"For your own good!" What child hasn't heard it, what parent hasn't said it. But how innocent is this phrase? Why is it reasonable to expect a child to accept without complaint and even perceive as a benefit the physical or mental violence they endure from their parents, when we would never demand something so irrational from an adult? And what happens later, when that "good child" who has suppressed their forbidden feelings (anger, hatred, rage) for years becomes an adult? In this book, Alice Miller exposes the pedagogical methods of recent centuries and then delves into the childhood of the drug addict Christiane F., the dictator Adolf Hitler, the child murderer Jürgen Bartsch, as well as certain artists (Sylvia Plath, Paul Klee, Peter Handke, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, etc.), revealing to us what exactly lies beneath the benevolent guise of the term "education" and simultaneously demonstrating how what is instilled in a child during the early years of life impacts the entire society. Addressing not only parents but primarily the child that every adult hides within, she shows us that the key to breaking the vicious cycle of "education" is right before our eyes. All it takes is the will to take it into our hands.