Book review - THE BODY NEVER LIES: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parentin

[housewolf]

I haven't visited this group before but I received the following review of Alice Miller's new book and thought some here might be interested in it. I received it in a personal email so I have no link or attribution for it.


THE BODY NEVER LIES: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting

Review of Alice Miller's forthcoming book

In his 1941 book "Generation of Vipers", Philip Wylie highlighted
how slavishly this culture worships motherhood, scorned how soldiers
spelled out "MOM" on parade grounds, and coined the term "momism".
The book enraged many, but shook too few awake. Today, Alice Miller
would show us, in detail, how those soldiers - and most of the rest
of us - were, and are still craving the approval, affection and love
denied us by our parents in our childhood. We are still caught in the
illusion that we can somehow win and/or earn the love from the source
that was so long withheld from us.

We have to break free of our (internalized) parents' grip on us,
that of the biblical injunction, "Honor (obey, worship,) thy father
and thy mother." Until then we, in a sense, feel and behave and think
like the little children we once were; we cannot grow up. Worse,
because as children we weren't accepted and loved for who we were,
parents repeatedly punished us in attempts to force us into the
imaginary mold they had prepared for us, i.e., what a child should
be. Dr. Miller's message is that our bodies bear a detailed record of
every childhood hurt and humiliation inflicted, every spank and slap,
insult and indignity. And until or if those internal, psychic wounds
remain unhealed, we can expect to continue to pay the terrible price
in physical illnesses. Powerless to do otherwise, we suppressed our
true and good authentic selves to win the love our emotional survival
depended on.

Dr Miller writes with astonishing and penetrating truth about the
connections between childhood suffering at the hands of parents, and
the physical consequences of obedience to the Fourth Commandment. The
Biblical law, "Honor thy father and thy mother" is here challenged as
the source of widespread - even universal - life-long suffering. As
children we attempted to free ourselves from our feelings of fear,
insecurity and confusion thru repression and
dissociation/self-alienation. Whatever the cost (abandonment of our
true selves), we persisted in loving and trusting our parents (we
hardly had a choice) and strived to earn their approval, (and (thus)
to please the Greater Parent in the Sky.)

Today, what stands between our bodies and the healing of those
injuries is the hold the Fourth Commandment has on our minds. As we
lie and breathe, the fear of parental rejection/punishment lurks
within that fear. It has to be brought to consciousness and examined
before healing can take place. We walk carrying a sack full of
personal history, the burden of wounds inflicted by all the
punishment and indignities that have ever happened to us. Until we
heal those internal wounds, we daily pay a terrible price in
suffering, much of it physical illness, and make others pay as well.
Those others are most often our own children. The claim so often
heard, "I got spanked and I turned out OK," cannot be upheld when it
is understood how the denial of physical and emotional injuries are
connected to present illnesses.

There are three sections to this book: first: illustrations from
the lives of famous literary people; second, efforts made at
overcoming traditional morality, i.e., effects of 4th Commandment;
and third, an in-depth case study of truth suppression as manifested
in anorexia. Alice Miller has expounded at length in earlier books
about dictatorial megalomaniacs like Hitler and Stalin who directed
their hate and violence toward others. In this book she shows how we
direct ours toward ourselves. Examples are taken from the biographies
of well-known people: Franz Kafka, Dostoevsky, Checkhov, Schiller,
Rimbaud, Proust, Virginia Wolfe, James Joyce, et. al. Shown are the
efforts of their respective parents to make them over into the child
they wanted, and the consequences in the victims' lifelong illnesses
and early deaths.

Dr. Miller repeatedly emphasizes the tragic effects, in the form
of physical ailments, of the body's life-long yearning for parental
love and affection. She touches on the way this suppression is
expressed in religion: the command to love God, on pain of punishment
when we fail to do so; the absurdity of inventing a parent-like
creator, perfect and omnipotent, who craves our love. It is an odd
god, an immensely dependent god, a Big Daddy who, if given the love
demanded, will reward with an eternity in blissful heaven. (And the
teenage suicide bombers of the Middle East are promised the bonus of
72 virgins to sweeten the deal.) Inasmuch as the Great Father is not
loved, even worshipped, the alternative is agonizing punishment from
now to the "end" of eternity.

We have to liberate ourselves from the propaganda imposed on us -
and enforced on us on pain of punishment - by conventional morality.
This book calls for a higher morality, as it applies to parenthood.
We cannot truly love our parents, she asserts, until we are liberated
from the infantile attachment, the idolatry, that trapped us in
childhood.

Dr Miller wants the reader to understand and accept that parents
who abused us do not deserve our love and honor, regardless of a
Moses-imposed commandment to do so. As we all must know, love is one
thing that cannot be enforced. Like Sgt. Joe Friday, the body, in its
wisdom, rejects illusions. It accepts only the facts, as higher
morality is inherent not in the mind, but in our bodies. She takes to
task all those friends and relatives and preachers and therapists who
say, "Forgive your mother, forgive your father; they did the best
they knew how. She changed your diapers, he sacrificed for you, and
above all they loved you." Miller will not hear it: forgiveness is a
crock and a trap, laid to continue the dependency, and preserve the
hope, that somehow, sometime, we will finally bask in the love that
was so long ago denied us. Reading Alice is like hearing someone
whisper, "I know the secret you are hiding in your past, the feelings
of hurt and fright and shame and humiliation at the abusive treatment
you suffered at the hands of your parents. And I'm asking you -
urging you, challenging you - to come out of that dark closet and
face up to it."

In the valley where I live, the #1 fear at whatever age is
parental punishment. And among adults, it's primary defense is
Denial. Behind the denial of childhood mistreatment lies the fear of
punishment, therefore acknowledgement or recognition of it in
adulthood can approach terror. But the price for denial is paid in
physical as well as mental illness. When aware of it we see it
everywhere: the suffering in the bodies and minds of strangers and of
those dear to us. But we must begin with ourselves, confronting the
punishing parent within.

[booksenkatz]

1. Thanks for sharing this. NT

[soleft]

2. Poisonous Pedagogy

I've read a number of book by Alice Miller, good thing for my son too!

Her work really helps you understand how a child perceives things, and understand that children aren't alien creatures whose needs are somehow different from our own which don't need to be respected.

Her explanation of poisonous pedagogy and how child rearing practices contributed to the rise of Hitler. It also explains the rise of certain figures in our country.

[AspenRose]

3. Oh, I need to get this book

Thanks!