Alice Miller Popular Books

Alice Miller Biography & Facts

Alice Miller (born Alicja Englard; 12 January 1923 – 14 April 2010) was a Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher of Jewish origin, who is noted for her books on parental child abuse, translated into several languages. She was also a noted public intellectual. Her book The Drama of the Gifted Child caused a sensation and became an international bestseller upon the English publication in 1981. Her views on the consequences of child abuse became highly influential. In her books she departed from psychoanalysis, charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies. Life Miller was born in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland into a Jewish family. She was the oldest daughter of Gutta and Meylech Englard and had a sister, Irena, who was five years younger. From 1931 to 1933 the family lived in Berlin, where nine-year-old Alicja learned the German language. Due to the National Socialists' seizure of power in Germany in 1933 the family turned back to Piotrków Trybunalski. As a young woman, Miller managed to escape the Jewish Ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, where all Jewish inhabitants were interned since October 1939, and survived World War II in Warsaw under the assumed name of Alicja Rostowska. While she was able to smuggle her mother and sister out, in 1941, her father died in the ghetto. She retained her assumed name Alice Rostowska when she moved to Switzerland in 1946, where she had won a scholarship to the University of Basel.In 1949 she married Swiss sociologist Andreas Miller, originally a Polish Catholic, with whom she had moved from Poland to Switzerland as students. They divorced in 1973. They had two children, Martin (born 1950) and Julika (born 1956). Shortly after his mother's death Martin Miller stated in an interview with Der Spiegel that he had been beaten by his authoritarian father during his childhood - in the presence of his mother. Miller stated that his mother did not intervene and was emotionally abusive. Martin also mentioned that his mother was unable to talk with him, despite numerous lengthy conversations, about her wartime experiences, as she was severely burdened by them. In 1953 Miller got her doctorate in philosophy, psychology and sociology. Between 1953 and 1960, Miller studied psychoanalysis and practiced it between 1960 and 1980 in Zürich. In 1980, after having worked as a psychoanalyst and an analyst trainer for 20 years, Miller "stopped practicing and teaching psychoanalysis in order to explore childhood systematically." She became critical of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Her first three books originated from research she took upon herself as a response to what she felt were major blind spots in her field. However, by the time her fourth book was published, she no longer believed that psychoanalysis was viable in any respect.In 1985 Miller wrote about the research from her time as a psychoanalyst: "For twenty years I observed people denying their childhood traumas, idealising their parents and resisting the truth about their childhood by any means." In 1985 she left Switzerland and moved to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Southern France.In 1986, she was awarded the Janusz Korczak Literary Award for her book Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child.In April 1987 Miller announced in an interview with the German magazine Psychologie Heute (Psychology Today) her rejection of psychoanalysis. The following year she cancelled her memberships in both the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association, because she felt that psychoanalytic theory and practice made it impossible for former victims of child abuse to recognise the violations inflicted on them and to resolve the consequences of the abuse, as they "remained in the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parents".One of Miller's last books, Bilder meines Lebens ("Pictures of My Life"), was published in 2006. It is an informal autobiography in which the writer explores her emotional process from painful childhood, through the development of her theories and later insights, told via the display and discussion of 66 of her original paintings, painted in the years 1973–2005.Between 2005 and her death in 2010, she answered hundreds of readers' letters on her website, where there are also published articles, flyers and interviews in three languages. Days before her death Alice Miller wrote: "These letters will stay as an important witness also after my death under my copyright".Miller died on 14 April 2010, at the age of 87, at her home in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence by suicide after severe illness and diagnosis of advanced-stage pancreatic cancer. Work Miller extended the trauma model to include all forms of child abuse, including those that were commonly accepted (such as spanking), which she called poisonous pedagogy, a non-literal translation of Katharina Rutschky's Schwarze Pädagogik (black or dark pedagogy/imprinting).Drawing upon the work of psychohistory, Miller analyzed writers Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and others to find links between their childhood traumas and the course and outcome of their lives.The introduction to the first chapter in Miller's first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, first published in 1979, contains a line that summarises her core view. In it, she writes: Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood. In the 1990s, Miller strongly supported a new method developed by Konrad Stettbacher, who himself was later charged with incidents of sexual abuse. Miller learned of Stettbacher and his method from a book by Mariella Mehr titled Steinzeit (Stone Age). Having been strongly impressed by the book, Miller contacted Mehr in order to get the name of the therapist. From that time forward, Miller refused to make therapist or method recommendations. In open letters, Miller explained her decision and how she originally became Stettbacher's disciple, but in the end she distanced herself from him and his regressive therapies.In her writings, Miller is careful to clarify that by "abuse" she does not only mean physical violence or sexual abuse, she is also concerned with psychological abuse perpetrated by one or both parents on their child; this is difficult to identify and deal with because the abused person is likely to conceal it from themselves and may not be aware of it until some event, or the onset of depression, requires it to be treated. Miller blamed psychologically abusive parents for the majority of neuroses and psychoses. She maintained that all instances of mental illness, addiction, crime and cultism were ultimately caused by suppressed rage and pain as a result of subconscious childhood trauma that was not resolved emotionally, assisted by a helper, which she came to term an "enlightened witness." In all cultures,.... 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  • The Dot synopsis, comments

    The Dot

    Maxwell Yu Miller

    In a world of colorful, striped dots, Blue doesn't fit in. In this story about finding acceptance when you're a bit different, our trueblue hero learns a lesson about how to earn t...

  • Die Natur heilt synopsis, comments

    Die Natur heilt

    Georg Groddeck

    Georg Groddeck war ein deutscher Arzt, Schriftsteller und Wegbereiter der Psychosomatik. Den publizistischen Anfang seiner Leistungen zur Psychosomatik machte Georg Groddeck 1917 m...

  • Essential Novelists - Alice Duer Miller synopsis, comments

    Essential Novelists - Alice Duer Miller

    Alice Duer Miller & August Nemo

    Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most...

  • Sin Eater synopsis, comments

    Sin Eater

    Megan Campisi

    “For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hardwon female empowerment” (The Washington Post).The...

  • Salem Falls synopsis, comments

    Salem Falls

    Jodi Picoult

    From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult comes a compelling and “multilayered tale of smalltown intrigue” (Glamour) about a prep schoolteacher accused of rape by a gr...

  • Un fil rouge synopsis, comments

    Un fil rouge

    Christian Lejosne

    Depuis qu'il a lu La souffrance muette de l'enfant, d'Alice Miller, l'auteur de ce livre ne peut s'empêcher, à la lecture de textes ou de biographies d'auteurs, d'essayer de repére...

  • Wicked Words 9 synopsis, comments

    Wicked Words 9

    Various Artists

    Wicked Words a collection of saucy and compelling short storiesWicked Words 9 is the latest in our everpopular series of Black Lace short story collections.Fun, filthy and sizzlin...

  • Everything I Need to Know About Family I Learned From a Little Golden Book synopsis, comments

    Everything I Need to Know About Family I Learned From a Little Golden Book

    Diane Muldrow

    Celebrate family and the 75th anniversary of Little Golden Books with the newest book in the everpopular EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW series!   Have you ever wished your family w...

  • Banished Knowledge synopsis, comments

    Banished Knowledge

    Alice Miller

    From the author of the bestselling classic The Drama of the Gifted Childa book that believes that children are inherently good and traces all forms of criminal deeds to past mistre...

  • The Truth Will Set You Free synopsis, comments

    The Truth Will Set You Free

    Alice Miller

    More than twenty years ago, a littleknown Swiss psychoanalyst wrote a book that changed the way many people viewed themselves and their world. In simple but powerful prose, the dee...

  • 7 best short stories by Alice Duer Miller synopsis, comments

    7 best short stories by Alice Duer Miller

    Alice Duer Miller & August Nemo

    Alice Duer Miller was a writer from the U.S. whose poetry actively influenced political opinion. Her feminist verses made an impact on the suffrage issue, and her verse novel The W...

  • Por tu propio bien synopsis, comments

    Por tu propio bien

    Alice Miller

    Una imprescindible e iluminadora incursión en las consecuencias del maltrato infantil.Este libro denuncia los estragos de una educación que se propone romper la voluntad del niño p...

  • Estate Of Alice A. Miller V. Mcgrath synopsis, comments

    Estate Of Alice A. Miller V. Mcgrath

    First Appellate District, Division One District Court Of Appeal Of California

    Appeal by the State of California, petitioner in intervention, from probate decree in favor of the Attorney General of the United States, objector, determining rights under section...

  • Salvar tu vida synopsis, comments

    Salvar tu vida

    Alice Miller

    Una prestigiosa psicoanalista aborda las consecuencias del maltrato infantil.Pocos expertos abordan el problema del maltrato infantil con la empatía y la claridad que car...

  • El cuerpo nunca miente synopsis, comments

    El cuerpo nunca miente

    Alice Miller

    Los peligros de somatizar las heridas psicológicas, ilustrados con grandes ejemplos de la literatura universal.El cuarto mandamiento, «Honrarás a tu padre y a tu madre», ...

  • Wendy, Darling synopsis, comments

    Wendy, Darling

    A.C. Wise

    A lush, feminist reimagining on what happened to Wendy after Neverland, for fans of Circe and The Mere Wife.LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVELFind the second star from the r...

  • Works of Alice Duer Miller synopsis, comments

    Works of Alice Duer Miller

    Alice Duer Miller

    7 works of Alice Duer Miller American writer and poet (18741942) This ebook presents a collection of 7 works of Alice Duer Miller. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump di...

  • The Gifts of Reading synopsis, comments

    The Gifts of Reading

    Robert Macfarlane, William Boyd, Candice Carty-Williams, Chigozie Obioma, Philip Pullman, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina Nayeri, Michael Ondaatje, David Pilling, Max Porter, Alice Pung, Jancis Robinson, SF Said, Madeleine Thien, Salley Vickers, John Wood & Markus Zusak

    With contributions by: William Boyd, Candice CartyWilliams, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Robert Macfarlane, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina...

  • The Untouched Key synopsis, comments

    The Untouched Key

    Alice Miller

    As in her former books, Alice Miller again focusses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven ...

  • Once Upon a River synopsis, comments

    Once Upon a River

    Diane Setterfield

    From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “eerie and fascinating” (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a “swift and entrancing, profound and beautiful” (Madelin...

  • Den Kreis durchbrechen synopsis, comments

    Den Kreis durchbrechen

    Peter Jedlicka

    Interessieren Sie sich für psychologische Ratgeber? Dann gründen Sie doch mit Gleichgesinnten einen Lesekreis, in dem über solche Bücher diskutiert wird! In diesem Ebook wird erkl...

  • Die Natur heilt synopsis, comments

    Die Natur heilt

    Georg Groddeck

    Dieses eBook: "Die Natur heilt" ist mit einem detaillierten und dynamischen Inhaltsverzeichnis versehen und wurde sorgfältig korrekturgelesen. Georg Groddeck (18661934) war...