Adolescent-Injuries Books

Male or female, both genders will find a helpful reading on this book. It's not only about parental image, it's also about basic emotions.

M. Esther Marding MD was a Jungian analyst who worked with Carl Jung himself, and went on to become the first of woman to practice Jungian psychology in America. The Parental Image: Its Injury And Reconstruction is an astutely presented analytical psychology study of the profound effects parental images have upon the life and psyche of the individual. Exploring complex topics such as the development of consciousness, healing injured parental images, the parental image as source and container of life, and more, The Parental Image is a thoughtfully reasoned and classical contribution to studies in Jungian psychology which has been deftly edited for contemporary readers by Daryl Sharp.

There is no better book on the market on the subject of self-injury.

This work provides a well-rounded culmination of explanation, conceptualization, supportive research, and applicable tips for the frontline responder.

D'Onofrio helps us to understand the inner world of the traumatized child, who can later become the self-injuring adolescent. He articulately puts the reader in touch with the pain and complexity of sufferers and the people who surround them. Readers are provided with an opportunity to endure a mere taste of the numbness or "deadness" that often drives self-injurers to inflict pain on themselves.

The later chapters discuss how to best help self-injuring individuals through a firm stance of empathy and clear boundaries combined with useful suggestions and steps to follow so as to best support the needs of the adolescent. D'Onofrio eloquently conveys his profound expertise and understanding to all -- clinicians, parents, as well as novice learners.

A brilliantly readable book that is neither pop-psychology nor esoteric medical literature, but rather the clear-eyed insights of an experienced practitioner with sound and articulate advice to providers, teachers and parents. Shoudl be required reading for anyone dealing with adolescents who are cutting or engaging in non-suicidal self-harm.

A really great useful book written in a way that's easy to read and understand.Many helpful suggestions.A must have book for parents of kids with TBI.Wonderful book

Dr Hollander lifts the veil on a difficult issue. With compassion, he takes parents on a journey inside this thoughtful therapy. A clear and enjoyable writing style help render a sensitive subject approachable and manageable. Through the use of well chosen examples, Dr. Hollander effectively outlines the problems facing teens who cut and their parents. With that foundation of understanding, he follows with a practical guide for parents to support their teen, their family, and themselves as they navigate therapy. Beyond the primary goal of helping teens who cut, Dr. Hollander's book outlines ideas and skills that are helpful to any parent tackling the ever-changing challenges of raising a child, or any human struggling to cope with difficulties inherent in life.

A very useful book and one of the few that does an excellent job of integrating theory with application. As such, it is useful for the practitioner as well as parents of children with brain injury (though it is written at a college level). Ylvisaker and Szekeres' chapter "Frameworks for Cognitive Rehabilitation" is excellent. Likewise, Marshall's chapter provides a good description of the recovery continuum and all the chapters on intervention offer more practical advice that ranges from low tech to high tech solutions.

a fascinating and remarkably candid memoir written by another brilliant and compassionate woman: That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist by Susan Rako, M.D. The title comes from a song by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rako was herself notably a "gifted child," -- actually a child prodigy on the piano who performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 14, and who became a psychiatrist to heal herself and others on the journey founded on courage to stand to one's own truth. Rako's memoir is wonderfully well-written and a great read. The writing just flows.

I read this book for the first time when it was first published and it had a great impact on me and on understanding how I had grown. It was painful but at the same time healing. I continue reading it and it continues having those characteristics. Thanks

Great read for adults who were parentified as children by their own parents, and helping you to cope with and MOVE PAST the legacy and wounds your parents accidentally left you with. They learned it from their parents, and it's important to break the cycle if you don't want to pass it to your children too. You will, unless you work very hard to heal the wounds. It's inevitable.

Alice Miller explains how a lot of us have been affected from childhood. The book flows well and is a page turner when you see that a lot of the situations relate to you in some way. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to improve themselves!

Reading books about psychology, especially books dealing with childhood trauma, is a bit like looking into a shattered mirror. Some parts will accurately reflect aspects of one's own psyche; other parts will be too distorted to have any relevance. As far as mirrors go, I think Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child" provides for excellent viewing.

The core of the book is about narcissism, or more precisely, the way that children are negatively affected by the emotional unavailability and/or abuse of their parents. These emotional wounds can create severe dysfunctions and personality disorders later in life - disorders over which the victim has absolutely no control, unless they begin the long and painful road towards breaking out of their "Inner Prison" (as Miller puts it).

Early editions of this book used a lot more psychological jargon, and the revised edition makes things quite clear and concise for the layman, without losing the essential concepts: the role and critical responsibility of the primary object (usually mother); the suppression/repression of feelings in favour of a need to please; the cycles of grandiosity and depression; contempt and its role in perversion and obsession; compulsion to repeat behaviours; the societal role in propagating psychologically diseased values through generations; the severe shortcomings of tradition psychotherapeutic methods (although this was first published in 1979), and the key to healing - consciously experiencing hidden emotional pain.

The case studies and quotes from patients are relevant and add an extra dimension to the theory. I found that some of the examples struck a stronger emotional chord than Miller's own observations, which is important if one is reading a book to gain insight rather than for simple curiosity.

Although a short book at approximately 126 pages, there is very little "fluff" or filling in it. Miller gets straight to the point and has little patience for "parental apologia", which is an approach I think needs to be taken. It seems from other reviews though that some parents bought the book thinking it would affirm their own notions of their child's "giftedness", and were a little "miffed" to find out that wasn't the case. In my opinion, parents like these are the exact reason professionals like Miller need to focus the lens directly on their behaviour.

While it is somewhat of a cliché these days to blame one's parents for one's neuroses, that isn't really the point; responsibility for healing rests with the victim, not the perpetrator. This is something Miller makes clear, although the point is better made in other books, notably Martha Stout's "The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness".

That the book is now still in print and in its 3rd revision is a testament to its long-term appeal. Despite having read it twice now, I still find revisits to be enlightening and worthwhile. I am very glad to have it on my bookshelf and consider it money well spent.

Readers with a deep interest in the subject may also find "The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment", "Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism", "Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves & Others" and the previously mentioned "Myth of Sanity" to be excellent sources of additional information.

Overall, an immensely valuable work and I thank Ms. Miller for her long-term efforts in sharing such important knowledge with the wider public.

I have read a few of Alice Miller's books and think to truly appreciate her work, that you shouldn't judge by only reading one. I am a fan from the first book of hers I read, but learned to really respect her work the more I read. This is a good read just like her others.

Alice Miller, I am a fan. Infor helped me let go of some stuff

I came across this book at a local bookstore last weekend just out of curiosity, and the thing that caught my attention was the title itself: "Banished Knowledge." I began to wonder: what kind of knowledge that this author was addressing. Then, I looked through it and it was about a knowledge lost to oneself due to trauma in childhood. And, this book was also about facing one's abused childhood in order to be freed from repressed emotions. This book is a second book by Alice Miller that I have read, with the first being Drama of the Gifted Child. I was a bit skeptical when reading "Banished Knowledge," but there is some good information that lies within.

I do agree with Miller when she said: "repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms" (p. 161). There are many of us to blocked out memories from childhood that leads to dissociative states, and we tend to act out or act in a way seems unnatural to ourselves and to others. And, because we repressed our emotions, either from our childhood or present time, we would become sick in some aspects. Our emotions do indeed affect our physical bodies.

"Banished Knowledge" is short, with 180 pages, and has nine chapters with an appendix. It is fairly easy to read, but it can be little tough to understand. But, there are nuggets of truth in this book that may or may not help one to face fears stem from one's childhood. I do recommend this book for those who are searching for self-identity. Judge for yourself on how this book affects you, and if you feel anger, then you found one of the repressed emotions leading back to your childhood.

This book will not hold all of the information that will save you from pain/trauma, but it at least will have some truth for you as part of your self-discovery.

While I applaud her commitment to exposing Child Abuse and am intrigued by her style of writing, I am horrified that she is so extremist in her views. Alice is obviously well-read and well-educated but some of her assumptions completely miss the mark. She basically made me feel that I am a child abuser. I have never raised a hand to my child. But that does not seem good enough to her. And do not even get me started on her section on Autism! She opens up a can of worms there and never closes it, instead choosing to put her opinion out there and then never defend or back up her claims.
I do think there is some valuable information in this book but no one should take this too seriously. It reads like a work of fiction. The subject matter is heavy and heart-breaking but because of her all-or-nothing approach I found myself tuning out early in the book. Please read it, but get it from the library.

No writer has had more of an impact on me than Alice Miller, but the more I grow, the more I realize her limits.

This book's strength is that Alice Miller understands and beautifully labels the devastating causes and effects of extreme child abuse. Its weakness is that she doesn't realize that these extreme cases are just the tip of the iceberg. And it's a big iceberg.

Although part of Alice Miller is most certainly enlightened, which explains why so much of her writing rings true, part of her remains clouded by denial. In Banished Knowledge her denial hinges on her false belief that she is fully enlightened. In the 1990 edition she repeatedly and confidently states that she has resolved all her own repressed traumas through the therapy method of J. Konrad Stettbacher.

Although this is patently untrue, it is convenient for her to believe because it protects her from her own buried pain. This allows her to radically underestimate the significance of the abuse she herself suffered in her own childhood - and she herself perpetrated on her own two children in her adulthood. After all, parents in any degree of denial cannot help but act out their repressed traumas onto their children, which by nature is abusive to the spirit of the child. This is the repetition compulsion which she herself so aptly elucidates in her other works. This is how I know Alice Miller abused her own children. I learned it by applying the best of her theory to herself.

Although she hints obliquely at her own abusiveness as a mother, her denial prevents her from looking it squarely in the eye...let alone studying her own shadow with the penetrating ferocity that made her famous. Thus, by extension she is unable to study the shadows of those like her, that is, the overwhelming majority of parents. She lets them off the hook the same way she lets herself off the hook.

This is why she tacitly grants non-enlightened parents her consent to procreate - despite it being an inherent recipe for abuse. And she certainly never says "don't have children!" She unconsciously recognizes that it would be hypocritical of her to condemn others for doing what she herself did - and is still unable to acknowledge having done.

No wonder Alice Miller has so many parents as followers. She is a safe leader - and certainly better than most. Although she does provide some enlightened guidance - which is why I was drawn to her in the first place and drank up her books for so long - at the same time she allows them to rest comfortably assured that she will never challenge their basic pathological motive for procreating.

Interestingly, a few years after writing Banished Knowledge, Alice Miller came to her senses and took the evolutionary step of publicly repudiating her idol Stettbacher as manipulative and destructive. In time she also came to acknowledge her own lack of full enlightenment.

Nevertheless, she still managed to find a way to protect her idealization of herself as a parent, and again, by extension, to give damaged people her tacit consent to procreate. She accomplished this by stating (in the last paragraph of the afterward of the 1997 edition of "Drama of the Gifted Child") that full inner healing is impossible and the desire to accomplish this is "hubris." Thus, if full healing is impossible, then some degree of repression and inner pathology is inevitable in everyone - and so, therefore is child abuse. And therefore she has no right to criticize it.

Wrong! The search to know oneself fully is not hubris! Terrifying, yes. Gutsy, yes. Overwhelming, at times, yes. And maybe even impossible for Alice Miller, given her advanced age, severe childhood history, and persistent rigidity.

But hubris for everyone: no! The real hubris is that Alice Miller so readily universalizes her own limited experience to all of humanity.

Here is the truth: Healing is possible. Full enlightenment is possible. And so is an end to all child abuse. Even mild child abuse.

And I guarantee that if Alice Miller were healthier she would be the first to agree.

This book is very thorough in that it covers all of the recent research in the field of pediatric exercise science.The book covers all related areas in the field,and is a good reference.

I'm not sure why I even finished this book. For starters, the glaring grammatical errors left me wondering if the author had completed even a high school level English class, and I'm shocked it was even published without additional editing. The author seems to have particular difficulty conjugating the verb "to see." For example, "Cassidy seen [sic] that the cover of the letter read: 'To Anna, from J." Where this an isolated incident, I would attribute it to an overlooked typo. However, the author consistently uses the past participle instead of the preterite form of this verb. While I found this error the most frustrating, the book was also littered with misplaced commas and awkward phrasing that made it difficult and somewhat painful to read.

The story, at least, was interesting, although at times it became too bizarre to believe. However, I found certain aspects of Cassidy's development infuriating. In particular, I found her move from self-injurious to antisocial behaviors quite troubling. For the vast majority of self-injurers, torturing animals does NOT provide the same relief as self-injury does. In fact, I've never heard even a single piece of anecdotal evidence, let alone actual research to support this view of self-injury. This portrayal only serves to perpetuate the unjustified fear of self-injurers as being prone to inflict violence on others. As a former self-injurer myself, I found this aspect of the story appalling.

Then there's the "information" at the end of the book. I noticed the author sited no references for this section. I think she should have done some research before trying to write on these subjects. I'm not sure where she got her information about the "average self-harmer," but her claims about the socioeconomic background and intellectual ability of self-harmers don't seem to be supported by any scientific research I could find. And her claim that "it's usually associated with Dissociative Disorders" is simply ridiculous. Some of the most common factors that are thought to contribute to self-injury are depression and low self-esteem. While self-injury is more common among people with dissociative disorders than in the general population, the majority of self-injurers don't have a dissociative disorder.

The section on dissociative disorders was almost unreadable. I didn't notice any factual errors in this section, but I was also unable to find a single complete sentence.

I'm not sure why the section titled "Words to Know" was even there. None of the terms listed had anything to do with the book, and none of the definitions were at all informative. I'm also not entirely clear on why "sociopath" was described as "offensive" but "psychopath" was not.

Even the list of resources for self-injurers was ridiculous. There are a lot of excellent books about self-injury. The DSM is not one of them. I don't see how books intended to aid medical professionals in diagnosing psychiatric disorders will be of much help to people struggling with self-injury.

I had a hard time reading this book. It is very dark, like a car accident where I didn't want to look but had to keep looking anyway.

Cassidy is a teenager who has a lot of issues. She doesn't fit in with the rest of the crowd in high school. Her mother left when she was ten and she is being abused by her dad. Her only friends are the ants that she keeps in an ant farm in her room.

Cassidy has trust issues and cuts herself to make herself feel real. As the story proceeds, she has become friends with a quirky girl named Anna and a handsome young man named Jonathan. Both Jonathan and Anna want to help Cassidy, but Cassidy can't accept their help or friendship. Soon she slips into a more disturbing way of dealing with her problems.

This is a good book for readers who want to understand more about psychopaths. I liked the sections in the back of the book which define disorders and vocabulary. If that wasn't there the book wouldn't have the impact that it does. I recommend this book, but not for the squeamish.

Reviewed by: Marta Morrison

This book was much different than the writer's previous titles. Instead of a fun atmosphere with a little dramatic spice, this story is filled with mystery, intrigue, and childhood morality. It has been a little over a year after reading "Threes a Crowd" and this story was a 180 from what the reader would expect, however, that is a good thing!

The Story -

The story was a rollercoaster of excitement and dramatic experiences for the characters. The author expertly intertwines fiction and real life experiences that are relatable to youth and old alike.

The Characters -

The characters come to life. This is a commonality between the author's books and is strong, if not stronger, than her previous works. Each of the characters faces their own personal dilemmas and is artfully rendered realistically.

The Plot -

I wont ruin the plot for you, but I guarantee that it is packed full of twists, turns, and surprises that you don't want to miss.

Enjoyment -

It's not a very long book so it won't take you more than two weeks to read over it, but you'll be like everyone else I have spoke to and want more of it. Just like you've been wanting more Threes a Crowd, your going to want another sequel to this book. So many questions are unanswered, so many mysteries still remain...your going to be craving for another book!

Final Judgment -

Give it a try! It's for mostly aimed towards teens, however, adults would like this book a lot. I think the book not only has entertainment value, but also has a wealth of resources for friends, family, or victims to self abuse and domestic abuse.