For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

You may want to rethink that.Due to my relatively new status as parent to a toddler and having known many people both internally within my immediate and distant family and externally amongst close friends and associates who've suffered under excessively harsh parenting, I am often drawn to child psychology literature and any other psych lit that will help me understand how to interpret the more negative aspects of their adult behavior. Throughout this enormous and daunting quest to find answers, the same narrative keeps popping up: various forms and levels of abusive parenting which include, but are not limited to yelling, slapping, hitting, spanking, verbal harshness, manipulation, humiliation, abandonment, various forms of parental instability, etc. are the primers for poor, criminal and/or self-hating expression.Most of the literature (via independent books and/or articles published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Pediatric Association) I've read over the years seem to agree on the causes of poor behavior, but Swedish psychologist Alice Miller's book "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence" complete the "bad behavior" theory in a way that I've not seen in any other child psych lit. Her book puts a very real face on what abusive parenting produces and even ties it into the Holocaust by extensively examining how Adolph Hitler was raised (neurotic, weak, compulsive and unstable mother and an excessively verbally, mentally and physically abusive father), how Germans were raised for generations under similar conditions and how abusive parenting contributed to an entire nation going along with the heinous acts that were to make WWII infamous. Of course this is the extreme outcome of abusive parenting, but the author taps into more common outcomes as well (e.g. criminal behavior; self-hating behavior in the form of addictions to drugs, alcohol, food, etc.; personality disorders which include compulsions, chronic depression, chronic anger, OCD, Narcissism, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and other sociopathies; and finally re-enacting the very abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents onto their own children or others because they either believe that the harsh discipline they endured was necessary and normal or because they are subconsciously lashing out due to their own unexamined weaknesses and pain).This is the first book by Alice Miller that I've read, but it will not be my last. It's absolutely essential reading even if you think your brand of discipline is harmless... chances are it's not. I would encourage all parents to read  For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence  and continue reading child psych literature from respected and scientific sources, especially if you have very young children between the ages of infancy and 5 years old as those are the most crucial years in child development (emotionally, mentally, physically, educationally, etc.) and what happens in those years will set the stage for the rest of one's life.

I ran into Alice Miller's For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence shortly after it was published in an English translation here in the USA in 1983. She is a psychoanalyst and as all psychoanalysts must do, herself underwent analysis with another practitioner of this arcane discipline. I hope that I do her no injustice by simply stating that this book is one outcome of her therapy. It became apparent to her that the way in which she was raised by her parents was not only wrong, it was evil. What she learned from her own childhood can be readily applied to the majority of the rest of us. It boils down to this: parents who hit, humiliate, beat, spank or belittle their children are causing them immense harm. Many of us in the West are used to such things because of our ubiquitous Judeo-Chrisitan-Islamic traditions. "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." Proverbs 13:24 If you're not used to the Jacobean English of the King James Bible, what this verse is telling us is that it's good to beat your kids sometimes. You wouldn't go to a doctor who practiced medicine as it was in the days when this verse was written; you likely as well wouldn't want to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a ship built according to the technology of these days either. So why on earth would you heed advice from a people who were at the least were superstitious and ignorant? Thankfully the Bible as a guide and corrective for "sinful humanity" is falling further and further out of favor as time goes by, being held to by a dwindling number of fanatics who still take it to be the "Word of God." In the meantime, contemplate if you can the millions and millions of parents who, over the millennia, have beaten their kids; contemplate the injured bodies and psyches which have accrued during all of this time. Aside from my having taken a shot at the "authority of scripture," there are probably many who will read this and will say, "Hey, my parents hit me and I turned out okay!" Very likely, you did not "turn out okay." If you spank, slap, humiliate or otherwise abuse your child you are perpetuating child abuse masquerading as good parenting. Think about it. A toddler may be twenty eight to thirty eight inches tall, and if you're an average sized adult coming in at sixty eight inches, you're at least twice the kid's size; no imagine that you, at your adult height, encounter an adult who is one hundred thirty six inches tall - and they proceed to spank, slap or beat you. How much power would you have against such a monster? One hundred thirty six inches translates as eleven feet four inches. That's how we appear to small children, children who are hard-wired from birth to implicitly trust Daddy and Mommy. When this eleven foot monster suddenly attacks with physical violence, the trust that you - the smaller one in all of this - have in them cannot be avoided. It's in your DNA. So what happens? You'll turn it inwards. You'll tell yourself that you must be evil, you must be defective and that you deserve your punishment. The notion that Mom and Dad are flawed only begins to emerge long after the damage has begun. So it is that far too many of us have our basic human dignity insulted, made an outcast in our own minds and hearts.Miller uses the life of Adolph Hitler as her case in point. There is a lot of material about him which has been available for decades and this includes his upbringing. His father, like many Teutonic fathers, beat young Adolph at every turn for infractions real and imaginary. And like many good parents, if he cried, his father would yell at him to stop crying and would punctuate the command with more slaps, belt-whippings, yelling. To the Shickelgrubers this was normal. If you think this is normal, welcome to the Hitler household.This is not easy reading. It was not intended to be easy reading. At the same time Miller's German original was artless and the English translation by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum is as near-flawless as a translation can be, preserving Miller's clear lucid prose. You simply cannot misunderstand her. If you wish to break the cycle of perpetuating violence against children - especially your children - you can do no better than starting with this book. After I read it through for the first time, I got my three kids together and promised them that I would never hit them again and we talked for hours afterward about how this startling new promise of mine came about. I am embarrassed to report that I did break that promise once. And in all candor, it took another thirty years to work my rage problems and narcissistic traits down to humane size; but my work began with this book and I thank Alice Miller for it.

This was a slow read, mostly because there was so much to think about. I was raised by parents who did not abuse me or teach my to deny my feelings, but I still found this book helpful in identifying incorrect beliefs that are held by society without question because we can’t imagine any other way.As a parent I’ve been challenging myself to question all my default beliefs regarding child-rearing, and this book did that more than any other book I’ve read. It’s not a parenting book, but the mindset embodied here will teach you much more than the many “parenting techniques” found in many of those types of (also helpful) books.I highly recommended this to anyone who wants to parent better than there own parents did or wants to work through any underlying issues they may have from childhood, even if your childhood was a happy healthy one. Warning, there is some discussion of child abuse but if those passages are very easy to identify and skip over without having to see anything if that’s upsetting to you.

I wish there was a way to know if the cover is damaged. This cover isn’t going to last much longer.

"For Your Own Good" is a game-changer in the realm of parenting literature. Alice Miller delves into the hidden aspects of child-rearing, exposing the subtle cruelties that may unknowingly be embedded in traditional parenting methods. Her insights are both eye-opening and thought-provoking.Miller connects the dots between certain parenting approaches and the roots of violence, providing a fresh perspective on the impact of early experiences on a child's psyche.

Un libro da leggere poche pagine al giorno, per assorbirlo bene, e lasciarlo lavorare nel profondo. Tutti i genitori dovrebbero leggerlo

OH MY GOD THIS BOOK. Wonderful simple ideas full of truth on the manipulation of all pedagogy and child rearing measures and how it creates further violence unless awareness and experiencing of the feelings are reached. Horrible and interesting chapters on Adolf Hitler's and serial killers' childhoods. Insights for being free and being truly alive.

Excelente, como todos los libros de Alice Miller, en lo personal es la primera vez que he llegado a tomar conciencia de la forma en que como padres proyectamos todos nuestros problemas no resueltos en nuestros hijos sin siquiera darnos cuenta de ello

アリス・ミラーはだいぶ前に『才能のある子のドラマ(The drama of the gifted child)』を読んだことがあった。最近、この本（For your own good)が話題に上ったので、読んでみた。アリス・ミラーは以前は臨床をしていたのだが、止めて著作業に専念している。そのせいか、他の文献からの引用が多く、その意味では読みにくいと感じた。また、全体的に悲観的であり、人生早期のネガティブな体験がその後もネガティブな影響を及ぼすという見方をしているように感じたが、精神分析家ならではなのかなと思った。愛着理論にあるように、親や家族ばかりでなくその後出会う人からのポジティブな影響で人生の基調が変わることもあり得るのではないかと思ったりした。つまりはレジリアンスといった見方もあるのでは、と思った。本作中では、麻薬使用者の自伝として知られ、映画にもなったクリスチアーネ・F（邦訳は『かなしみのクリスチアーネ』）の話も出てきた。