An interesting read, though I did not really learn anything I haven't heard before! I think a book like this benefits from anecdotes, because it can be hard to truly conceptualize & understand some of the language of this topic. This is something this book does well! Overall, I give 3 stars.

In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual “wisdom,” we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.
*
The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother’s face and finds himself therein…provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother’s face, but rather the mother’s own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.
*
Two extreme forms, of which I consider one to be the reverse of the other—grandiosity and depression. Behind manifest grandiosity there constantly lurks depression, and behind a depressive mood there often hides an unconscious (or conscious but split off) sense of a tragic history. In fact, grandiosity is the defense against depression, and depression is the defense against the deep pain over the loss of the self that results from denial.
*
There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger—and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies.
*
This ability to grieve—that is, to give up the illusion of his “happy” childhood, to feel and recognize the full extent of the hurt he has endured—can restore the depressive’s vitality and creativity and free the grandiose person from the exertions of and dependence on his Sisyphean task.

I was on fire to discuss this book with people and I had so many place saving stickers all over it I realized I simply wanted to talk about every sentence! I read it 20 years ago and I felt like I finally found explanations that made sense! Since then I've read many other good books discussing the same issues which also were excellent so the fire became a little light. It's an excellent book of possible truth, and definitely should be near the top of that book list if you have an interest in this subject.

I'm not sure who recommended this book to me or how it got on my list but it really messed with me. I thought I was a pretty good mom but after reading this I can't help but feel that I'm a mess and need therapy and all of my children's flaws & problems are my fault. Jeez!

Here are some quotes I highlighted:

the past is constantly determining their present actions. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that it no longer exists.

not even one moment of quiet can be permitted during which the burning loneliness of her childhood experience might be felt.

whenever they suddenly get the feeling they have failed to live up to some ideal image or have not measured up to some standard. Then they are plagued by anxiety or deep feelings of guilt and shame.

There was a mother* who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from everyone else behind a hard, authoritarian, even totalitarian facade.

No one can heal by maintaining or fostering illusion.

I don’t have to look cheerful for someone else, and I don’t have to suppress my distress or anxiety to fit other people’s needs. I can be angry and no one will die or get a headache because of it. I can rage when you hurt me, without losing you.”

parents who saw him as he really was, understood him, and tolerated and respected his feelings.

Children who are intelligent, alert, attentive, sensitive, and completely attuned to the mothers well-being are entirely at her disposal.

If the repression stays unresolved, the parents’ childhood tragedy is unconsciously continued on in their children.

provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child.

He may experience his feelings—sadness, despair, or the need for help—without fear of making the mother insecure.

there are those with great gifts, often precisely the most gifted, who do suffer from severe depression.

Only a child needs (and absolutely needs) unconditional love. We must give it to the children who are entrusted to us. We must be able to love and accept them whatever they do, not only when they smile charmingly but also when they cry and scream.

It is precisely their oversensitivity, shame, and self-reproach that form a continuous thread in their lives, unless they learn to understand to what these feelings actually relate. The more unrealistic such feelings are and the less they fit present reality, the more clearly they show that they are concerned with unremembered situations from the past that are still to be discovered.

But since this attempt is not rooted in an awareness of his own true needs and feelings, he is again giving up and denying his true self in order to be accepted and loved, this time by a peer group.

He is not really himself, nor does he know or love himself: Everything he undertakes is done in hope of making somebody love him in the way he once, as a child, so urgently needed to be loved;

It is not only the “beautiful,” “good,” and pleasant feelings that make us really alive, deepen our existence, and give us crucial insight, but often precisely the unacceptable and unadapted ones from which we would prefer to escape: helplessness, shame, envy, jealousy, confusion, rage, and grief. These feelings can be experienced in therapy. When they are understood, they open the door to our inner world that is much richer than the “beautiful countenance”!

Disregard for those who are smaller and weaker is thus the best defense against a breakthrough of one’s own feelings of helplessness:

And the humiliated grown daughter, if she has no other means of ridding herself of her burden, will revenge herself upon her own children. She can do so secretly and without fear of reprisals, for the children have no way of telling anyone, except perhaps later in the form of obsessions or other symptoms, the language of which is sufficiently veiled that the mother is not betrayed.

in twenty years’ time these children will be adults who will feel compelled to pay it all back to their own children. They may consciously fight with vigor against cruelty in the world yet carry within themselves an experience of cruelty that they may unconsciously inflict on others.

It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior.

But how often were our parents, and we ourselves toward our own children, unconscious of how painfully, deeply, and abidingly they and we injured a child’s tender, budding self?

If a mother cannot take pleasure in her child as he is but must have him behave in a particular way,

he reproaches himself that it had been “his character” that had made life so difficult for his parents. Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents’ expectations.

Probably the greatest of wounds—not to have been loved just as one truly was—cannot heal without the work of mourning.

A mother cannot truly respect her child as long as she does not realize what deep shame she causes him with an ironic remark, intended only to cover her own uncertainty. Indeed, she cannot cannot be aware of how deeply humiliated, despised, and devalued her child feels,

but the function all expressions of contempt have in common is the defense against unwanted feelings.

for we have to despise everything in ourselves that is not wonderful, good, and clever. Thus we perpetuate the loneliness of childhood: We despise weakness, helplessness, uncertainty—in short, the child in ourselves and in others.

Even alert parents cannot always understand their children, but they will respect their children’s feelings even when they cannot understand them.

They convey the feeling that they are the only ones who exist, the only ones who have anything interesting or relevant to say.

It greatly aids the success of therapeutic work when we become aware of our parents’ destructive patterns at work within us.

The first part of this book was spot on. I’m not usually one for extensive therapy reads, so at some point it lost me. But it definitely changed how I think about myself and my upbringing.

took me a really long time to read it for such a short book
talks a lot about narcissistic parents but couldn’t relate too much tbh or maybe im not enlightened enough

I appreciated the general thesis of this book -- basically, the desire to please and/or live up to the placed expectations of one's parents can inhibit personal happiness, fulfillment and expression into adulthood -- but I repeatedly got stymied by Miller's extreme examples. She also often posits that a realization is the equivalent of a cure, which felt too tidy for me. I had trouble reading this book, and ultimately didn't finish it -- oh well.