I'm a psychology student, and I just read your '32 reasons why the Schizophrenogenic Mother is incorrect' and to be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure If you were aiming for humour, or just general off the wall wackiness. Some of your points are correct in a way, yet some of the other less 'blatant' ones are incorrect.

I want to thank everyone who has written on this guestbook! I love reading the comments---always good fuel for thought---and it's nice to get feedback too!! So appreciated! Also, this week I ended my psychotherapy practice---and began a new chapter of my life. Everything is changing for me, in a big way---all in a good direction, I hope! ---Daniel

Hi Dan (Dan Philips), Good comments---thanks. I guess I should be more clear about why I linked to NAMI's definition of schizophrenia. NAMI is a backward, Big-Pharma-money-taking organization and yes, their definition of schizophrenia is very bad---surface and neurologically-oriented. I linked to it almost tongue-in-cheek to show how mainstream psychiatry views schizophrenia---in order to contrast with my point of view. But my error is that perhaps not everyone will understand that I explicitly attack NAMI's point of view and do not agree with it. (In fact, my movie directly criticizes NAMI.) So I should probably change the way I link if I give the wrong impression. Thanks for clueing me in---because others have probably wondered the same thing and just not told me. all the best, Daniel

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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

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

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.