Today I publish an account by a friend of her journey from an abusive childhood to healing and a normal life. Janet suffered from serious troubles with social relations, mood, and dissociation and was a patient in the psychiatric system for several years, until she found recovery with help from the works of Alice Miller, Konrad Stettbacher and Jean Jenson.
I recommend Janets account to anybody touched by issues with childhood abuse and psychological suffering. I feel that by focusing on just telling what happened to her, she very well captures the everyday drama that happens to children all over the world.
A brief background on these therapy koncepts: Alice Miller published her first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child. in 1979. In the eighties she wrote several books that were increasingly critical towards the Freudian tradition in psychotherapy. She became quite famous and her books sold in tens of thousands in many languages all over the world. She became sort of a spokesperson for suffering children and childhood. People started writing to her to request how they could find therapy in accordance with her books. She didn’t know of any such therapy, so she choose to recommend the books of Stettbacher and Jenson as basis for self-therapy. She has later taken back these endorsements, as is discussed in Janets text.
Today Janet suffers from a serious cancer. This is extremely sad. You are very welcome to comment on her story, or send her your greetings below in the comment field.
Link to pdf: I want to live by Janet.
Update 19 september 2011: new version of the story published.
Update 23 March 2014: New totally reworked version published (this version was also published in print in Dutch)