Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries

A psychoanalyst offers, based on years of research, a method that will enable adults to feel the banished child within, and let that child speak and condemn the past's abuse, in order to liberate their lives

In her strongest book yet advocating children's rights, Miller ( The Drama of the Gifted Child, The Untouched Key ) charges that psychoanalysis, a field in which she has worked for more than 20 years, perpetuates child abuse because its practitioners consistently deny the wrongs parents commit against their children. Her message is that both psychoanalysts and parents often fail to see abuse for what it is because they fail to comprehend their own childhood traumas. To illustrate her point, Miller draws from stories of child beatings, sexual abuse, and incest, frequently rationalized as forms of discipline and "necessary" sexual initiation. She also analyzes literary works (O'Neill, Kafka, Arthur Miller) that ultimately play down child abuse in the interest of family solidarity. To break destructive patterns, Miller outlines a new method of treatment, which, she says, improved her own life dramatically. Unfortunately, Miller devotes too little discussion to this method in favor of material she has covered in earlier works. Nonetheless, the reader is left with much to consider.
- Michelle Lodge, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.