Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Alice Miller has achieved worldwide recognition for her work on the causes and effects of child abuse; on violence towards children and its cost to society. For more than twenty years she taught and practised psychoanalysis; now she questions the validity of psychoanalytic theories and common psychiatric methods.

THE UNTOUCHED KEY is a powerful and provocative synthesis of Alice Miller's ideas and experience. With her usual impeccable clarity, insight and logic she explores the clues- often overlooked in biography- connecting unnoticed childhood trauma to adult creativity and destructiveness. What did Picasso express in 'Guernica'? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler become a mass murderer? Her conclusions reveal the roots and consequences of our centuries-old existence on obeying repressive parental figures- including psychiatrists and psychotherapists- and challenge us to unlock the door to our true childhood history in order to regain our lost awareness and our full life.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Picasso, Buster Keaton, Hitler and Stalin are analyzed to prove that childhood trauma or abuse is related directly to later creativity or destructiveness. ``These profiles . . . are reductionist,'' PW said. ``Swiss psychoanalyst Miller is more successful in showing how Nietzsche's stifling upbringing by pious, controlling women fueled his misogyny and his grandiose ideas.'' Illustrated . (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Miller, disturbed by the work of such artists as Picasso, Buster Keaton, and Nietzsche, has scanned biographical materials to find childhood trauma that might explain their horror and anger. She points out both the long-term damage of childhood abuse/neglect and the tendency of an artist to repress and of critics and society to ignore them. The Swiss psychoanalyst has previously championed the cause of the child in four books, including Thou Shalt Not Be Aware [BKL Jl 84] and For Your Own Good [BKL Mr 15 83]. This is not a scientific study--rather a critical analysis--and Miller claims that she "must leave it to the reader to verify [her] statements . . . or refute [her] arguments." Her book will activate both questions and controversy and will be a fine addition to larger psychology and art/literary collections. Notes, bibliography, update on child abuse. No index. --Angus Trimnell

Kirkus Book Review

That childhood experiences are the key to adult actions is Miller's recurring theme, and here she says it again--as clearly and passionately as always. Miller has been a psychoanalyst for more than 20 years, so it comes as no surprise that she looks to childhood for the sources of adult anxiety and destructive behavior. Where she departs from traditional psychoanalytic thought--and the gap grows broader with every book--is in insisting that the influential events of infancy and childhood are real events, not displacements or projections, not symbols or fantasies. She has developed this thesis eloquently in earlier books--For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983) among them--looking at the childhoods of antisocial personalities (including Adolph Hitler). In this volume, she studies the childhoods of artists and intellects like Picasso, Kathe Kollwitz, Buster Keaton, and Nietzsche. Her findings help to explain why some children, although abused or neglected, become creative adults, while others repeat the pattern of pain and cruelty. Almost always in the former picture is one sympathetic adult. Miller's talent is to take the complexities that shape a human being and present them in simple--sometimes deceptively simple--terms. The reader will look with new eyes at the paintings of Picasso, the films of Buster Keaton, indeed the work of any favorite artist. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Alice Miller was born in Lwow, Poland on January 12, 1923. She studied philosophy and literature at the University of Warsaw, which operated underground during the war. After the war, she continued her studies at the University of Basel and received a doctorate in 1953. After undergoing Freudian psychiatric training, she went into practice as a psychoanalyst. She believed that parental power and punishment lay at the root of nearly all human problems.

By the time she wrote her first book, she had stopped practicing psychiatry. Her works include The Drama of the Gifted Child; The Truth Shall Set You Free; Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries; For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence; Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child; The Untouched Key; The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting; Breaking Down the Wall of Silence; and Free From Lies: Discovering Your True Needs. She died on April 14, 2010 at the age of 87.

(Bowker Author Biography)