Customer Reviews

The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
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Alice Miller goes into a facinating and undoubtably true acount on how we are often are own worst enemy. We often poison ourselves with comfortable lies that end up causing more damage than we realize both spiritually and physically.
The Truth will Set you Free, is a wonderful title for the books content. As someone who has been meditating almost daily for the past several years I have grown to develop an awareness of myself that I did not have in earlier years. So I put Alice Miller to the test. After a meditation session I stayed sitting and relaxed and began to think Aloud the following statements pausing for 3 minutes between each one. 1- He was the best father in the world and he loved me very much growing up. 2- My father never loved me and wouldn't have cared if I died. 3- Though he did care and provide, my father was a pathetic man who loved himself much more than he ever loved me. When I said the first two statements, I felt an inner tension in my gut and upper spine. When I claimed the last one the tension released completely. That's because the last statement was the true one, regardless of how hard it might be to admit. But such tension is subtle and not detectable by most people at first. Alice Miller states that we often take the lies told to us by society and family and embody them, but our bodies/subconscious CANNOT be lied to. And our bodies carry around the toxic lie until finally we find ourselves getting sick. Facing truth may hard for your mind to bear initially, but it's the only thing that alleviates pain in the soul and body in the long run. The only problem I have with this book it offers almost no practical guideline as to what someone can DO to get to the truth. It mentions therapy briefly. Meditation I know works too, but it took me a long time before I grew to an awareness of subtle little shifts in emotion and the body like what I experienced in the 'experiment.' The type of people who would buy this book most likely have already faced their emotional blindness on some level and are looking to learn ways to enhance that- and that practicality is what this book is missing. Still a fascinating and potentially enlightening read.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It covers what Miller calls "Poisonous Pedagogy" that stems from parents and religious teaching. If you truly want to free yourself from a toxic and traumatic past buy this book - your mind will undoubtedly be opened to the horrors of accepted childcare and religious teaching practices.

Alice Miller's books about the realities of childhood trauma, cruel parenting and how to overcome it are wonderful, brutally honest, and freeing. I recommend any book by Alice Miller.

I read this book carefully & slowly. I will not be the same again, in that I will no longer go through life, with my eyes closed. Emotionally, this book has freed me to a great extent. I believe then, that it can do so for anyone who is honest & open.

What Alice Miller does better than anyone else is uncover assaults to the soul that are generally unrecognized. She discloses words and behaviors that are experienced, during the developmental years of childhood, that undermine one's value and sense of self.

This is a great book to help me understand myself. From my grandma to my mother, and to me, our personal life seem repeat the same fate of the earlier generation's. My daughter is now entering her early adulthood. Is she going to be another victim of this family curse? Reading this book, bring back a lot of my buried childhood memory. I can see how strongly that drives me today on making decisions and choices, and how I response and relate to other people. This awareness bring me a great hope that I can live differently in the rest of my life, and positively impact my daughter, and her children in the future.

After having read another of Alice Miller's books (Drama of the Gifted Child) I thought I'd see what else she had to say and in The truth will set you free I was not disappointed. She writes in a free flowing and honest manner and is able to make the reader reflect on and even question the validity behind things we take for granted; things we often assume to be a fact of life. I think this book is especially relevant for anyone that is a parent or hopes to one day become one. We owe it to ourselves and we especially owe it to our children and future generations to overcome the blindness Miller speaks of. It is also a great read to help elucidate one's own character development.

I thought this book of course does a good job explaining Alice Miller's position that abuse has harmful lasting effects. But the title of this book led me to believe it had helpful ideas for recovering people. It doesn't. It just explains her position, and when you are disability and haven't worked in a few years and you are just trying to come to terms with all that's happened to you and you spend money to buy a book with the title that it will help you recover and it doesn't have any helpful ideas then you might feel pretty ripped off, which is what I Think about this book.

I see kids at church where their parents don't discipline them, and they act up and do things that I never would have even thought about doing as a child. I would have had the living daylights beaten out of me, and I would have suffered extensively. I never would have dreamed of it.

I do see that the abuse has had long lasting effects in my life, and I"m seeking to recover, but this book wasn't very helpful.

I read all her books and this one is as brave and clear and is a help to me in my own personal growth. A great book for those who have not yet looked closely at their own childhoods and also for those who have. I recommend it to both.

The book is very well written and interesting. It is of great help to all adults of narcissistic parents / families. Alice Miller gives support and understanding to the grown-up that wants to be in control of his own life. The truth also allows advance in emotional growing. Highly recommended for parents as a tool to improving communication with their children and progressing the intent of raising loving and caring children.