The Drama of Being a Child - Alice Miller

My T suggested that I read this book. I've found it a very unsettling and upsetting read - I went into therapy broadly thinking that my father was the 'bad' parent and my mother was the 'good' parent but as time has gone on we've talked more and more about her. The book suggests that she was getting her own unresolved childhood needs met through me, and my depression has developed as a result. I feel sick that the parent I idolised could actually have been harming me and I've never even realised it. I don't know how to come to terms with having two abusive parents not one. I just want to push the book away, which I guess means I should do the opposite.

Has anyone read it and had similar feelings?

I haven't read the book, but I do have a couple of thoughts about what you have written.
If you feel like pushing the book away, that doesn't neessarily mean you should do the opposite. In fact it might be important to listen to your feelings. Perhaps at this time the emerging feelings are simply too overwhelming for you to cope with? That's okay, and you can always return to these thoughts later, or in the relative safety of the therapy hour.
Also I feel like there is more room for grey areas in your thinking. It is shocking to think that someone you previously thought of as "good" could suddenly be painted in a different light, but it doesn't have to be either/or. If you feel your mother did things wrong (or even abusive) as a parent, that doesn't have to take away from the positive experiences you seem to be saying you have of her parenting. This new realisation doesn't mean she has to go from being totally "good" to totally "bad". Don't deny yourself the positive experiences too.
I wish you healing.

Thanks so much Echoes. I agree, black and white thinking is a big problem of mine generally. I'm just letting the bad stuff taint the good as well. I think the idea is that I'm meant to empathise with why she did what she did, but at the moment it just makes me feel sick. Thanks so much for the support.

It's weird, but my daughter and I were just discussing this last week! Apparently Miller's son wrote a book that said she did to him what she cautioned others NOT to do to their kids.

I read Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child - I think it changed names somewhere along the line.
Some of what I got out of it was that no matter how well intentioned parents were, sometime children have a bad time of it. Not because the parents were monsters, but because everyone has stuff.

This is true. She was a narcissistic monster who also had a horrible childhood. I really can't take her books seriously knowing how she treated her son.

I think the title may have been changed because "gifted" now means academically gifted to English speakers (and maybe also German speakers), but Miller really meant by gifted those with a talent for surviving their parents.

Or a talent for twisting themselves to 'fit' their parents.

Wow, I did not know that! I had read “Drama of the Gifted Child” years ago, thought it sounded like me, but that didn’t really help anything much.

I looked up Martin Miller and read an interview with him online. Very interesting.

Sounds like maybe Alice Miller in “Drama” was describing a situation she knew well (and recognized in her clients?), but did not how to get out of it herself? So then a question may be – having identified that you are caught in that cycle/trap, how to get out? Sounds like neither of the Dr. Millers really know/knew that?

I don't think therapists are any better at raising children than anyone else necessarily. I have friends whose parent/s were therapists - and they are no better at life than anyone else. I have friends who are therapists who have children. They have addiction problems, school problems, relationship problems, life problems just like everyone else. The first one I see has said one of her children rarely talks to her and that she has issues with her daughter-in-law. I have read articles by the children of therapists and they ***** and moan and see their own therapist to deal with how they were raised just like others. Some just report unusual childhood interactions.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double..._the_kids.html

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2...children/?_r=0

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/06/comp...-a-mother.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ats-me-patient

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ologist-mother

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...chotherapists/

I think this is an important point that is not much talked about in therapy, at least the therapy I've had, or the articles I read on PC.

We talk about how horribly we were treated and learn how to feel the effects that had on us but in the end "everyone has stuff" and I for one loved my parents anyway. They may not have "deserved" my love and my idealization of them was certainly just that -- idealization -- and as an adult I needed to learn to let that go. But the love? I am so glad that I have the capacity for that and they were my first "objects", and I still love them, deceased and imperfect though they were.

I have a "monster" inside of me but that's not all of me. Nor was it for my mother or father.

Unpopular opinion but I read it and mostly felt the author made a big deal about lot of things that I view as just normal life