Editing Alice Miller (psychologist) (section)

==Writings==
The following is a brief summary of Miller's books.

===''The Drama of the Gifted Child''<small> (''Das Drama des begabten Kindes'', 1979) </small>===

In her first book (also published under the titles ''Prisoners of Childhood'' and ''The Drama of Being a Child''), Miller defined and elaborated the [[personality]] manifestations of childhood trauma. She addressed the two reactions to the loss of love in childhood, [[depression (mood)|depression]] and [[grandiosity]]; the inner prison, the vicious circle of [[contempt]], [[repressed memories]], the [[etiology]] of depression, and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult.<ref>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Alice|title=The Drama of the Gifted Child|url=https://archive.org/details/dramaofgiftedchi00millrich|url-access=registration|year=1981|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=9780465016945}}</ref>

Miller writes:

<blockquote>"Quite often I have been faced with patients who have been praised and admired for their talents and their achievements. According to prevailing, general attitudes these people{{--}}the pride of their parents{{--}}should have had a strong stable sense of self-assurance. But exactly the opposite is the case… In my work with these people, I found that every one of them has a childhood history that seems significant to me:
* There was a ''mother'' who at the core was emotionally insecure, and who depended for her narcissistic equilibrium on the child behaving, or acting, in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from the child and from everyone else behind a hard, authoritarian and even totalitarian façade.
* This child had an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother or of both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him.
* This role secured "love" for the child{{--}}that is, his parents' exploitation. He could sense that he was needed, and this need, guaranteed him a measure of existential security.
This ability is then extended and perfected. Later, these children not only become mothers (confidantes, advisers, supporters) of their own mothers, but also take over the responsibility for their siblings and eventually develop a special sensitivity to unconscious signals manifesting the needs of others."<ref>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Alice|title=The Drama of the Gifted Child|year=1979|publisher=Basic Books|pages=7–9}}</ref></blockquote>

===''For Your Own Good''<small> (''Am Anfang war Erziehung'', 1980) </small>===

Miller proposed here that German traumatic childrearing produced heroin addict [[Christiane F.]], [[serial killer]] of children [[Jürgen Bartsch]], and dictator [[Adolf Hitler]]. Children learn to accept their parents' often abusive behaviour against themselves as being "for their own good." In the case of Hitler, it led to [[Displacement (psychology)|displacement]] against the Jews and other minority groups. For Miller, the traditional pedagogic process of spanking was manipulative, resulting in grown-up adults deferring excessively to authorities, even to tyrannical leaders or [[dictator]]s, like Hitler. Miller even argued for abandoning the term "pedagogy" in favour of the word "support," something akin to what [[psychohistory|psychohistorians]] call the helping mode of parenting.<ref>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Alice|title=For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence|year=1980|publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux|location=New York, NY|isbn=9780374522698|url=https://archive.org/details/foryourowngood00alic}}</ref>

In the Poisonous Pedagogy section of the book, Miller does a thorough survey of 19th century child-rearing literature in the book, citing texts which recommend practices such as exposing children to dead bodies in order to teach them about the sexual functions of human anatomy (45–46), resisting the temptation to comfort screaming infants (41–43), and beating children who haven't committed any specific offense as a kind of conditioning that would help them to understand their own evil and fallen nature.

The key element that Miller elucidated in this book was the understanding of why the German nation, the "good Germans," were compliant with Hitler's abusive regime, which Miller asserted was a direct result of how the society in general treated its children. She raised fundamental questions about current, worldwide child-rearing practices and issued a stern warning.

===''Thou Shalt Not Be Aware'' <small> (''Du sollst nicht merken'', 1981) </small>===

Unlike Miller's later books, this one is written in a semi-academic style. It was her first critique of psychoanalysis, charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies, which she described in ''For Your Own Good''. Miller was critical of both [[Freud]] and [[Carl Jung]]. She scrutinised Freud's [[Drive theory (psychoanalysis)|drive theory]], a device that, according to her and [[Jeffrey Masson]], blames the child for the abusive sexual behaviour of adults. Miller also theorised about [[Franz Kafka]], who was abused by his father but fulfilled the politically correct function of mirroring abuse in metaphorical novels, instead of exposing it.

In the chapter entitled "The Pain of Separation and Autonomy," Miller examined the [[authoritarian]] (e.g.: [[Old Testament]], [[Papist]], [[Calvinist]]) interpretation of [[Judeo-Christian]] [[theism]] and its parallels to modern parenting practice, asserting that it was [[Jesus]]'s father [[Saint Joseph|Joseph]] who should be credited with Jesus's departure from the dogmatic [[Judaism]] of his time.

'''<big>''Pictures of Childhood''</big>  <small>(1986)</small>''' 

'''''<big>The Untouched Key</big>''''' <small> '''(''Der gemiedene Schlüssel'', 1988)''' </small>

This book was partly a [[psychobiography]] of [[Nietzsche]], [[Picasso]], [[Käthe Kollwitz|Kollwitz]] and [[Buster Keaton]]; (in Miller's later book, ''The Body Never Lies'', published in 2005, she included similar analyses of [[Dostoyevsky]], [[Anton Chekhov|Chekhov]], [[Schiller]], [[Rimbaud]], [[Yukio Mishima|Mishima]], [[Proust]] and [[James Joyce]]).

According to Miller, Nietzsche did not experience a loving family and his philosophical output was a metaphor of an unconscious drive against his family's oppressive theological tradition. She believed that the philosophical system was flawed because Nietzsche was unable to make emotional contact with the abused child inside him. Though Nietzsche was severely punished by a father who lost his mind when Nietzsche was a little boy, Miller did not accept the [[genetics|genetic]] theory of madness. She interpreted Nietzsche's psychotic breakdown as the result of a family tradition of Prussian modes of child-rearing.

===''Banished Knowledge''<small> (''Das verbannte Wissen'', 1988) </small>===

In this more personal book Miller said that she herself was abused as a child. She also introduced the fundamental concept of "enlightened witness": a person who was willing to support a harmed individual, empathise with her and help her to gain understanding of her own biographical past.

''Banished Knowledge'' is autobiographical in another sense. It is a pointer in Miller's thoroughgoing [[apostasy]] from her own profession—psychoanalysis. She believed society was colluding with Freud's theories in order to not know the truth about our childhood, a truth that human cultures have "banished." She concluded that the feelings of [[guilt (emotion)|guilt]] instilled in our minds since our most tender years reinforce our repression even in the psychoanalytic profession.

===''Breaking Down the Wall of Silence'' <small> (''Abbruch der Schweigemauer'', 1990) </small>===
Written in the aftermath of the fall of the [[Berlin Wall]], Miller took to task the entirety of human culture. What she called the "wall of silence" is the metaphorical wall behind which society — academia, psychiatrists, clergy, politicians and members of the media — has sought to protect itself: denying the mind-destroying effects of child abuse. She also continued the autobiographical confession initiated in ''Banished Knowledge'' about her abusive mother. In ''Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolours and an Essay'', Miller said that painting helped her to ponder deeply into her memories. In some of her paintings, Miller depicted baby Alice as [[Swaddling|swaddled]], sometimes by an evil mother.<ref name=Paintings>{{cite web|url=http://www.alice-miller.com/gallery/|title=Alice Miller, Paintings 1975 – 2005 {{!}} Alice Miller, Bilder Meines Lebens (Pictures of My Life)|website=Alice-Miller.com|date=18 August 2015}}</ref>

{{blockquote|I betrayed that little girl […]. Only in recent years, with the help of therapy, which enabled me to lift the veil on this repression bit by bit, could I allow myself to experience the pain and desperation, the powerlessness and justified fury of that abused child. Only then did the dimensions of this crime against the child I once was, become clear to me.<ref>Miller: ''Breaking Down the Wall of Silence'', (op. cit.), pp. 20f</ref>}}

In a ''New York Times'' obituary of 26 April 2010 British psychologist [[Oliver James (psychologist)|Oliver James]] is quoted saying that Alice Miller "is almost as influential as [[R.D. Laing]]."