Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs [Hardcover]

Alice Miller (Author), Andrew Jenkins (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 2009

An astoundingly moving and perceptive work on how adults can finally overcome the traumas of their childhood.

Since the landmark publication of The Drama of the Gifted Child, no one has been more influential than Alice Miller in empowering adults whose lives were maimed emotionally and physically during childhood. Now Dr. Miller goes even further, presenting groundbreaking theories that enhance communication between therapist and patient and enable adults to express powerful emotions that have been trapped for years. Practical and perceptive, Miller’s work explains what we can expect from therapy, how we can identify the causes of our own pain, and why subconscious pain, unaddressed for decades, manifests itself later as depression, self-mutilation, primal inadequacy, and chronic loneliness. Containing searing excerpts from “The Diary of a Mother,” in which a mother learns how to communicate honestly with both herself and her daughter, as well as a trove of Miller’s own moving answers to her thousands of readers, Free from Lies is the culmination of a life devoted to healing others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Free from Lies is a clarion call from one of the great psychological minds of our time. (Stephen Kamsi, Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Alice Miller (1923-2010) is the author of such classic works as The Drama of the Gifted Child, Prisoners of Childhood, The Body Never Lies, From Rage to Courage, and Free from Lies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393069133
• ISBN-13: 978-0393069136
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #908,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Self-Help > Inner Child

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Free From Lies... Thank You Dr. Miller for yet another masterpiece., October 13, 2009

By 

Daisy - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs (Hardcover)

Childhood, the base for the rest of our lives... why as parents would we ever choose to make it a cruel base? It is time to wake up, stop repeating what was done to us, discover new loving ways to treat our children, admit our parents did it wrong and not feel the need in the very same breath to excuse that. We all have choices in life, we do not have to spank/beat our kids just because it was done to us. We can think for ourselves and realize that hitting a child can NeVeR be right or justified... it is just purely barbaric. Alice Miller suggests we think of a giant coming over to us and hitting us over and over... just think about that... How would one feel? Scared, petrified, humiliated, hatred towards this giant, wanting revenge.... all of these would be a typical response... And this is exactly what children DO FEEL as it is being done to them by their parents (the giants). Yet because they are children, this is considered okay???!?! Yet if this happened to an adult by a 30 foot giant, everyone would be against the giant... but again, a child... this is called parenting, this is called discipline... this is called BLINDNESS.

Thank you Dr. Miller for the truth.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful survey, September 15, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs (Hardcover)

FREE FROM LIES: DISCOVERING YOUR TRUE NEEDS is from any who denied that they suffered physical and emotional abuse as children. Former victims can heal by discovering and acknowledging their true history instead of denying it - and this explains why a therapist should become a witness to the survivor of such cruelty rather than the usual neutral therapeutic role. A powerful survey, this is a pick for any general or health lending library.

42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a self-help book, August 12, 2009

By 

Nico1908 "NTF" (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs (Hardcover)

This was the first book by Alice Miller I've ever read and I found it interesting, although according to her very broad definition, most, if not all of us are the victims of physical/emotional/psychological childhood abuse of some sort or other - it definitely made me view my own childhood in a new light.

Unfortunately, about half the book consist of her responses to letters or e-mails she has received, a transcript of a lengthy interview, and what appears to be an autobiographical letter to her daughter and her own mother. - The author had my full attention for the first half of the book but she lost me in the second part.

To sum it up: If you are looking for a "ten steps" kind of book, this is not it. "Free From Lies" will give you an overview of Ms. Miller's views on how deeply childhood abuse affects us as adults. It will encourage you to seek an "empathic therapist" rather than a therapist who confirms the patient's deep-seated conviction that somehow the treatment she/he received from her parents as a child was normal or her/his fault or even deserved. The book will also give you some basic tips as to how to find a suitable therapist.

Save your money and get it from the local library!