Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

186 Pages·2008·0.61 MB·English

by  Alice Miller

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Praise for Alice Miller and Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
“Miller is both prolific...and eloquent in her
continuing indictment of parents who abuse their
children and societies that tolerate such behavior.”
—Kirkus
“A penetrating look at how to break the cycle of child
abuse in today’s world.”—Moving Worlds
“What Miller has to say is enlightening....This is not a
book that can be read through once and put aside.The
reader can return again and again as new truth is
recognized.”—South Bend,Indiana,Tribune
“Miller charts valuable territory.”—New Age Journal
“A moving argument for awareness and condemnation
of child abuse.”—Science News
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B R E A K I N G D O W N
T H E W A L L O F S I L E N C E
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also by alice miller
The Drama of the Gifted Child:
The Search for the True Self
For Your Own Good:
The Roots ofViolence in Child-rearing
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware:
Society’s Betrayal of the Child
Pictures of a Childhood:
Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay
The Untouched Key:
Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
Banished Knowledge:
Facing Childhood Injuries
Paths of Life:
Six Case Histories
The Truth Will Set You Free:Overcoming Emotional
Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self
The Body Never Lies:
The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting
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Alice Miller
B R E A K I N G D O W N
T H E W A L L O F S I L E N C E
the liberating experience
of facing painful truth
Translation by Simon Worrall
revised edition
a member of the perseus books group
new york
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Copyright © 2009 by Alice Miller
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Previously published by Meridian,an imprint of Dutton Signet,a division of
Penguin Books USA Inc.First Meridian Printing 1993.First Meridian Printing
Revised Edition 1997
Copyright © Hoffmann und Campe Verlag,Hamburg,1990,1996
Translation copyright © Alice Miller,1991,1992,1997
All rights reserved.
Originally published in German under the title Abbruch der Schweigemauer.
“Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Kids”reproduced by permission of
EPPOCHand Jan Hunt.
Author photograph © Julika Miller/Suhrkamp
All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America.No part of this
book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information,address Basic Books,387 Park Avenue South,New York,NY
10016-8810.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk pur-
chases in the United States by corporations,institutions,and other organizations.
For more information,please contact the Special Markets Department at the
Perseus Books Group,2300 Chestnut Street,Suite 200,Philadelphia,PA 19103,
or call [phone],ext.5000,or e-mail [email protected].
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN:978-0-465-01504-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Foreword vii
Part One ~ Openings and Glimpses
1 Eve’s Initiative 3
2 Out of the Prison of Confusion 9
3 The Psychiatrists’Campaign Against
the Act of Remembering 17
4 Blindman’s Buff and the Flight from
Facts in Psychoanalysis 31
Part Two ~ Facts
5 Child Sacrifice as “Tradition” 47
6 The Monstrous Consequences of Denial 53
Adolf Hitler’s Path to Genocide,53
Nicolae Ceausescu’s Vision of Redemption,69
7 The Mistreated Child in the Lamentations of Jeremiah 87
v
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vi Contents
Part Three ~ Giving Up Hypocrisy
8 The Liberating Experience of Painful Truth 101
9 Protecting Life After Birth 113
Afterword to the Paperback Edition 121
Appendix A
Wars and Dictators 129
Appendix B
A Law Against the Business of Tyranny 137
Appendix C
A Letter to Alice Miller 143
Appendix D
Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Kids 145
Bibliography 149
Index 151
About the Author 165
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Foreword
The truth about childhood, as many of us have
had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not un-
commonly,it is monstrous.Invariably,it is repressed.To be con-
fronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into
our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly
impossible.The capacity of the human organism to bear pain is,
for our own protection, limited. All attempts to overstep this
natural threshold by resolving repression in a violent manner
will, as with every other form of violation, have negative and
often dangerous consequences.The results of any traumatic ex-
perience,such as abuse,can only be resolved by experiencing,ar-
ticulating, and judging every facet of the original experience
within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.
In recent decades, there have been a number of dangerous
attempts to resolve the consequences of childhood traumas by
vii