Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: To Join the Waiting Child

Alice Miller has achieved recognition for her revolutionary work on the causes and effects of child abuse - here she works towards demolishing the wall of silence which surrounds the sufferings of early childhood as they affect everyday life, politics, the media, psychiatry and psychotherapy. An infant's trust and dependency on its parents, its longing to be loved and be able to love in return, are boundless. To exploit this dependency, to confuse a child's longings and abuse its trust by pretending that this is somehow "good for" it, Alice Miller condemns as a criminal act, committed time and again out of ignorance and the refusal to change. The essential first stage in this healing process is feeling the truth of our experience. Only this, Alice Miller writes, can enable us "to recognise childhood events and resolve their consequences so that we can lead a conscious, responsible life. If we know and feel what happened to us then, we will never wish to harm ourselves or others now".