0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page i P A T H S O F L I F E 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page ii also by alice miller The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child- rearing Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-six Watercolors and an Essay The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Painful Truth The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page iii revised and updated 10th anniversary edition Alice Miller P A T H S O F L I F E s i x c a s e h i s t o r i e s Translated by Andrew Jenkins A Member of the Perseus Books Group new york 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/13/08 11:46 AM Page iv Copyright © 2009by Alice Miller Translation Copyright © 1998by Alice Miller Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group Previously published in 1999by Vintage Books, a division of Random House. Originally published in Germany as Wege des Lebens by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfort am Main. Copyright © 1998by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfort am Main. This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1998. Author photograph © Julika Miller/Suhrkamp All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-465-01268-8 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page v Contents Preface vii Six Case Histories Claudia and Daniel: Thirty Years Later 3 Yolanta and Linda: Really Welcome 23 Anika: Worth a Try 38 Helga: Trading on Tears 50 Gloria: Wisdom from the Heart 79 Margot and Lilka: Warsaw to Sydney and Back 96 v 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page vi c o n t e n t s vi Reflections Gurus and Cult Leaders: How They Function 123 What Is Hatred? 129 159 Afterword 163 Postscript 167 Notes 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page vii Preface Most people are born into a family. This family will mark them for life. Critical as young people may be of their parents, sometimes to the extent of breaking with them altogether, there is no way of escaping the more or less indelible imprint that these first family influences leave. Awareness of this fact becomes inescapable when we have children of our own. Many people give the matter little thought. They simply put their own children through the same things they experienced themselves when they were young, and they feel they are quite right to do so. But one day they find to their amazement and dismay that it is precisely with their children and spouses or companions that they have the toughest time achieving the inner freedom they have been striving for since their youth. They are then quite likely to feel that they have reached an im- passe. As they found no way out of that impasse when they were vii 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page viii viii Preface children, they had no alternative but to knuckle under, to grin and bear it. And for some adults it seems to be just the same. But it is not. For however much we may be the product of family background, of heredity, of upbringing (for better or for worse), as adults we can gradually learn to recognize these influ- ences. Then we are no longer under the compulsion to behave like robots. The greater our awareness of the way we have been conditioned, the more likely we are to free ourselves from our entrapments and be receptive to new information. The reader will become acquainted with a number of per- sonal stories in the following pages. One of the things they are designed to illustrate is that the traces left by our childhood ac- company us not only in the families of our own we have as adults, they manifest themselves in the very fabric of human so- ciety, all the way up to those outsize personalities who (again, for better or for worse) have left their imprint on the course of his- tory. In my closing reflections, I turn to the question of whether and how we can learn to gain a clearer understanding of the way hatred evolves and thus prevent it from taking root. As every life is unique, people naturally differ in the way they integrate their childhood into their adult lives. But regardless of the way individuals may decide to go, sensitivity to the harm done by a cruel childhood is increasing and that can only be a boon for society as a whole. Child abuse in all its forms has always been with us and it is still widespread today. But only recently have the victims started realizing what has been done to them and talking to other people about it. Subjects rarely touched on before are moving into the foreground of discussion, a discussion which opens up new perspectives of greater fulfill- ment in life for very many people. This was brought home to me forcibly by a book I read re- cently.1 In it, fourteen fathers serving prison sentences for sexual 0465012688-FM.qxd:40379_int_fm1.qxd 10/3/08 9:29 AM Page ix Preface ix abuse of their children and taking part in a carefully structured group therapy designed during their term of imprisonment tell the story of their crimes. It is encouraging to see how the men- talities of these men changed after they were given the opportu- nity to talk about what they had been through and thus felt understood and accepted. As was to be expected, they are with- out exception stories of horrible deprivations in childhood, sce- narios full of sexual exploitation masquerading as a substitute for the love they were denied. When I say encouraging, I am referring to the transforma- tion undergone by these men on the basis of the counseling and guidance they were given. They had lived thirty, forty, fifty years without ever being given the opportunity to scrutinize and in- vestigate what they had been through as children, much less identify it as a wrong that had been done to them. Compulsively and without qualms, they inflicted the same suffering on their own children as they had been subjected to themselves. As long as they had no grasp of the way these things related to each other, they were unable to free themselves from that compul- sion. Only now are they ready and willing to acknowledge their responsibility, because they no longer regard what happened to them in early youth as just the way things happen to be but have learned to see it as an outrageous wrong inflicted on them. Armed with this knowledge they can now mourn that horrible, twisted mess in their early lives where their childhood should have been. This apprenticeship in critical thinking has not driven them into self-p ity. Quite the contrary. From their own sufferings they have learned to empathize with their children and to acknowl- edge that they have harmed them for the rest of their lives. They are doing their best to repair that damage, but they know that much of it is irreversible. Not all of them have already succeeded