Who was Alice Miller? || Psychology Series

hey everyone today we're looking at a brief history of alice miller [Music] so the agenda for today is we're going to look at who was alice miller we'll look at her work we'll look at her concept of the full self we'll do a little critique of her work and then we'll go on to some final thoughts who was alice miller alice miller was a polish swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst and philosopher of jewish descent who was born in poland in 1923 and died in france in 2010 miller is a world-renowned therapist who dedicated her life to

studying and helping those who'd been mistreated or abused as children to illustrate her theories she especially focused on the biographical stories of famous artists and dictators to examine how a child's emotional traumas and repressed rage can manifest in serious health problems and proclivity towards brutality and sadism she is the author of 13 books which have been translated into 30 languages so no small feat most notably miller renounced her membership to the international psychoanalytical association in 1988 because she strongly felt that psychoanalysis remained in the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parents [Music]

so what else did alice miller believe well alice miller believed that no matter how perfect our childhood memories are there's always some element of trauma that we must confront to liberate ourselves from these inherited damaging behaviors and yeah this process is often difficult because we're forced to remember these painful feelings of isolation and repression however if we do not strive towards this liberation our past continues to shape our present so even though our childhood is in the past our perceptions and decision-making is determined by our vulnerable and afraid childhood disposition and alice miller says here

in this quote you know taken from the alice miller website she says almost all of us with very few exceptions were beaten in our childhood and were not allowed to defend ourselves our parents were not always malignant they hit us because they have been treated the same way in their childhood they simply believed and made us believe that this was the right way of upbringing miller says that all of us have wounds that started from our childhood if a child grows up in a compassionless environment an environment that does not respect or understand and support

the child then that child will suppress that distress when children are punished for expressing their negative emotions they learn to suppress them and therefore suppress part of their true selves to survive a child adopts behaviors that their parent approves of because they they fear that if they act against their parents wishes then the parents won't love them anymore they will lose their love and this brings us on to the false self this fear of losing a parent's love creates pressure for the child to always act in a certain usually well-behaved way even when a child's

boundaries have been crossed this constant pressure to act the way your parents want you to act well it leads to the development of the false self or as miller calls it the as if personality so undoubtedly the child grows into an adult believing that they are this false self and they take that full self with them they can't differentiate the false self from the true self because they're unable to live it it's all they've ever known and this creates a sense of haunting futility sounds like an existential crisis and miller said the only way to

combat this or liberate ourselves from the false self is to release our old role as unconscious victim and embrace the present as an independent conscious individual that accepts the reality of our childhood you know the good and the bad undoubtedly wholeheartedly and as she says in this next quote it is only after a person is liberated that they begin to articulate to grow and develop creativity and that quote is taken from the drama of being a child by alice miller and 100 recommend you read that book it's incredible and reveals i don't know it revealed

a lot about me and my own childhood and i'm really grateful for that so what's the point of all alice miller's theories well integration acknowledging the trauma and moving through it i want to come back to the reason why alice miller left the international psychoanalytical association you know it was because she strongly felt that psychoanalysis at that time remained in the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parent so as you can imagine if if if his therapists were trying to you know or were failing to recognize that all their patients had at

some point been mistreated or abused as children if they're failing to recognize that and denying it how could healing ever take place for the patient really well the fact is they can't deny all of someone's experience only exacerbates it just before we finished i wanted to look at some critiques of miller's work so i thought it would be useful to develop miller's theories from an intersectional standpoint for example based on observation alone girls are taught to be more agreeable and without needs than boys just check out this short clip anger is a human emotion neither

good nor bad it is actually a signal emotion it warns us of indignity threat insult and harm and yet in culture after culture anger is reserved as the moral property of boys and men what if we didn't sever anger from femininity because severing anger from femininity means we sever girls and women from the emotion that best protects us from injustice what if instead we thought about developing emotional competence for boys and girls so how does this proclivity towards agreeableness for girls how does this affect girls as they grow into women it is more acceptable for

men to express anger and violence but how does this perceived advantage afforded to men actually hinder them from honing their more compassionate feminine side and how does this position the patriarchy as both victor and victim of its own self-fulfilling creation furthermore miller's ideas could be elevated by linking them with science for instance gaba mate draws attention to the correlation between agreeableness and illness he identifies several types of personality some of which are more susceptible to disease type c personalities described as extremely cooperative passive lacking assertiveness and accepting type c personalities also repress these negative emotions

and they struggle to maintain a strong and happy facade and of course this habitual suppressing of perfectly natural emotions it just places a lot of stress upon that person and they'll develop chronic stress you know and it creates an unnatural biochemical imbalance in the body consequently those who sacrifice their own needs are more likely to suffer from a life-threatening disease such as cancer this point cannot be stated without acknowledging the added stresses that are placed on minorities in predominantly white countries the uk is sick with systemic racism and minorities are expected to deal with daily

cover and over racism as a result does this mean that they're more likely to develop a false self or a potentially life-threatening disease [Music] breathe guys this is this is all heavy stuff but honestly it's even though it's heavy it's rich and it it really needs to be understood and these theories need to be known about on in a mainstream level so i'm really hoping you're sticking with this but just some final thoughts a quote from alice miller we can repair ourselves and gain our lost integrity by choosing to look more closely at the knowledge

that is stored inside our bodies and bringing this knowledge close to our awareness this path although certainly not easy is the only route by which we can at least leave behind these cruel invisible prisons of our childhood we become free by transforming ourselves from unaware victims of the past into responsible individuals of the present who are aware of our past and are thus able to live with it so there we are living whether it is acceptance it's freedom and then we can kind of seek some kind of peace and we can continue to grow and

develop a healthy relationship with ourselves and others that is all wow that was a heavy one but um thank you so much for sticking with it if you want these notes head to my patreon if you had any thoughts to add as well because this is really a brief introduction to melissa if you have anything to add please put it in the comments below give the video a like and i'll see you next time [Music] you