدير والتعبير والتي تحترم وتؤكد ذات الطفل الحقيقية، إن لبّاها الأهل بشكل صحي ترسّخ عند الطفل حقوقه الفطرية تلك فينتقل من تمركزه النرجسي حول ذاته لوسع رؤية الآخر والتفاعل معه له -للآخر- وليس لمنفعته الشخصية، وإلا، ظل مثبّتا في تلك المرحلة متمركزا حول ذاته ويستخدم ما حوله لصالحه.

بداية من عنوان الكتاب المُركّب "الطفولة المأسورة البحث عن الذات الحقيقية" والتي وصفت فيها الكاتبة طبيعة النرجسية كمرحلة لم تكتمل لآخرها فأصبحت مقيدة مأسورة وإن تقدم صاحبها بالعمر، تظل احتياجاته النرجسية حبيسة تطلب التحرر في كل مشهد تمر به كنداء "انظروا لي" ، فيُنظَر لإنجازاته لا احتياجاته وذاته الحقيقية المأسورة التي يخاف هو حد الرعب أن تظهر فتُقابل بالرفض، تدعّم إنجازاته فتصبح كمسكن يدفعه للمزيد منها ولكنها لا تزيده إلا عطشاً للمزيد.. من المسكنات!

ومن المفارقات أن أكثر البشر تأثراً هم الأكثر حساسية، الأكثر تأثرا بغياب احتياجاتهم والأكثر موهبة! ومن هنا جاء العنوان الآخر "دراما الطفل الموهوب".

تتحدث الكاتبة في التمهيد عن ربط المرحلة النرجسية بالأنانية "في الصغر" وتبعات ذلك على الطفل وتحوله من طفل متطلب لاحتياجه الطبيعي لطفل ملبي لرغبات والديه"طيب مطيع" وإلا فقد محبتهم وكيف تؤثر تلك النظرة عليه في الكبر ومعاناته عندما يري الآخرين ليسوا طيبين.

ثم انتقلت في الفصل الأول لشرح طبيعة الاحتياجات النرجسية في الطفولة وخاصة في الطفل الذكي عاطفيا سريع الفهم لإشارات والديه وكيف يؤثر حرمانه من احترام رغباته أو قمعه ومن ثَم تكيفه ففقدان جزء من ذاته الحقيقية.

أما الفصل الثاني فكان رسم لطريقين ناشيء من منطلق واحد، عدم تلبية الاحتياجات النرجسية، لتودي إلى طريقين؛ إما النرجسية المتعاظمة التي ترى ذاتها أعلى ممن حولها وتستخدمهم لتحقيق مجدها الشخصي،
والأخرى، الهشة والتي تُسقِط في اكتئاب الشعور بخسارة الذات، انعدام القيمة، بعد إنكاره المُتبنّى من تربيته لمشاعره واحتياجاته الأصيلة، فيتطابق مع تلك الرؤيا التي لم يعرف غيرها ويسقط في شعور من الخواء والخزي.. فالنرجسية المتعاظمة والهشة وجهان لعملة واحدة..

ثم تتحدث في الفصل الثالث عن إسقاط كراهية الذات في تلك الأحوال وأثرها في ازدراء الضعف في من حوله، وتتابُع ذلك في الأبناء، كيف يب��و وإلامَ يؤدي.

رأيت من خلال الكتاب نظرة ميكروسكوبية للنرجسية وأثرها، وجه آخر لم أبصر من خلاله من قبل، ربما نظرة تراحمية تجعل ممن هو في ذلك الموضع إنسان يتألم ليس شيطاناً،
أتفهم كيف أتى إلى هنا، إلام يطمح، ولكن لا أتعاطف مع فِعله لو كان مؤذياً بمبرر احتياجه غير المُلبّى.

الكتاب يستحق تقييم ٥ لولا الترجمة الغير جيدة في صفحات كثيرة، ارشحه بقوة للمتخصصين على الأخص لأن به بعض المصطلحات التي قد يصعب فهمها.

This isn’t really a book about narcissistic abuse, but one more about the effects of emotionally absent mothers who have almost Victorian standards of child rearing. The problem is it conflates the two things. This book was first published in 1979, so it’s not surprising the author was seeing adult clients who were raised in a Victorian mould - their parents and grandparents were still carrying the legacy of that era, not to mention the trauma of two world wars.

And there’s the first big problem with the author’s conclusions - that everything is the mother’s fault, while ignoring all the other influences in a child’s development. This includes the father, siblings, wider family, their peer group, the social conditioning of the time, generational trauma, wealth, health, access to education and a hundred other things. Unfortunately, the author is caught up in Freudian psychology, so an unfeeling mother is solely to blame for their adult child’s unhappiness and their sexual ‘perversions’.

The second big problem is the author then offers no solution to readers who identify with anything they’ve read. If they agree they are suffering because of their relationship with their mother, what are they to do about it? I assume the author thinks it’s enough just to realise it’s your mother’s fault and that will unlock the secrets to your inner happiness, because that is the Freudian way. At the point of this discovery the client is essentially deemed to be cured and left to their own devices.

The kindest thing I can say about this book is that it’s ideas have dated and things have moved on. However, early works like this were probably an important first step in developing our modern understanding that child abuse doesn’t only involve violence and assault, but that emotional abuse and emotional neglect are just as damaging.

160 sayfadan çok daha fazlasını okudum sanırım ya da okumaya çalıştım desem daha doğru.
Alice Miller’ı insanlara tanıtmak için elinden geleni yapan Nihan Kaya’ya ayrıca teşekkürler!
Çok yoğun bir kitaptı zor oldu benim için okuması. Satırlar arasında beklemelerim, hazmetmekte zorlandığım çok anlar yaşadım..
Anne-baba, öğretmen, dayı, hala, teyze, anneanne, babaanne!
Çocuğa dokunan herkes okusun mutlaka!
Belki böylelikle makus talihimizi değiştirmek mümkün olabilir...

In 1994 a friend of mind recommended this book to me. I was going through a rough patch -- divorce, change of residence/state, change of occupation, all those major stressors -- and this book was more than a help, it made me see myself and my personal struggle in a new light.

I can't and won't try to summarize this book in a few trite sentences. Suffice it to say that Dr. Alice Miller is a pioneering psychologist with great insight into the human problem. Dr. Miller states her objective, in the introduction to the original edition of her work, as follows: "...I am looking for a way ... by which the patient can regain his long-lost authentic sense of being truly alive."

This book helped me do just that. I don't think it will do it for everyone -- after I read it I was a fanatical convert/missionary for many years, only to learn, finally, that the truth will set you free only if you're ready for it.

Regardless, this is an interesting work in human psychology that anyone who desires more knowledge and insight into the human condition will find a profitable read.

Freudian claptrap, devoid of scientific thought or evidence. How did they get away with this stuff?

Seems really dated and simplistic, which, given all we've learned about depression since the advent of SSRI's, isn't all that surprising for a book almost 40 years old. I found it useful more for how it helps illustrate the evolution of psychotherapy and how it helped me understand certain things about how therapists I saw approached their practice than for any insight it offered into myself.

Re: the evolution of psychotherapy, I was struck by the focus on mothers and what they do wrong. You would think that most people have only a female parent, that fathers play almost no role in a child's life. This was really brought home to me in this passage:

In the Zurich exhibition (1977) to commemorate the centennial of [Hermann] Hesse's birth [in 1877], a picture was displayed that had hung above the little Hermann's bed and that he had grown up with. In this picture, on the right, we see the "good" road to heaven, full of thorns, difficulties, and suffering. On the left, we see the easy, pleasurable road the inevitably leads to hell. Taverns play a prominent part on this road, probably because devout women hoped to keep their husbands and sons away from these wicked places with this threatening representation.[emphasis added]

Notice how she rushes to blame "devout women" for wanting to spoil the pleasure of "their husbands and sons." Did "devout women" in 1877 have much influence over art? Were they allowed to create it? Did they have time to create it when they were also probably busy raising families? Did they write and deliver the sermons about the evils of taverns?

NO. They didn't.

And here's another thing: women both devout and otherwise had good reason to fear when their husbands went to taverns and came home drunk, because drunkenness is a contributing factor to domestic violence against both wives and children. For women who had no independent income, no vote, no say in governance, and who could lose all custody of their children if they left an abusive husband, a primary way to try to keep their children safe from violence was to try to keep their husbands out of taverns.

But sure, the real problem was that these horrible women made four-year-olds feel bad about their unconscious desires to hang out in places full of drunk male adults.

That's just some straight-up misogyny. And considering that misogyny has been one of the things at the root of my depression, a book so steeped in it isn't likely to give me a lot of relief.

The insistence here that depression MUST BE ROOTED IN SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD, an idea more recent research undercuts, is also a problem. I had a therapist or two who followed that dogma in ways that probably caused a lot of harm.

A therapist told me the key to my healing was to discover my early childhood trauma. I was like, "Nah, I was a pretty happy little kid; the shit hit the fan around the time my body started changing and boys started getting mean and scary in sixth and seventh grade." She flat-out told me, "You were traumatized as a child, probably through a molestation, and you have to uncover the memory of the trauma."

I actually followed the visualizations she gave me and dutifully went into a meditative state to talk to my seven-year-old self, who told me, when I asked her what was wrong, that she couldn't help me fix the problem I wanted to address because it hadn't happened yet.

When I told my therapist that, she actually got upset at me and insisted I'd just done it wrong. She told me I better uncover a memory of being molested if I wanted to get better. I had very clear memories of my early childhood (something people who have repressed memories typically lack) and I also understand female biology enough to be confident of when certain events happened to me (hint: it was adulthood) and was therefore further confident that I was right about my life and she was wrong. So I fired her.

If someone did that shit now, they'd lose their license. It's completely unethical--and with good reason. While there are certainly people who have recovered memories of being molested in early childhood--one of my good friends experienced that, and it's the only thing that explains certain aspects of his life--there are others who invented memories to please aggressive therapists like the unethical, wrong-headed person I worked with.

In any event, we now know that puberty REALLY FUCKS WITH PEOPLE'S BRAINS. Adolescents are weird. They are super anxious, and there are biological reasons for this. That anxiety can be something they don't grow out of, and there can be biological reasons for that, too. It's not automatically because their parents fucked them up.

So all in all, with its misogyny and its erroneous insistence that adult depression has to be rooted in trauma inflicted by parents on children in early childhood, I think this book does as much harm as good. I'm glad it seems dated and simplistic, since that means psychotherapy is moving on from it.