The introduction to the first chapter in Miller’s first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, first published in 1979, contains a line that summarises her core view. In it, she writes:
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.[32]
A common denominator in Miller’s writings is her explanation of why human beings prefer not to know about their own victimisation during childhood: to avoid unbearable pain. She believed that the unconscious command of the individual, not to be aware of how they were treated in childhood, led to displacement: the irresistible drive to repeat abusive parenting in the next generation of children or direct unconsciously the unresolved trauma against others (war, terrorism, delinquency),[33][34]or against themselves (eating disorders, drug addiction, depression).
In her writings, Miller is careful to clarify that by “abuse” she does not only mean physical violence or sexual abuse, but also psychological abuse and emotional neglect perpetrated by one or both parents on their child, which is difficult to for the abused person to identify and process because humans have an evolutionary drive to repress feelings of betrayal, rage, and self-protection so that they can continue to receive their parents’ protection and acceptance. Formerly abused children are likely to repress feelings and memories of their childhood, which may be triggered by a stressful life event, or the onset of mental illness. Miller blamed psychologically neglectful or abusive parents for the majority of neuroses and psychoses. She maintained that all instances of mental illness, addiction, crime and cultism were ultimately caused by suppressed rage and pain as a result of subconscious childhood trauma that was not resolved emotionally, assisted by a helper, which she came to term an “enlightened witness.” In all cultures, “sparing the parents is our supreme law,” wrote Miller. Even psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists were unconsciously afraid to blame parents for the mental disorders of their clients, she contended. According to Miller, mental health professionals were also creatures of the poisonous pedagogy internalized in their own childhood. This explained why the Commandment “Honor thy parents” was one of the main targets in Miller’s school of psychology.[35]
Miller called electroconvulsive therapy “a campaign against the act of remembering”. In her book Abbruch der Schweigemauer(The Demolition of Silence), she also criticized psychotherapists‘ advice to clients to forgive their abusive parents, arguing that this could only hinder recovery through remembering and feeling childhood pain. It was her contention that the majority of therapists fear this truth and that they work under the influence of interpretations culled from both Western and Orientalreligions, which preach forgiveness by the once-mistreated child. She believed that forgiveness did not resolve hatred, but covered it in a dangerous way in the grown adult: displacement on scapegoats, as she discussed in her psycho-biographies of Adolf Hitler and Jürgen Bartsch, both of whom she described as having suffered severe parental abuse.
In the 1990s, Miller initially supported a version of primal therapy developed by Konrad Stettbacher[36] Miller initially learned of Stettbacher’s method from a book by Mariella Mehr titled Steinzeit (Stone Age). Having been strongly impressed by the book, Miller contacted Mehr in order to get the name of the therapist. Later, Stettbacher was charged with incidents of sexual abuse. From that time forward, Miller refused to make therapist or method recommendations. In open letters to the public, Miller explained why she originally supported Stettbacher’s methods, but in the end she distanced herself from him and his regressive therapies.[37][38]
