Customer Reviews

Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs

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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.

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.

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!

I found this book very helpful in seeing through the lies I grew up with and working toward overcoming them and making my life my own.

I know the value of this writer's material (Alice Miller) - she did not disappoint. All her books, including this one, are excellent tools for identifying those vague uncomfortable feelings that become emotional blocks.

Free From Lies is a brilliant and definitive recent work by Dr. Alice Miller, reknowned Swiss Psychoanalyst. It is profound and a must read for seekers of truth. It is my favorite of her recent books, and a synthesis of much she has discovered over her many years of practice and work.