Alice Miller's Books and the Roots of Authoritarianism
By shmoodles
@shmoodles (69)
Canada
December 15, 2006 12:50am CST
I just wondered if anybody in this community had heard or read any of Alie Miller's books... "The Drama of the Gifted Child" - "For your Own Good" or "Thou Shall Not Be Aware" - which are all on the subject of early childhood experience and how this correlates to the roots of the worship of authority in our society. I am a huge fan of Miller's work, read much of her body of writing, and largely in agreement with her on most of her ideas.
I find myself looking at the events of the world around us today in horror at times, and on an intellectual level I had understood how the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot had been able to be carried out... but I did not understand it on an emotional level. It seemed *abstract* to me. Historical - instead of present day contextual...
But that's where Millers' works are so vitally important. How do we find the US Congress passing into law the Patriot Act, when not one single one of them had actually been given the time to actually read it. Why would they do that? They were simply told "It's for our own good" - and they went along with it.
Those magical words seem to absovle government and authority of any stripe of any culpability in what they do. Miller's books explain why... and how we are preconditioned from infancy to accept without question the authority of government, media and "experts" and go along with things in the name of whatever is supposed to be "for our own good" -- even when in doing so, our govrnments and it' agencies are infantilizing the population with each new law that they pass....
Anyways.. I just wondered if there were any other Alice Miller readers out there. If you are looking for a book that will completely change the way you look at government, and other emodiments of authority in our society, includng ourselves as parents.. if one is bold enough to do that -- and believe me - it's not an easy thing to do... I strongly recommend her books.
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