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The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
Contributor(s): Miller, Alice (Author)
ISBN: 0385267649     ISBN-13: 9780385267649
Publisher: Anchor Books
OUR PRICE:   $17.10  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: March 1991
Qty:
Annotation: Since the publication of The Drama of the Gifted Child in 1981, Alice Miller has achieved worldwide recognition for her work on the causes and effects of child abuse, on violence toward children and its cost to society. Now, in The Untouched Key, she explores the clues, often overlooked in biography, that connect childhood traumas to adult creativity and destructiveness. 19 drawings.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | Mental Health
- Family & Relationships
- Psychology | Developmental - Child
Dewey: 155.9
LCCN: 91219126
Physical Information: 0.51" H x 5.19" W x 8" (0.43 lbs) 192 pages
Themes:
- Topical - Family
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
As in her former books, Alice Miller again focuses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. When she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, K the Kollwitz, Buster Keaton, and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long--childhood--she opens rusty locks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives. What did Picasso express in Guernica? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion and lose his mind for 11 years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers?

Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals, but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.