World-renowned therapist Alice Miller shows how a child's emotional traumas, repressed humiliation, and bottled rage can manifest themselves as serious adult health problems. Miller connects painful childhoods with later afflictions including depression, anorexia, serious illness, and even insanity. While examining everything from parental spanking to sexual abuse and emotional blackmail, Miller exposes the societal pressures that converge to harm children. She explains that we have so many societal mechanisms to prevent us from feeling anger or rage against our parents that we tend never to confront our own feelings and explores the benefits of using a therapist to reaffirm the patient's repressed reactions to a forgotten childhood experience.
