Without hanging Freud in effigy or throwing the baby of his genius out with the bathwater of his philosophical and ethical judgement errors, Miller established her perspective and cry for new psychological techniques based in compassionate listening to others lives and childhoods (instead of forcing others lives into a preexisting paradigm) magnificently.
The effect of her work begins with her establishment of Freud's drive theory--Oedipal complex, et. al.--as merely an artistic, pseudo-scientific extension of the very Judeo-Christian, Victorian Age system of morality that allowed for secret atrocities to be routinely committed on innocent children in the first place. Its existential inadequacy in charting the anatomy of the soul (which is what the word "psyche" means) comes up in virtually every psychoanalysed person and derivative doctrine and explains much if not most of the profound failures of the entire discipline in Western society this past century (and, definitively, people's lack of faith in it). It's as if Freud, like Shakespeare or Bach, created a new language with many of the materials of the popular one being used; only unlike Shakespeare or Bach then chose, because of the martyrdom that sticking to his real discoveries demanded of him, to basically backpeddle and translate all of the same antequated ideas he should have replaced into it. Camille Paglia of SEXUAL PERSONAE was the first person I ever heard say that people who try to judge Freud on scientific terms miss the point that he wasn't trying to make science; he was making art. Alice Miller proves she was right, only the art he created hurt people as much as it helped, as his theories of the innate sexual drives of children are based on--but has little to no basis in--the hidden, unspoken reality of the lives of children: powerless against the love, power and abuse of sexually conflicted adults.
Alice Miller redefines common sense with her perspective, by replacing your view of history and present day reality. To read her books is to begin to be free, know your inner grief, release it, and be reconnected with your vitality, creativity and joy. In charting Western society's betrayal of the human child, the grief one feels upon its discovery through her is unavoidable. But the secret life and hidden potential one discovers of the human child, through being once again reacquainted with the truth of their (our) infinite posiibilites for growth and transformation--if only left to do so--is astounding. True, if you have ever found yourself brought nearly to tears over stories of child abuse, seeing how prevalent it is and what its actual impact on the world is via reading this will be hard for you to take. But if you ever wondered what really separates the Bill Gateses and Michael Jordans, etc. from the rest of us, because a little voice keeps telling you its something other than exceptional talents, this book, in taking the mystery out of what creates happiness and inner peace, could change your life.