The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition

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What she does is reduce the complexities of children's emotions and the ambivalence of parents to a simple fairytale of good and evil," she says.

She maintained that all instances of mental illness, addiction, crime and cultism were ultimately caused by suppressed rage and pain as a result of subconscious childhood trauma that was not resolved emotionally, assisted by a helper, which she came to term an "enlightened witness.Those who process their trauma and live their lives being honest to themselves will be the leaders of change.

Written in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Miller took to task the entirety of human culture. The role of the therapist, according to Miller, is to help the adult rediscover the child in the cellar. This is a tough truth to face because it makes many people, especially the families of trauma survivors, uncomfortable. She addressed the two reactions to the loss of love in childhood, depression and grandiosity; the inner prison, the vicious circle of contempt, repressed memories, the etiology of depression, and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult.To illustrate this point, Oliver James describes how, while working as a clinician in a psychiatric hospital in the early 1980s, he found himself treating a five-year-old girl who exhibited a disturbing degree of sexualised behaviour. It was her contention that the majority of therapists fear this truth and that they work under the influence of interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness by the once-mistreated child. This is all pretty simplified, the book is brief and well worth reading particularly if you see aspects of yourself or someone you know in the above.