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The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting Reprint Edition

by Alice Miller (Author), Andrew Jenkins (Translator)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 813 ratings
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An examination of childhood trauma and its surreptitious, debilitating effects by one of the world's leading psychoanalysts.

Never before has world-renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller examined so persuasively the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the body. Using the experiences of her patients along with the biographical stories of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Miller shows how a child's humiliation, impotence, and bottled rage will manifest itself as adult illness―be it cancer, stroke, or other debilitating diseases. Never one to shy away from controversy, Miller urges society as a whole to jettison its belief in the Fourth Commandment and not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives. In this empowering work, writes Rutgers professor Philip Greven, "readers will learn how to confront the overt and covert traumas of their own childhoods with the enlightened guidance of Alice Miller."
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  1. ISBN-10
    0393328635
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393328639
  3. Edition
    Reprint
  4. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  5. Publication date
    August 17, 2006
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
  8. Print length
    240 pages
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Alice Miller’s arguments are lucid, closely reasoned, and utterly convincing."
― Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (August 17, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393328635
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393328639
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 813 ratings

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Alice Miller

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
813 global ratings
So excited for this book!
5 Stars
So excited for this book!
I'm so excited for this book! I recently read (at the advice of a fellow EMS friend) Bessel Van Der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score and found it very enlightening. From a person who suffered child abuse in every form of the word, the information in it really opened my eyes as to how much I jad been holding in my entire adult life. Not to mention the things I've seen in the back of the medic for 20+ years, it was such a great read. This book by Alice Miller has the same ideas about trauma and its effects on our physical well-being. Just the first few pages have already gotten my attention and has me ready to binge read this book tonight. Anyone who has suffered any form of trauma and/or abuse in any form should get these two books immediately. While they do not have all the answers, they do give you a leg to stand on and a beginning point to healing yourself so that you may have a better and happier life. I plan to build my library with a fee more of Alice Miller's books as I think they will be heavily beneficial to my life in general.
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Top reviews from the United States

peggytg
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2024
Verified Purchase
Alice Miller’s books are life-changing. Freeing. Courageous. True. In this book, she addresses the effects that physical and mental traumas can have on the body. Especially if childhood traumas are buried or repressed. Every physician, parent, teacher, patient and teenager should read her books. More exploration of the connection between physical and emotional pain is vital.
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KClagg09
5.0 out of 5 stars So excited for this book!
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2022
Verified Purchase
I'm so excited for this book! I recently read (at the advice of a fellow EMS friend) Bessel Van Der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score and found it very enlightening. From a person who suffered child abuse in every form of the word, the information in it really opened my eyes as to how much I jad been holding in my entire adult life. Not to mention the things I've seen in the back of the medic for 20+ years, it was such a great read. This book by Alice Miller has the same ideas about trauma and its effects on our physical well-being. Just the first few pages have already gotten my attention and has me ready to binge read this book tonight. Anyone who has suffered any form of trauma and/or abuse in any form should get these two books immediately. While they do not have all the answers, they do give you a leg to stand on and a beginning point to healing yourself so that you may have a better and happier life. I plan to build my library with a fee more of Alice Miller's books as I think they will be heavily beneficial to my life in general.
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KClagg09
5.0 out of 5 stars So excited for this book!
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2022
I'm so excited for this book! I recently read (at the advice of a fellow EMS friend) Bessel Van Der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score and found it very enlightening. From a person who suffered child abuse in every form of the word, the information in it really opened my eyes as to how much I jad been holding in my entire adult life. Not to mention the things I've seen in the back of the medic for 20+ years, it was such a great read. This book by Alice Miller has the same ideas about trauma and its effects on our physical well-being. Just the first few pages have already gotten my attention and has me ready to binge read this book tonight. Anyone who has suffered any form of trauma and/or abuse in any form should get these two books immediately. While they do not have all the answers, they do give you a leg to stand on and a beginning point to healing yourself so that you may have a better and happier life. I plan to build my library with a fee more of Alice Miller's books as I think they will be heavily beneficial to my life in general.
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18 people found this helpful
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Crystal Stewart
4.0 out of 5 stars An important concept for those struggling with physical pain from emotional trauma
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2013
Verified Purchase
For me the ideas espoused in this book were new, but could have been presented more succinctly. The book really contains one theme--the emotional damage inflicted by parents causes lifelong physical trauma which is either manifested personally or is inflicted on others. It gives numerous examples, but does not discuss how to overcome this issue in enough detail. Still worth reading.
11 people found this helpful
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Explorer
5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed my life
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2006
Verified Purchase
After coasting through the past ten years in a fog of depression and unfulfilling relationships, I started seeing a counselor who recommended this book to me. I'm not exaggerating when I say it changed my life. Alice Miller argues that as children, we are often instructed to "honor" our parents and win their love by suppressing our genuine feelings - especially the hurt and anger we naturally feel in response to abuse. Society reinforces this belief by idealizing parents and discouraging us from telling the truth about what we experienced as children. However, this suppression has a poisonous effect on the body and mind (and society as a whole). As much as we try to hide those feelings, they make themselves known through various kinds of suffering, both emotional and physical.

Miller argues that once we are allowed to give voice to our true feelings and offer some compassion to ourselves - rather than the facade we have created to please others, namely our parents - then that real self no longer has to cry for attention through the suffering of our bodies and minds. This turned out to be very true for me. I feel that I can now be honest with myself and others without fearing rejection and loss of love. I highly recommend this book and Miller's other offerings to anyone dealing with depression, childhood abuse, or feelings of general emptiness and dissatisfaction.

**After recently re-reading this book, I would probably remove one star from my rating due to Miller's pure speculation in Part I, in which she deconstructs the writings and life stories of famous authors and artists. This section can also be slow and might be difficult for some readers to get through.

I also wish that she (or the translator) had broadened her definition of abuse. She frequently uses the term "beatings" to summarize the harm children can suffer at the hands of their parents. But mental and emotional abuse can be just as detrimental to a child's development and self-image, and readers who experienced such should not discount the impact of their own experiences. However, Miller's overall argument is so powerful that I can't help but recommend the book despite its flaws.
177 people found this helpful
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Steven Haack
5.0 out of 5 stars In Search of One's Own Truth
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2015
Verified Purchase
It seems that my parents only loved me or talked nice to me when I either behaved or did what was on their agenda. At sixteen, I was twenty minutes late arriving home and my father, with arms like Popeye, beat me with a baseball bat an hour after he came back from church. Instead of my mom protecting me, she walked out.

Until I left home three years later, I walked the line. I never learned to relax; in fact, for the next twenty four years, in order to feel good, not feel or calm my bad feelings was to drink, take pills, overeat, overwork and have sex and fight.

At age seventeen, desperate to feel safe and have a sense of belonging, I joined a Non-Denominational Christian Church, which turned out to be a cult who kept me captive for thirteen years. At age forty-one, I found myself in the emergency room of Riverside Hospital having my wrist sown up from attempted suicide.

The doctor asked me what happened and I told him I wanted to hurt myself. Instead of locking me up in a psyche ward, he sent me home with a friend asking her to watch me for the next twenty-four years. I went home in shock. I tried to kill myself and the doctors send me home.

Here I am sixty years old and after reading this book I am free enough to tell my story. This book holds ideas on how I can deal and heal with from my poisonous past.

“Frequently, Physical illnesses are the body’s response to permanent disregard of its vital functions. One of our most vital functions is an ability to listen to the true story of our lives… The central issue in this book is the conflict between the things we feel – the things our bodies register – and the things we think we ought to feel so as to comply with moral norms and standards we have internalized at an early age.” (Page 19)

“Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feelings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have.” (Page 20)

“The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the processes of repression and denial.” (Page 22)

“What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name.” (Page 96)

“… People who have been severed from their true feelings since early childhood will be dependent on institutions like the church and will let themselves be told what they are allowed to feel.” (Page 119)

“... (We) are no longer a child, and my life no longer depends on recognition from ‘the family.” (Pages 128)

“The goal of a successful therapy is liberation from a painful dependency – not reconciliation, which is only a moralistic and not a physiological demand.” (Page 131)

“The Body Never Lies” by Alice Miller
135 people found this helpful
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Pilar
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opening
Reviewed in Mexico on September 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
Great read. Miller accurately puts into words what I have been trying to convey for so long as a therapy patient. I’m still looking for the right help and now, thanks to this book, I have a more clear view of knowing what will be helpful and what not.
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Jill
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you
Reviewed in Canada on April 16, 2017
Verified Purchase
The concepts revealed and explained here are life changing. I realize I have been suppressing me and protecting others. These others don't care for my feelings or my outcome. Only I can change me. A door opened for me to understand myself and thus begin positive changes, when I read this book.
4 people found this helpful
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Sabu Augustine
2.0 out of 5 stars You CAN overlook this Book..!
Reviewed in India on February 24, 2018
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This book is full of analogies. Doesn't help much with the actual reason.
One person found this helpful
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lipman gwendoline
5.0 out of 5 stars Un livre à lire
Reviewed in France on October 13, 2017
Verified Purchase
Alice Miller a fait un magnifique travail de recherche sur l'impact du "dressage" d'enfants .
Se plonger dans ses livres permet de guérir la relation à soi et à ses enfants.
One person found this helpful
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J. D. W. Lyon
5.0 out of 5 stars Do NOT be indecisive ! Reading 'ALL' her books can, very easily, be THE best thing you EVER did in your life !
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2016
Verified Purchase
Alice Miller originally became a Freudian psycho analyst in order to deal with her own problems, but eventually discovered that much of Freudianism is merely false ideology, & the ONLY way she could learn the truth was through her patients. Later she publicly renounced Freud & returned all the certificates she was awarded by them. Publically admitting that you've been "barking up the wrong tree" for 20 years takes a LOT of guts. That initially impressed me, & also that she, unlike too many other psychologists, avoids "psycho babble".
As her books cover a wide range, it's inevitable that different parts will affect different people in different ways. What resonated for me was her phrase "re-enacting childhood dramas". For me that was like finding the key of a long locked room & when I opened it, inside I found many things I was aware of, but never really understood before. As I began to understand more & more, I "stood" there in amazement, continually repeating to myself wow - w-o-w - W-O-W ! . I cannot even begin to explain how much her books have changed my life. Certainly she has turned me round almost 180 degrees & made me a MUCH better person !
Yes, there are a few who will try to slag her off or claim they were "bored" etc., but we need to understand that such people are in denial, & lack the courage &/or support they need to face up to their problems ( what such people need to understand is

"IF YOU DON'T LEARN TO CONTROL YOUR FEARS, THEN THEY WILL CONTROL YOU ! "
- unknown Spetsnaz ( Russian Federation ) special forces instructor )

, & thus these problems will continue to cause untold misery that will not only ruin their lives, but also those of others who have the misfortune to
come into close contact with them - believe me, I've been through that myself & still have the physical scars & broken bones to prove it ! e.g. my "X" caused sufficient chaos to put me in the "wrong place @ the wrong time" & I was knocked down on a pedestrian crossing & received multiple broken bones, including a compound fracture that took almost a year to even start healing, which cost me 2 & 1/2 years of excruciating back pain
when I was "mobilised" onto crutches! More than 5 years after ( & now divorced )I was in a relationship with another woman who was also similarly abused in childhood. As her repression started to lift ( because she started to relax, as was then with me in her first healthy relationship ! ), she also took the easy way out by going into denial ( NOT just a river in Egypt ! ) & started playing "mind games" ! Having by now almost recovered from my first accident, I went out for a ride on my MTB to clear my mind - & got "side swiped" by an incompetent taxi driver who smashed up my collar bone, shoulder blade, elbow & hand - if I hadn't been wearing a helmet, I VERY much doubt I'd be here today to write this !
So take it from me that buying Alice Miller's books are not only the best thing you can spend your money on, but have the potential to, quite literally, be life savers ! - As far as I'm concerned not just parents & teachers, etc . should read her books, but they should be mandatory reading as part of the conventional education system!

Jim
12 people found this helpful
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