Book No. 11 of 2021
A surprisingly short read that I found insightful but read with a dose of skepticism. I think many of Miller’s points and theories ring true and are very valid—fully agree that childhood pain/trauma/cruelty can have lasting effects on the adult self, and that people who carry their hurt without examining or addressing it are prone to enacting cruelty on their own children and blindly following nationalist or fringe ideologies that scapegoat the marginalized and allow them to justify being cruel to others. (In short, the people who need therapy and aren’t getting it are causing all sorts of problems that make other people need therapy—an evergreen story.)
Where I would personally quibble—and mind you I am a person with no qualifications in psychology whatsoever so sure, I might be totally wrong here—is with Miller’s assertions that all adult psychological issues can be traced back to childhood (I would argue that people can be traumatized as adults, i.e. in cases of assault and abuse) and that depression can essentially be “cured” when childhood trauma is properly processed. Still got something out of the book despite my personal skepticism.
Similar Reads
I thought it was hilarious that this book—which essentially advocates that everyone needs therapy—stood as a stark opposite to Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, which asserts that therapy is largely unnecessary, even though both books make similar statements about society.
Some passages about the perception of the self reminded me of Melissa Dahl’s Cringeworthy, which addresses the discomfort when one is forced to acknowledge others’ perception of their “true” self.