From Publishers Weekly
Psychoanalyst Miller's important message is poorly served by her choice of medium in this collection of composite dialogues intended to show the consequences of childhood abuse and neglect. In her introduction, Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child) explains that people are marked for life by their family experiences in early childhood, and that knowledge of how childhood suffering affects us in our adult lives is crucial. Even violent offenders, says Miller, can learn empathy for their victims once they begin to understand how their own adult behavior is rooted in cruelty they experienced as children. To show how this type of understanding can develop, Miller presents seven "scenarios" in which fictionalized characters talk out their problems. Miller intends these as stories but they read more like lectures than narratives. Though they deal with significant issues?childhoods filled with neglect, physical cruelty, sexual abuse?they lack emotion, drama and concrete detail. The characters' voices are indistinguishable?perhaps because each is really the voice of the detached analyst herself. At times, the book's message seems overstated, as when a mother agonizes that a difficult childbirth could have been avoided if only she had received proper encouragement. But the section dealing with the parent of a girl with Down's syndrome is, ultimately, quite moving. The two essays with which Miller ends this slim volume, "Gurus and Cult Leaders" and "What Is Hatred?," offer more intellectual substance and engaging insights than do the scenarios. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Miller, a world-famous Swiss psychologist and author (e.g., The Drama of the Gifted Child, BasicBks., 1994. reprint), here demonstrates that early childhood experiences contribute to adult behavior. Thus, while human nature is not inherently destructive, exposure to parental ignorance and neglect often results in the perpetuation of destructive behavior from one generation to the next. Miller provides detailed accounts of fictional characters, associating their childhood traumas with adult problems and abnormal family relationships; the scenario concerning a Holocaust survivor is especially poignant. Miller suggests that only by confronting hidden truths can an individual be released from a cycle of interpersonal destructiveness. The final segments, "Gurus and Cult Leaders" and "What Is Hatred?," summarize major concepts. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-?Yan Toma, Queens Borough P.L., Flushing, NYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Swiss psychoanalyst Miller has long been one of the most powerful--and nuanced--theoreticians on child abuse; particularly, the notion that parents repeat with their children patterns of behavior they experienced with their parents. Here, she invents characters and lets them tell their stories--in letters or conversations--to elucidate the range of harm the phrase "child abuse" encompasses and the ways adults endeavor, with more or less success, to deal with the consequences of that harm. In tabloid headlines and the "recovered memory" movement, child abuse seems always to be sexual--and some of Miller's stories involve sexual abuse. Most characters, however, describe other forms of early childhood pain: physical abuse; emotional withdrawal; adults seeking support that children are simply not old enough to provide. Adults must recognize their past pain, Miller urges, to avoid transferring that same pain to their children: a point she expands on here in discussing the appeal of gurus and cults, as well as the childhood roots of the hatreds a despot like Hitler displays and manipulates. Mary Carroll


Book Description
"Her writing is lovely, and speaks to the nature of the human soul."--Newsday

From the world-famous Swiss psychologist whose book The Drama of the Gifted Child has become a classic, here are seven "life stories" exploring the countless ways in which our families and our childhood experiences form us and turn us into the people we are today.

How do early experiences of love or suffering affect our adult relationships? What effect is child abuse likely to have on the victim's later life? How does hatred evolve and take root? How do people develop into cult leaders or political tyrants? Through the seven hypothetical scenarios and two essays that make up Paths of Life, Miller examines these questions and many others. Her narratives demonstrate that with knowledge and understanding of our past we have the power to change our future, freeing ourselves from the curse of repeating our parents' mistakes. In this, her eighth book, Alice Miller has given us yet another wise and profound study of the inestimable importance of childhood.

"Alice Miller wrote the book on narcissistic parents and the havoc they wreak on children. Twenty years later, she's still on the case with a new book and even more radical ideas."--Mirabella




Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German


From the Inside Flap
"Her writing is lovely, and speaks to the nature of the human soul."--Newsday

From the world-famous Swiss psychologist whose book The Drama of the Gifted Child has become a classic, here are seven "life stories" exploring the countless ways in which our families and our childhood experiences form us and turn us into the people we are today.

How do early experiences of love or suffering affect our adult relationships? What effect is child abuse likely to have on the victim's later life? How does hatred evolve and take root? How do people develop into cult leaders or political tyrants? Through the seven hypothetical scenarios and two essays that make up Paths of Life, Miller examines these questions and many others. Her narratives demonstrate that with knowledge and understanding of our past we have the power to change our future, freeing ourselves from the curse of repeating our parents' mistakes. In this, her eighth book, Alice Miller has given us yet another wise and profound study of the inestimable importance of childhood.

"Alice Miller wrote the book on narcissistic parents and the havoc they wreak on children. Twenty years later, she's still on the case with a new book and even more radical ideas."--Mirabella


About the Author
Alice Miller lives in Switzerland.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the world-famous Swiss psychoanalyst whose book Drama of the Gifted Child is a classic, here are seven "life-stories" of characters who, in recounting their lives to one another, invite us to think back over our own lives and see what has formed us and how we may yet become free.

SYNOPSIS

How do our first experiences of pain and love affect our future? This is the question renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller, author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, asks in her fascinating new book, Paths of Life. Through tracing the life stories of seven different characters, Miller shows us how we can reflect on our own lives to understand both how we were formed and how we might still change.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Psychoanalyst Miller's important message is poorly served by her choice of medium in this collection of composite dialogues intended to show the consequences of childhood abuse and neglect. In her introduction, Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child) explains that people are marked for life by their family experiences in early childhood, and that knowledge of how childhood suffering affects us in our adult lives is crucial. Even violent offenders, says Miller, can learn empathy for their victims once they begin to understand how their own adult behavior is rooted in cruelty they experienced as children. To show how this type of understanding can develop, Miller presents seven "scenarios" in which fictionalized characters talk out their problems. Miller intends these as stories but they read more like lectures than narratives. Though they deal with significant issues--childhoods filled with neglect, physical cruelty, sexual abuse--they lack emotion, drama and concrete detail. The characters' voices are indistinguishable--perhaps because each is really the voice of the detached analyst herself. At times, the book's message seems overstated, as when a mother agonizes that a difficult childbirth could have been avoided if only she had received proper encouragement. But the section dealing with the parent of a girl with Down's syndrome is, ultimately, quite moving. The two essays with which Miller ends this slim volume, "Gurus and Cult Leaders" and "What Is Hatred?," offer more intellectual substance and engaging insights than do the scenarios. (Oct.)

Library Journal

A famed Swiss psychoanalyst offers seven stories that can help us understand our own lives.

Kirkus Reviews

A few good stories, but otherwise not much is new in these seven short fictions depicting characters struggling with, and sometimes growing beyond, 'traces of earlier fears, uncertainties and deprivations.' This is the first venture into fiction for the prolific, but increasingly repetitive Swiss psychoanalyst Miller (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence), and it's not a happy one. Her characters often come across as stilted, as if they were lifted from case reports. There's some real drama in their struggles to cope with the memory and the legacy of childhood—severe emotional neglect and, in some cases, physical or sexual abuse. But, as in many of Miller's other writings, an anti-parental bias is evident, and her characters sometimes express an unjustified sense that they have a complete understanding of what has happened to them. One, firmly convinced that her father sexually and physically abused her when she was an infant, actually informs her husband, 'I know the whole truth now.' Can anyone possess 'the whole truth' when it coma to interpersonal relations? Miller follows her seven fictions with a short, interesting essay, 'Gurus and Cult Leaders: How They Function,' and a considerably longer, reductionist one entitled 'What is Hatred?' In the latter, she claims without bothering to cite any evidence, that 'there was a universal abuse of infants' in Germany around the turn of the century and that one consequence of corporal punishment against children in that country was 'genocide and the toleration of genocide.' Her claim is a case of psycho-history at its most speculative and a-historical. In general, there is considerable evidence in the professional literature andin memoirs and biographies for what Miller writes about in that essay—a significant number of adults were emotionally neglected or abused as children—but romanticizing the victims, reducing history to one dimension, and otherwise overstating the case is a poor way of making the point.