For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing - Softcover

Alice Miller

4.26

2,060 ratings by Goodreads

9780788164521: For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing

Softcover

ISBN 10: 078816452X ISBN 13: 9780788164521

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd., 1983

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Explores the sources of violence within ourselves & the way these are encouraged by orthodox child-rearing practices. Challenging the way in which we rationalize punishment & coercion as being for the child s own good , Miller illuminates the cost in compassion & humanity in later life. She argues that child abuse is still highly regarded in our society as long as it is defined as childrearing, & that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions stemming from how they were treated by their own parents. Her message is clear: People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood . . . will feel no need to harm someone else or themselves .

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Review:

Miller explores the backgrounds of extreme cases of self-destructive and violent individuals to further her theories on longterm consequences of abusive childrearing. Her conclusions about what creates a drug addict, a murderer, even a Hitler, stray far from psychoanalytic dogma about human nature. Miller paints a jolting picture of the violent world each generation helps shape when traditional upbringing, with its hidden cruelty, is perpetuated. She also offers a way out by striving to resensitize the child in the adult, to unlock an emotional life frozen in repression.

About the Author:

Other books by Alice Miller, the internationally renowned psychoanalyst, include The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting, The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth, and The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness. Miller lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

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