The True Drama of the Gifted Child: Alice Miller's Son Martin Talks About His Mother's Neglect & Abuse

Interviewer Uta Blohm
Contemporary Psychotherapy
Nov. 30, 2015

Remarkable story, truth is stranger than fiction. - Chris Martin Miller is the son of Alice Miller and is also a psychotherapist; he was born in and still lives in Zürich. He has written a biography of his mother’s life, – The True ‘Drama of the Gifted Child.’ (2013) – which so far has only been published in German. To make some of the content accessible to the English-speaking world, we have interviewed the author. The following is an abridged version of the translated interview.

Q: Thank you very much for the interview. You published the book about your mother in 2013. Can you say something about what made you want to write the book?

MM: When Das Drama des begabten Kindes (The Drama of Being a Child) was published, I was approached by many readers who idealised this person, Alice Miller. Everybody kept saying, “She must have been such an empathic, great mother. You must have had a wonderful childhood.” At the time I was incapable of putting the reality right. I was really shocked at how the world out there perceived my mother through this book but also by how my mother presented herself as a person I had never seen. I quite painfully for the first time became aware of the spilt in my mother – that she presents a person in public who does not exist in reality. My book reflects a need to leave the underground, to come out of the shadow where I have always lived and show who I am. And so it makes sense that I want to ask quite clearly, not just to the readers but also for myself, “Who is Alice Miller really?” and also, according to Alice Miller, I am entitled to show my perspective. That is one of the most important reasons – I wanted to put something right.

The second reason I wrote the book is to create justice through giving myself permission to say what has been done to me. That means that, although to the outside world it looks as if we had been a great family, I wished to stop the lie, to dismantle the false image.

A third point is that I want to show how the trauma of war affects people. I would like to show how the children of parents who have survived a war suffer trauma. Most importantly I would like to show how destructive people who survive a trauma that they have not dealt with, can be. This is also a message to the public currently as we are being confronted in Europe with many traumatised refugees. We need to be aware what we are getting ourselves into because these people need more than just support and integration. We have to be psychologically aware and answer the question of how to deal with possible forms of violence even when we want to give people refuge.

I am dealing a lot with Germany and I can see how, over the generations, a lot of destruction, rage, despair, sadness, grief and pain is still being passed on. These projections, when children are forced to live out their parents’ identity, is my experience too; I wanted show what that means. The other aim of the book is to show that it is possible to work this through in therapy and to leave the past behind.

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