"A clarion call from one of the great psychological mins of our time." Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco --

More than twenty years ago, a little-known Swiss psychoanalyst wrote a book that changed the way many people viewed themselves and their world. In simple but powerful prose, the deeply moving Drama of the Gifted Child showed how parents unconsciously form and deform the emotional lives of their children. Alice Miller's stories about the roots of suffering in childhood resonated with readers, and her book soon became a backlist best seller. In The Truth Will Set You Free Miller returns to the intensely personal tone and themes of her best-loved work. Only by embracing the truth of our past histories can any of us hope to be free of pain in the present, she argues. Miller uses vivid true stories to reveal the perils of early-childhood mistreatment and the dangers of mindless obedience to parental will. Drawing on the latest research on brain development, she shows how spanking and humiliation produce dangerous levels of denial, which leads in turn to emotional blindness and to mental barriers that cut off awareness and the ability to learn new ways of acting. If this cycle repeats itself, the grown child will perpetrate the same abuse on later generations -- a message vitally important, especially given the increasing popularity of programs like Tough Love and of "child disciplinarians" like James Dobson. The Truth Will Set You Free will provoke and inform all readers who want to know Alice Miller's latest thinking on this important subject.

This “rare and compelling” (New York Magazine) bestseller examines childhood trauma and the enduring effects it has on an individual's management of repressed anger and pain. Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer--and has helped them to apply it to their own lives. Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their "love." Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived." But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.

This is an empowering work from a world-renowned psychoanalyst that enables readers to come to terms with their repressed emotions and break the cycle of violence.

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

A strong criticism of Sigmund Freud’s research regarding sexually abused children, from the bestselling author of The Drama of the Gifted Child. Originally published in 1984, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware explodes Freud’s notions of “infantile sexuality” and helps to bring to the world’s attention the brutal reality of child abuse, changing forever our thoughts of “traditional” methods of child-rearing. Dr. Alice Miller exposes the harsh truths behind children’s “fantasies” by examining case histories, works of literature, dreams, and the lives of such people as Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Gustave Flaubert, and Samuel Beckett. Now with a new preface by Lloyd de Mause and a new introduction by the author, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware continues to bring an essential understanding to the confrontation and treatment of the devastating effects of child abuse. Praise for Thou Shalt Not Be Aware “Epoch-making . . . Alice Miller’s courage, warmth, experienced intuition and candor yield fascinating insights.” —The Boston Globe “A provocative critique of traditional therapy’s view of childhood . . . This is explosive stuff. I can’t imagine anyone coming away from this book without several newfound discoveries about herself and her relation to her parents.” —Glamour “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware is that rarest of gems, a highly creative and exciting work which throws a multifaceted light upon the development of human nature in the Western World.” —Ashley Montagu “Alice Miller is not out to “hang the bastards,” but rather to help create a world of self-conscious and self-loving individuals who don’t need, want or know how to abuse others.” —San Francisco Chronicle “It is timely. It is powerful. It is painful . . . absorbing, enlightening and provoking.” —Charlotte Observer

The motivational speaker explores the reasons for such self-imposed limitations as age, fear, time, and money, and describes how to overcome their restrictions to achieve one's goals.

This book is about exploring the dimensionalities of who we are as we strive to communicate the deeper aspects of our being. Giving creative voice to "real-self expression" requires our establishing true communication with a deeper consciousness within us — a turning inward to capture and seize the thoughts, experiences, emotions, and myriad of memories that reside inside our mind — to push beyond the limitation of words and to stand in the spaces between what may seem to be inharmonious aspects of our self to find synchrony. This is the gift of our psychic symphony. The only question is one of what we will compose. Sherron Lewis and Shelley Stokes The authors, Shelley Stokes, Ph.D. and Sherron Lewis, LMFT, have been pursuing a conceptual, clinical and experiential exploration of the many dimensions and phenomena contained in the human struggles inherent in knowing, being, expressing and living as an expression of SELF that is more REAL and less a manifestation of distorting, inhibiting, fear inducing and submissiveness to accommodate to the perceived demands and expectations of external forces and emotionally important relationships. In this, their latest effort in this endeavor, they continue to employ a methodology that includes clinical theoretical formulations, neuropsychological findings, poetic and philosophical offerings, spiritual references, clinical therapeutic vignettes, and personal reflections. Throughout their writings, Lewis and Stokes, creatively share aspects of their own personal explorations and reflections on their journeys to greater self-authenticity and freedom of expressions of the self. In fact, it is through their use of personal self-disclosures, that they offer the reader a form of interpersonal experiential intimacy in teaching and encouraging the same in the reader's journey of self-discovering and expression, thus making accessible to the reader, especially the non-clinical professionals, a greater access to integrated knowing through concepts, emotions, reflections and experiences. Through this unique approach, the authors engage in a powerful means of communication by inviting the reader to personally engage in the demanding, complex, exciting, energizing and releasing effort to get beyond habitual ways of being in finding, creating and expressing that which has been waiting to be brought to greater fruition in REAL-SELF expression. Errol F. Leifer, PhD., ABPP ABN FABN Sherron Lewis is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Northern California. She specializes in individual and interpersonal conflict and personal development. Her theoretical orientation is a blend of psychodynamic, attachment, and family systems theories. She has enjoyed conducting many workshops on a variety of topics relating to parenting, shame, and real self-expression. The focal areas of her practice are: individual, couples, and family therapy, multilevel intervention, and clinical consultation. She also has enjoyed being a freelance artist for the past thirty-five years. Shelley Stokes is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Northern California. He received his certification in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Masterson Institute in 1994 and has had a long-standing practice treating adults and families. He has conducted many workshops and taught extensively on a variety of topics related to understanding and treating disorders of the self. In addition to coauthoring three recent books with Sherron, his other writings have included Disorders of the Self: Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment of Borderline Personality Organization, Non-Pathologic Object Use in the Process of Therapeutic Change: Winnicott Revisited, and The Culturally Different Patient in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

You have been lied to! Have you been deceived? Through a nationwide survey and in-depth discussion groups, Nancy and Dannah have listened carefully to the heart of your generation. And here are some things they’ve heard: -“I know God should be the only thing that satisfies, but if it could be Him and my friends, then I could be happy.” -“It seems like I have been struggling with depression forever. I always feel like I am not good enough.” - “I tell myself that I don’t really listen to the song lyrics, but once I hear a song a few times and start thinking about what they’re saying I realize that it's too late. It's already stuck in my head." -“For me, the whole wife and mom thing is overrated. It isn’t cool to want a husband and a family.” Maybe you can identify. Trying to listen to the right voices can be difficult. This book has been written by friends who will help you find the Truth. Maybe your heart is telling you that some things in your life are way off course. Certain habits and relationships have left you confused and lonely. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. In this book, Nancy and Dannah expose 25 of the lies most commonly believed by your generation. They share real-life accounts from some of the young women they interviewed, along with honest stories about how they’ve overcome lies they believed themselves. They get down in the trenches of the battle with you. Best of all, they’ll show you how to be set free by the Truth.

Who are we really? The image we have of our 'self' is derived largely from our experiences of who we are, from who we would like to be, and from who we are told we are by others. It is a sense that changes over the years that begins to develop in early childhood and grows (or is stunted) through experimenting and testing in early relationships and later relationships in life, composed of various images which we strive to integrate over time. It is that core 'someone