Banished Knowledge : Facing Childhood Injuries
Author: Alice Miller
List Price: $12.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0385267622
Publisher: Anchor (01 September, 1991)
Sales Rank: 76,484
Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
A MUST read
This is the first book I have read by Alice Miller and the first I've read on childhood abuse. It is written in easy to understand language and gets the point across VERY well. Ms. Miller does make a few statements that are hard to swallow, but she goes on to explain them and certainly doesn't tell you that you HAVE to believe them. This book is a must read for anyone who has suffered any type of childhood abuse.
Rating: 3 out of 5
I believe this book was intended for a professional audience
First let me begin by saying that I really have enjoyed and learned from Miller's other works. They have been important text's for those of us not in "practice". So it was with high expectations that I purchased Banished Knowledge. After reading the first couple of chapters, I came to the conclusion that this book was more of a polemical text meant for the psychoanalsyst community then it was for the layperson. By the end of the book I was convinced that this was the case. However, I did find nuggets interspersed throughout the book that made the book at least worth reading if not completely satisfactory. If you are interested in purchasing this book with the expectations of, say, Drama of the Gifted Child just be prepared to find the writing written in a tone that seeks an audience not usually intended for her other works.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Miller is God
Miller may make some extreme and perhaps unsupportable statements now and then, and don't expect a course in scientific method on every page, but her books lay out how the mind works more clearly and thoroughly than anything else I know of. Trying to understand the child, or the parent, or the mind, or trauma, or yourself without thoroughly digesting Miller is really unthinkable. Other excellent books by Miller include Drama of the Gifted Child (also called "Prisoners of Childhood") [read the original version, currently available only in hardcover] and For Your Own Good. As for other authors, important works on childhood trauma include Making Sense of Suffering by J. Konrad Stettbacher, Betrayal Trauma by Jennifer Freyd, and Soul Murder by Morton Schatzman (don't confuse this latter book with one of the same title by Leonard Schengold). Schatzman's book is inexplicably out of print, but it's worth getting from the library. An excellent, simple, and highly practical book is Toxic Parents by Susan Forward.
Book Index