All of Miller’s books are about narcissism. And trauma, and grandiosity, and depression. She analyzed Hitler’s childhood and the German character traits that made the Holocaust possible. Excuse my effusive praise for her, but on the topics of neurosis, dysfunction, and pathological behavior, I’ve never found her equal.
You did not reference "All of Miller's books" including the one that examined Hitler's childhood to find the forces that created Hitler, the historical figure. She does not, as I do, start with trauma to lead into narcissism and how it can both define an individual and a national movement; she starts with narcissism that leads to trauma. She rejects what we know, through neuroscience to be true, that trauma is transferred through DNA in the form of epigenetics. She traces the willingness of the Germans to follow Hitler (tho he lost the 1932 election in a landslide, getting only 13 million votes vs Hindenburg's 19 million) to their tradition of strict upbringing. That follows perhaps if you reject genetics. But my analysis is based on both direct trauma (not from strict child rearing) and epigenetics, by which trauma is intergenerational, which is a radical departure from her analysis of Nazi Germany, which does not explain the current situation in Israel/Palestine. I think there is much wisdom in Miller who influenced how I raised my children, but I don't think her approach to historical events, as in her book on HItler, explains the events I am trying to explore with a model that begins not with narcissism but with trauma and its intergenerational nature, which she clearly rejects. I appreciate your comment.
Miller certainly believes in the cycle of abuse and offers extensive evidence for the Compulsion to Repeat. She eloquently shows how the maltreatment of children traumatizes them and explains how this leads to pathological behavior when they're adults. Perhaps you should tighten your original comment laying out your ideas, but I'm a person who comes down firmly on the side of "nurture" in the nature versus nurture debate. Genetics of course have influence over humans, but the decades-long attempt in the U.S. to reject the importance of environment in how children turn out has been a failure.
What Miller rejected is now science, that trauma is inherited thru DNA. "Miller believed that in psychoanalysis, the therapist was taking a step too far back when it came to pointing out the true cause of mental problems in adulthood. She believed that the parent must be made aware of his or her inadequacies. The writer’s personal and family experience of Nazism seems to have galvanised her theories about a bullying authoritarian force ruling the life of an individual. “She has analysed the psyches of Hitler and his henchmen, and despotism constantly recurs as a metaphor in her work. (…) she even writes of her mother thus: “Not once did she apologise to me or express any kind of regret. She was always ‘in the right’. It was this attitude that made my childhood feel like a totalitarian regime. ” artlark.org By projecting her own need to blame her own parents, she had to reject what is accepted science today, that trauma is intergenerational: Epigenetics, which she rejected in order to find the focus of blame on the parents, is "the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence." Wikipedia
In other words, we have to take a step back further than the parents, whose narcissism may well be the coping mechanism of a person suffering epigenetic trauma. That rejection, which I think was motivated by her personal need to blame her parents for her own suffering, is the fatal flaw in her analysis of both individual cases and her study of the Nazi era, which in no way would explain the events in Israel today, The Nazi era is, in a sense, being repeated, but her explanation for it, does not hold up, for Israeli child rearing is almost the opposite of the German model: "“free-range parenting” is the national default position. Kids are independent from young ages, arranging and ferrying themselves to playdates. A six- or seven-year-old walks to the corner store with friends for ice cream. Ten-year-olds regularly cross Tel Aviv on scooters or on the bus with friends. Parenting in Israel offers more freedom to both kids and parents. " mosaicmagazine.com
You seem to reject the idea that child abuse and neglect have significant influence on how a person turns out. I find this astonishing, as would Miller's countless readers who wrote to her about how intensely her work spoke to them and their experiences. You appear to have no understanding whatsoever of child psychology, preferring organic explanations as all-important. Your last few sentences about childhood in Israel really had me scratching my head. Israelis may indeed practice a species of free-range childrearing, but a great deal more information is needed than that. They indoctrinate their children from a very early age to see Arabs as villains who are out to get them (see Nurit Peled and Max Blumenthal, for starters), and this goes a long way toward explaining the love Israelis have for killing and humiliating Palestinians. Childhood is far more complex an experience than you seem to understand, so there really is no point in my trying to sell you on Miller's unusual wisdom. You'll find yourself in prodigious company in the U.S., including Big Pharma, in trying to pin most or all human dysfunction on genes or brain chemistry, or whatever, but you'll never erase the way Miller's work speaks to millions of people when it comes to the brutal and callous conditions under which they grew up.
I do NOT reject that claim; it is valid, but so is the fact of epigenetics, which Miller rejects and is part of my analysis. You have created a strawman to attack rather than deal with the deficiencies in the Miller approach, which rejects the genetic ingredient of trauma and thus reactions to trauma. I already noted to you that the raising of my own children was influenced by reading Miller, so how can you accuse me of dismissing something I put into practice. However, my analysis is not about childrearing but intergenerational trauma and the way narcissism can apply not only to individual but to national character or groups. You are determined to defend Miller, but that is not the issue: the issue is whether my analysis helps explain the current situation and thus provides ways to address it with understanding rather than just anger, hatred, or malice.
Did she use it as a model by which to understand national character?
All of Miller’s books are about narcissism. And trauma, and grandiosity, and depression. She analyzed Hitler’s childhood and the German character traits that made the Holocaust possible. Excuse my effusive praise for her, but on the topics of neurosis, dysfunction, and pathological behavior, I’ve never found her equal.
You did not reference "All of Miller's books" including the one that examined Hitler's childhood to find the forces that created Hitler, the historical figure. She does not, as I do, start with trauma to lead into narcissism and how it can both define an individual and a national movement; she starts with narcissism that leads to trauma. She rejects what we know, through neuroscience to be true, that trauma is transferred through DNA in the form of epigenetics. She traces the willingness of the Germans to follow Hitler (tho he lost the 1932 election in a landslide, getting only 13 million votes vs Hindenburg's 19 million) to their tradition of strict upbringing. That follows perhaps if you reject genetics. But my analysis is based on both direct trauma (not from strict child rearing) and epigenetics, by which trauma is intergenerational, which is a radical departure from her analysis of Nazi Germany, which does not explain the current situation in Israel/Palestine. I think there is much wisdom in Miller who influenced how I raised my children, but I don't think her approach to historical events, as in her book on HItler, explains the events I am trying to explore with a model that begins not with narcissism but with trauma and its intergenerational nature, which she clearly rejects. I appreciate your comment.
Miller certainly believes in the cycle of abuse and offers extensive evidence for the Compulsion to Repeat. She eloquently shows how the maltreatment of children traumatizes them and explains how this leads to pathological behavior when they're adults. Perhaps you should tighten your original comment laying out your ideas, but I'm a person who comes down firmly on the side of "nurture" in the nature versus nurture debate. Genetics of course have influence over humans, but the decades-long attempt in the U.S. to reject the importance of environment in how children turn out has been a failure.
What Miller rejected is now science, that trauma is inherited thru DNA. "Miller believed that in psychoanalysis, the therapist was taking a step too far back when it came to pointing out the true cause of mental problems in adulthood. She believed that the parent must be made aware of his or her inadequacies. The writer’s personal and family experience of Nazism seems to have galvanised her theories about a bullying authoritarian force ruling the life of an individual. “She has analysed the psyches of Hitler and his henchmen, and despotism constantly recurs as a metaphor in her work. (…) she even writes of her mother thus: “Not once did she apologise to me or express any kind of regret. She was always ‘in the right’. It was this attitude that made my childhood feel like a totalitarian regime. ” artlark.org By projecting her own need to blame her own parents, she had to reject what is accepted science today, that trauma is intergenerational: Epigenetics, which she rejected in order to find the focus of blame on the parents, is "the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence." Wikipedia
In other words, we have to take a step back further than the parents, whose narcissism may well be the coping mechanism of a person suffering epigenetic trauma. That rejection, which I think was motivated by her personal need to blame her parents for her own suffering, is the fatal flaw in her analysis of both individual cases and her study of the Nazi era, which in no way would explain the events in Israel today, The Nazi era is, in a sense, being repeated, but her explanation for it, does not hold up, for Israeli child rearing is almost the opposite of the German model: "“free-range parenting” is the national default position. Kids are independent from young ages, arranging and ferrying themselves to playdates. A six- or seven-year-old walks to the corner store with friends for ice cream. Ten-year-olds regularly cross Tel Aviv on scooters or on the bus with friends. Parenting in Israel offers more freedom to both kids and parents. " mosaicmagazine.com
You seem to reject the idea that child abuse and neglect have significant influence on how a person turns out. I find this astonishing, as would Miller's countless readers who wrote to her about how intensely her work spoke to them and their experiences. You appear to have no understanding whatsoever of child psychology, preferring organic explanations as all-important. Your last few sentences about childhood in Israel really had me scratching my head. Israelis may indeed practice a species of free-range childrearing, but a great deal more information is needed than that. They indoctrinate their children from a very early age to see Arabs as villains who are out to get them (see Nurit Peled and Max Blumenthal, for starters), and this goes a long way toward explaining the love Israelis have for killing and humiliating Palestinians. Childhood is far more complex an experience than you seem to understand, so there really is no point in my trying to sell you on Miller's unusual wisdom. You'll find yourself in prodigious company in the U.S., including Big Pharma, in trying to pin most or all human dysfunction on genes or brain chemistry, or whatever, but you'll never erase the way Miller's work speaks to millions of people when it comes to the brutal and callous conditions under which they grew up.
I do NOT reject that claim; it is valid, but so is the fact of epigenetics, which Miller rejects and is part of my analysis. You have created a strawman to attack rather than deal with the deficiencies in the Miller approach, which rejects the genetic ingredient of trauma and thus reactions to trauma. I already noted to you that the raising of my own children was influenced by reading Miller, so how can you accuse me of dismissing something I put into practice. However, my analysis is not about childrearing but intergenerational trauma and the way narcissism can apply not only to individual but to national character or groups. You are determined to defend Miller, but that is not the issue: the issue is whether my analysis helps explain the current situation and thus provides ways to address it with understanding rather than just anger, hatred, or malice.