A tormented, abused child can never take revenge in reality, as she is powerless and defenceless, but she can – and must – harbour vengeful fantasies in her imagination. But something goes wrong, depending on the circumstances into which we are born, and the house in which we grow up. As Winnicott put it: ‘A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.’ As babies, we are innocent sponges, blank slates – with only the most basic needs present: to eat, shit, love and be loved. It also won the prize for my worst read of 2020 so. Stephen Fry described it as absolutely brilliant, and it took home the Goodreads Choice Award last year for best mystery/thriller.
This doesn’t mean that all abused children go on to become abusers but it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser. Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient is the must-read thriller of 2019, an instant New York Times and Sunday Times 1 bestseller. The writer, Alex Michaelides has impressed his followers with his exceptional skills in producing an engaging storyline and giving life to the strong characters of his novel.
A simple analogy might be helpful: a leading psychiatrist in the field of sexual abuse once told me she had, in thirty years of extensive work with paedophiles, never met one who hadn’t himself been abused as a child. The Silent Patient is a type of mystery thriller, which is tempting and highly addictive for the level of suspense and thrill it has. “Sometimes it’s hard to grasp why it is that the answers to the present lie in the past.
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