Mary 3/5/2010 1:00:02 PM Thank you for sharing your insights into trauma and recovery. My own feelings about abuse, denial and the incompetence of many who practice therapy are validated when I read your essays. Good luck in your future endeavors. dan Philips 3/5/2010 9:19:33 AM To add to my last message. I feel that Millers description of Neurosis being the repression of the true self and phycosis as the eruption of early trauma (and the true self) in odd and distorted clues is it any wonder that someone can feel narcissistic rage at how they were treated and be condemned as mad by a society which still denies the abuse of childhood. The enlightened witness Miller describes is what the schizophrenic needs to help them unravell the confusion they are faced with. Odd clues that the young mind has used metaphor to describe the abuse need to be understood and not condemned as delusions and fantasy. To link to a defenition of this condition that states that the condition has nothing to do with parents does rather blow a hole in what you are trying to do with your website ie campaign for more honesty in condemning parents for the abuse they visit upon children. Dan Philips 3/5/2010 9:07:55 AM I have been a fan of Alice Miller and it was very interesting to read your essay on her work and I too have found her first three books very useful. I would argue that \"The Body Never Lies\" is also very powerful and helped me come to the realisation that i was sexually abused by an Uncle and my father when I was a child and had repressed it. I am still on a journey of self discovery and am finding it difficult to find a decent therapist in the UK. The UK especially seems incapable of dealing with childhood trauma and Parents role in this. The one thing i find a little confusing about your website is your link to the defenition of Schizophrenia. My cousin who i suspected was abused by my Uncle has this \"condition\". Alice Miller describes schizophrenia as confusion. Take a young person who cannot face the fact that a Parent has sexually abused them and are facing society saying this kind of thing is not true and a family who face great shame if they admit it and one has someone who is trapped between early trauma and the role expected of them. R.D.Laing\'s book Insanity, Madness and the Family has numerous examples of young women whose fathers abused them and even Laing could not see that though read this after Thow shalt not be aware and it jumps out. I feel that the defention you link too rather undermines your wish to fully explore one\'s childhood which is actually what a Schizophrenic is trying to do without anyone aware of what society denies. just a lad in malibu 2/27/2010 9:08:37 AM most of us know deep down that our parents are bumps on our personal journey, but few ever face it or transcend it...and so they continue this silent cycle. your writings reflect my own awareness - that a child or adult is not responsible for his/her mom\'s or dad\'s happiness. in a metaphysical sense, however, the rejection of one\'s parents is a metaphor for the rejection of life in a box - and this rejection of the safety of a physical world and its ties is essential to one\'s journey...a journey to one\'s soul within, which you have also expressed in different words. for this reason, i thank my parents for being ignorant, underdeveloped humans, for they gave me the opportunity to introspect and reject them. and in my metaphorical rejection of them, i rejected the bounds of a false existence. your words are brave, in a cowardly world. Michael 2/11/2010 1:50:42 AM Daniel, Your website has been a great aid to me in my reconciling of my childhood trauma, and I\'m very grateful to have discovered Alice Miller\'s work through you. Despite similar hypocrisy in terms of personal behavior with his family, I find R.D Laing to have incredible insight into the endemic violence against children that our civilization demands: \"From the moment of birth, when the stone - age baby confronts the twentieth century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as it\'s mother and father have been, and their mother and father before them. These forces are mostly concerned with destroying most of it\'s potentialities. The enterprise is on the whole successful. By the time new human being is 15 or so, we are left with a being like ourselves. A half - crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age. Love and violence, properly speaking , are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other\'s freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other\'s own existence of destiny. We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.\" - \"The Politics of Experience\" CS 2/2/2010 7:02:45 AM Daniel, from your interview and appearance on Freedomainradio.com; you are a thoroughly likeable fellow! I\'m very impressed with your courage, self knowledge, knowledge of psychology, willingness to challenge yourself and talk about taboo topics in such an open, frank, confident and reasonable manner. I\'ve learned a lot from you in a short time and the rich amount of deeply thought provoking material you\'ve created should keep challenging me for months if not years! All the best to you in the next phase of your career. And thank you so very much for sharing so much of yourself with the audience and community of FDR. CS Marcus 1/27/2010 12:16:38 AM Reason is no aim. Its just a fulfilment. Hope you understand the ironic breeze from the other side of the schizophrenic curtain. I think most psychiatrists would not understand nor believe a word that you promote. Me, I think its merely true. I also think its not that easy to find out as a sane person... Nice work...hope you continue to astonish people with your excellent work. Fred Gracely 1/23/2010 2:06:05 PM I\'m big on analogies, and I wrote a piece that I \"think\" will help people struggling with the concept of the \"truth of their history\" understand it. It\'s posted here: http://improvinguponsilence.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/twisted-and-bent/ Love to hear thoughts about it. If you think it doesn\'t work, feel free to pull this post from your guest book. I\'d NEVER want to spread confusion instead of clarity. Thanks! Fred Amber 1/20/2010 3:01:32 AM I\'ve spent the last dozen years distancing myself from my parents geographically and emotionally but am STILL working to unravel the deep damage they\'ve done which prevents me from attaining, in your words, \"enlightenment.\" I stumbled on your YouTube channel and was inspired by your suggestions for self healing. I also appreciate the quiet, thoughtful style of your videos. Make more!!! Your channel led me to this site where I\'ve been enjoying your essays now. Thank you for articulating what many of us know to be TRUE from the evidence all around us, but are unable to put a finger on so precisely. You mentioned in some of your videos and essays that you get criticized for pointing out many fallacies of being conventional, especially when it comes to bringing more children into this world, so I just wanted to be one of those people who thanks you for it instead. What you\'re sharing here is very helpful and some of us really do appreciate it. Sebastian Ortiz 1/18/2010 11:09:10 AM Hey there! My name is Sebastian, I bumped into one of your videos which had been refered to in one of the www.freedomainradio.com boards. I thought it was very interesting. You might want to check out the website, it seems like quite a few people would like Stef to interview you. S. Loretta 1/17/2010 7:48:31 AM You seem to be both highly intelligent and insightful; yet, humbly aware of where you are at in your own stage of healing. From one psychotherapist to another, here is a great website relating to trauma that may prove useful to you or your clients. I know it has for me because the people who started this foundation also carry very little dissociation and denial around trauma. Best wishes on your path to even greater enlightenment! www.cftre.com Daniel Mackler 1/16/2010 3:08:27 AM Hi all--- thanks for the nice feedback. JB---i\'ll check out your website. feel free to email me at dmackler58 at aol dot com ....all the best, daniel JB 1/15/2010 10:32:51 PM I started the first and only Schizophrenia Peer Program in Canada. I would like to talk with you. www.thesecrethandshake.ca Jennifer 1/13/2010 2:54:21 AM How did you get so smart? Seriously, a voice of reason in the field of psychiatry. Thank you. Simon 1/11/2010 9:13:47 PM Great Site! bex 12/27/2009 10:46:15 AM Hey Daniel- have really enjoyed seeing your new essays on here- Bex Daniel Mackler 12/24/2009 4:28:04 AM THANK YOU Fred--- yes, so true---the rewards of doing this deep and painful inner work are beyond comparison: DEEP JOY! thank you for sharing this---i appreciate the feedback. i think we all need real feedback. the feedback from within our own selves is the key, but external feedback is so affirming too. i wish you a happy holiday season (assuming this is a holiday season for you)---Daniel Fred Gracely 12/24/2009 4:13:49 AM Thanks for sharing your insights and experience. I too am passionate about \"looking inside,\" and have come to a part of my path where the deep trauma of my childhood is raging to the surface. What is most surprising to me about this is the intensity of the feelings. When you write that neglect is torturous for a child, you couldn\'t be more right. The feelings I am now aware of having had and still being driven by in the present (although partially repressed until now) are beyond wildest imagination. What made it hard for me to connect with the truth of my history is the fact that there was nothing overtly \"wrong\" with my childhood, it was just deeply broken and painful in an \"average\" way. I was lonely and frustrated to a degree that would have any adult jumping off a cliff. What has also been amazing on this part of the path is that there is a counterpart to reconnecting with that suffering: feeling the bliss of the happy child. Just as the pain I felt then was deeper than an adult could typically fathom, so was the joy. Therein lies the promise of enlightenment, I believe -- clearing out the damage done to reconnect with the potential that once existed to be blissfully happy. While my heart told me this was what was going on, reading your beautiful words has brought a whole new confidence that I\'m heading in the right direction. I\'m deeply grateful for your work here. I hope that many people find your site and benefit from your words. Fred