Writings
The following is a brief summary of Miller's books.
The Drama of the Gifted Child (Das Drama des begabten Kindes, 1979)
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 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.[34]
Miller writes:
"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 facade.
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."[35]
For Your Own Good (Am Anfang war Erziehung, 1980)
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 against the Jews and other minority groups. For Miller, the traditional pedagogic
process was manipulative, resulting in grown-up adults deferring excessively to authorities, even to
tyrannical leaders or dictators, like Hitler. Miller even argued for abandoning the term "pedagogy" in
favor of the word "support," something akin to what psychohistorians call the helping mode of
parenting.[36]
In the Poisonous Pedagogy section of the book, Miller does a thorough survey of 19th century childrearing 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 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 (Du sollst nicht merken, 1981)
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 scrutinized Freud's drive
theory, a device that, according to her and Jeffrey Masson, blames the child for the abusive sexual
behavior of adults. Miller also theorized 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 Joseph who should be
credited with Jesus's departure from the dogmatic Judaism of his time.
The Untouched Key (Der gemiedene Schlüssel, 1988)
This book was partly a psychobiography of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz and Buster Keaton; (in
Miller's later book, The Body Never Lies, published in 2005, she included similar analyses
of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Schiller, Rimbaud, 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 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 (Das verbannte Wissen, 1988)
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, empathize 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 instilled in our minds since our
most tender years reinforce our repression even in the psychoanalytic profession.
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer, 1990)
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
Watercolors 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 swaddled, sometimes by an evil mother.[37]
“
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.[38]
In a The New York Times obituary of April 26, 2010 British psychologist Oliver James is quoted
saying that Alice Miller "is almost as influential as R.D. Laing."
Bibliography
Miller's published books in English:
1. The Drama of the Gifted Child, (1978), revised in 1995 and re-published by Virago as The
Drama of Being a Child. ISBN 1-86049-101-4
2. Prisoners of Childhood (1981) ISBN 0-465-06287-3, which is The Drama of the Gifted
Child under a new title
3. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Violence (1983) ISBN 0-374-52269-3 (full text available online at no cost)
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child (1984) ISBN 0-374-52543-9
Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries ISBN 0-385-26762-2
The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness ISBN 0385-26764-9
Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay ISBN 0-374-23241-5
Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios (1999) ISBN 0-375-40379-5
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful
Truth ISBN 0-525-93357-3
The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness (2001) ISBN 0-465-04584-7
The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting (2005) ISBN 0-393-060659, Excerpt
Free From Lies: Discovering Your True Needs (2009) ISBN 978-0-393-06913-6