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parental approval and experienced a loss of their true selves. They stopped expressing unacceptable feelings and engaging in the unacceptable behaviors, at least in front of adults. They stopped sharing the unsanctioned thoughts. The part of them that was unacceptable went underground and eventually withered from lack of attention. Or that part of them that was unacceptable was projected onto others.
    Miller believed that as the true self was disowned, the false self was elevated. If others approved, the false self felt validated and the person was temporarily happy. With the false self in charge, all validation came from outside the person. If the false self failed to gain approval, the person was devastated.
    This loss of the true self was so traumatic that her patients repressed it. They had only a vague recollection of what was lost, a sense of emptiness and betrayal. They felt vulnerable and directionless—happy when praised and devastated when ignored or criticized. They were like sailboats without centerboards. Their self-worth changed with whatever way the wind blew.
    Miller contrasted adults with false selves to authentic adults who experienced all feelings, including pain, in an honest way. Authentic adults accepted themselves rather than waiting for others to accept them. This state of psychological health she called vibrancy.
    Her weapon against mental illness was “the discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth of each individual.” She encouraged her patients to accept what happened to them as young children. Only then could they become authentic people.
    Miller wrote about this process as if it were an either-or phenomenon. But in fact this process of creating false selves in children follows a continuum that ranges from basic socialization to abuse. It is present in all families: All parents accept and reject some of their children’s behaviors and teach children to sacrifice some wholeness to social acceptability. However, even the most authoritarian parents usually don’t succeed in totally destroying the true selves of their children.
    Miller wrote in a different time and place about a different kind of family from the average family in America in the 1990s. What is timeless and important about Miller’s work is her description of the process by which the self splits. With great clarity she describes the splitting into political versus personal selves. She documents the damage that this splitting can do and describes the process by which healing can occur.
    I think that a process analogous to Miller’s occurs for girls in early adolescence. Whereas Miller sees the parents as responsible for the splitting in early childhood, I see the culture as splitting adolescent girls into true and false selves. The culture is what causes girls to abandon their true selves and take up false selves.
    Often parents are fighting hard to save their daughters’ true selves. Parents encourage their daughters to stay with their childhood interests and argue with them over issues such as early sexual activity, makeup, diets and dating. They encourage athletics and math and science classes. They dislike the media values and resist cultural definitions of their daughters as consumers or sex objects. They do not want their daughters to sell their souls for popularity. They are fighting to preserve wholeness and authenticity.
    But because of girls’ developmental stage, parents have limited influence. Cayenne, for example, would barely speak to her parents. As daughters move into the broader culture, they care what their friends, not their parents, think. They model themselves after media stars, not parental ideals.
    With puberty, girls face enormous cultural pressure to split into false selves. The pressure comes from schools, magazines, music, television, advertisements and movies. It comes from peers. Girls can be true to themselves and risk abandonment by their peers, or they can reject their true selves and be