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Every parent should read the books written by Alice Miller. She has solved our human problem.
How is Emotional Blindness Created?
The 21 Points
The newborn child is always innocent.
Each child needs among other things: care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching, caressing, and tenderness.
These needs are seldom sufficiently fulfilled; in fact, they are often exploited by adults for their own ends (trauma of child abuse).
Child abuse has lifelong effects.
Society takes the side of the adult and blames the child for what has been done to him or her.
The victimization of the child has historically been denied and is still being denied, even today.
This denial has made it possible for society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of the child for such a long time.
The child, when betrayed by society, has no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser.
Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses, psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency.
In neuroses, the child's needs are repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are experienced.
In psychoses, the mistreatment is transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness).
In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of mistreatment is felt but the actual origins are concealed.
In delinquency, the confusion, seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and again.
The therapeutic process can be successful only if it is based on uncovering the truth about the patient's childhood instead of denying that reality.
The psychoanalytic theory of "infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and reinforces society's blindness.
Fantasies always serve to conceal or minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's survival; therefore, the so-called invented trauma is a less harmful version of the real, repressed one.
The fantasies expressed in literature, art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early childhood experiences in a symbolic way.
This symbolic testimony is tolerated in our culture thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were understood, they would be rejected.
A past crime cannot be undone by our understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled needs.
New crimes, however, can be prevented, if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to them.
Therefore, the reports of victims will be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of responsibility in society at large.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Each child needs among other things: care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching, caressing, and tenderness.
These needs are seldom sufficiently fulfilled; in fact, they are often exploited by adults for their own ends (trauma of child abuse).
Child abuse has lifelong effects.
Society takes the side of the adult and blames the child for what has been done to him or her.
The victimization of the child has historically been denied and is still being denied, even today.
This denial has made it possible for society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of the child for such a long time.
The child, when betrayed by society, has no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser.
Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses, psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency.
In neuroses, the child's needs are repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are experienced.
In psychoses, the mistreatment is transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness).
In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of mistreatment is felt but the actual origins are concealed.
In delinquency, the confusion, seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and again.
The therapeutic process can be successful only if it is based on uncovering the truth about the patient's childhood instead of denying that reality.
The psychoanalytic theory of "infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and reinforces society's blindness.
Fantasies always serve to conceal or minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's survival; therefore, the so-called invented trauma is a less harmful version of the real, repressed one.
The fantasies expressed in literature, art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early childhood experiences in a symbolic way.
This symbolic testimony is tolerated in our culture thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were understood, they would be rejected.
A past crime cannot be undone by our understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled needs.
New crimes, however, can be prevented, if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to them.
Therefore, the reports of victims will be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of responsibility in society at large.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown
The misled brain and the banned emotions
The Facts:
1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.
2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned.
3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.)
Questions and Answers:
Q: Parents beat their children without a second thought, to make them obedient. Nobody, except a very small minority, protests against this dangerous habit. Why is the logical sequence (from being a misled victim to becoming a misleading perpetrator) totally ignored world-wide? Why have even the Popes, responsible for the moral behaviour of many millions of believers, until now never informed them that beating children is a crime?
A: Because almost ALL of us were beaten, and we had to learn very early that these cruel acts were normal, harmless, and even good for us. Nobody ever told us that they were crimes against humanity. The wrong, immoral, and absurd lesson was wired into our developing brains, and this explains the emotional blindness governing our world.
Q: Can we free ourselves from the emotional blindness we developed in childhood?
A: We can - at least to some degree - liberate ourselves from this blindness by daring to feel our repressed emotions, including our fear and forbidden rage against our parents who had often scared us to death for periods of many years, which should have been the most beautiful years of our lives. We can't retrieve those years. But thanks to facing our truth we can transform ourselves from the children who still live in us full of fear and denial into responsible, well informed adults who regained their empathy, so early stolen from them. By becoming feeling persons we can no longer deny that beating children is a criminal act that should be forbidden on the whole planet.
Conclusion:
Caring for the emotional needs of our children means more than giving them a happy childhood. It means to enable the brains of the future adults to function in a healthy, rational way, free from perversion and madness. Being forced to learn in childhood that hitting children is a blessing for them is a most absurd, confusing lesson, one with the most dangerous consequences: This lesson as such, together with being cut off from the true emotions, creates the roots of violence.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.
2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned.
3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.)
Questions and Answers:
Q: Parents beat their children without a second thought, to make them obedient. Nobody, except a very small minority, protests against this dangerous habit. Why is the logical sequence (from being a misled victim to becoming a misleading perpetrator) totally ignored world-wide? Why have even the Popes, responsible for the moral behaviour of many millions of believers, until now never informed them that beating children is a crime?
A: Because almost ALL of us were beaten, and we had to learn very early that these cruel acts were normal, harmless, and even good for us. Nobody ever told us that they were crimes against humanity. The wrong, immoral, and absurd lesson was wired into our developing brains, and this explains the emotional blindness governing our world.
Q: Can we free ourselves from the emotional blindness we developed in childhood?
A: We can - at least to some degree - liberate ourselves from this blindness by daring to feel our repressed emotions, including our fear and forbidden rage against our parents who had often scared us to death for periods of many years, which should have been the most beautiful years of our lives. We can't retrieve those years. But thanks to facing our truth we can transform ourselves from the children who still live in us full of fear and denial into responsible, well informed adults who regained their empathy, so early stolen from them. By becoming feeling persons we can no longer deny that beating children is a criminal act that should be forbidden on the whole planet.
Conclusion:
Caring for the emotional needs of our children means more than giving them a happy childhood. It means to enable the brains of the future adults to function in a healthy, rational way, free from perversion and madness. Being forced to learn in childhood that hitting children is a blessing for them is a most absurd, confusing lesson, one with the most dangerous consequences: This lesson as such, together with being cut off from the true emotions, creates the roots of violence.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Alice Miller defines Child Mistreatment, Child Abuse
Humiliations, spankings and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators and cruel leaders. Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they had to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it.
This is why society's ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructivity - in all "good will", in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never cruelty and lies. Fortunately, there are many mistreated children who find "helping witnesses" and can feel loved by them.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
This is why society's ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructivity - in all "good will", in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never cruelty and lies. Fortunately, there are many mistreated children who find "helping witnesses" and can feel loved by them.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Spanking is counterproductive and dangerous
Why spankings, slaps, and even apparently harmless blows like pats on the hand are dangerous for a baby?
They teach it violence.
They destroy the absolute certainty of being loved that the baby needs.
They cause anxiety: the expectancy of the next attack.
They convey a lie: they pretend to be educational, but parents actually use them to vent their anger; when they strike, it's because, as children,
they were struck themselves.
They provoke anger and a desire for revenge, which remain repressed, only to be expressed much later.
They program the child to accept illogical arguments (I'm hurting you for your own good) that stay stored up in their body.
They destroy sensitivity and compassion for others and for oneself, and hence limit the capacity to gain insight.
What long-term lessons does the baby retain from spankings and other blows?
The baby learns:
That a child does not deserve respect.
That good can be learned through punishment (which is actually wrong, punishment merely teaches the children to want to punish in their own
turn).
That suffering mustn't be felt, it must be ignored (which is dangerous for the immune system).
That violence is a manifestation of love (fostering perversion).
That denial of feeling is healthy (but the body pays the prize of this error, often much later).
How is repressed anger very often vented?
In childhood and adolescence:
By making fun of the weak.
By hitting classmates.
By annoying the teachers.
By watching TV and playing video games to experience forbidden and stored up feelings of rage and anger, and by identifying with violent heroes. (Children who have never been beaten are less interested in cruel films, and, as adults, will not produce horror shows).
In adulthood:
By perpetuating spanking, as an apparently educational and effective means, often heartily recommended to others, whereas in actual fact, one's own suffering is being avenged on the next generation.
By refusing to understand the connections between previously experienced violence and the violence actively repeated today. The ignorance of society is thereby perpetuated.
By entering professions that demand violence.
By being gullible to politicians who designate scapegoats for the violence that has been stored up and which can finally be vented with impunity: "impure" races, ethnic "cleansing", ostracized social minorities, other religious communities etc.
Because of obedience to violence as a child, by readiness to obey any authority which recalls the authority of the parents, as the Germans obeyed Hitler, the Russians Stalin, the Serbs Milosevic.
Conversely, some become aware of the repression and universal denial of childhood pain, realizing how violence is transmitted from parents to children, and stop hitting children regardless of age. This can be done (many have succeeded) as soon as one has understood that the causes of the "educational" violence are hidden in the repressed history of the parents.
This text can be distributed without any changes, additions or cuts.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
They teach it violence.
They destroy the absolute certainty of being loved that the baby needs.
They cause anxiety: the expectancy of the next attack.
They convey a lie: they pretend to be educational, but parents actually use them to vent their anger; when they strike, it's because, as children,
they were struck themselves.
They provoke anger and a desire for revenge, which remain repressed, only to be expressed much later.
They program the child to accept illogical arguments (I'm hurting you for your own good) that stay stored up in their body.
They destroy sensitivity and compassion for others and for oneself, and hence limit the capacity to gain insight.
What long-term lessons does the baby retain from spankings and other blows?
The baby learns:
That a child does not deserve respect.
That good can be learned through punishment (which is actually wrong, punishment merely teaches the children to want to punish in their own
turn).
That suffering mustn't be felt, it must be ignored (which is dangerous for the immune system).
That violence is a manifestation of love (fostering perversion).
That denial of feeling is healthy (but the body pays the prize of this error, often much later).
How is repressed anger very often vented?
In childhood and adolescence:
By making fun of the weak.
By hitting classmates.
By annoying the teachers.
By watching TV and playing video games to experience forbidden and stored up feelings of rage and anger, and by identifying with violent heroes. (Children who have never been beaten are less interested in cruel films, and, as adults, will not produce horror shows).
In adulthood:
By perpetuating spanking, as an apparently educational and effective means, often heartily recommended to others, whereas in actual fact, one's own suffering is being avenged on the next generation.
By refusing to understand the connections between previously experienced violence and the violence actively repeated today. The ignorance of society is thereby perpetuated.
By entering professions that demand violence.
By being gullible to politicians who designate scapegoats for the violence that has been stored up and which can finally be vented with impunity: "impure" races, ethnic "cleansing", ostracized social minorities, other religious communities etc.
Because of obedience to violence as a child, by readiness to obey any authority which recalls the authority of the parents, as the Germans obeyed Hitler, the Russians Stalin, the Serbs Milosevic.
Conversely, some become aware of the repression and universal denial of childhood pain, realizing how violence is transmitted from parents to children, and stop hitting children regardless of age. This can be done (many have succeeded) as soon as one has understood that the causes of the "educational" violence are hidden in the repressed history of the parents.
This text can be distributed without any changes, additions or cuts.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Every Smack is a Humiliation
A Manifesto
Many researchers have already proven that corporal punishment on children may indeed produce obedience in the short term but will have serious negative consequences on their later character and behavior. Only if there was at least one single person who loved and understood the child, the disastrous development toward later crimes could be prevented. During their whole childhood dictators like Hitler, Stalin or Mao never came across such a helping witness. They learned very early to glorify cruelty and hypocrisy and to justify them while committing crimes on millions of people. Millions of others, also exposed to physical maltreatment in childhood, helped them to do so, without the slightest remorse.
Children should not be the scapegoats for the adults' painful experiences. The claim that mild punishments (slaps or smacks) have no detrimental effects is still widespread because we got this message very early from our parents, who had taken it over from their own parents. This conviction helped the child to minimize his suffering and to endure it. Unfortunately, the main damage it causes is precisely the numbness as well as the lack of sensitivity to our children's pain. The result of the broad dissemination of this damage is that each successive generation is subjected to the tragic effects of seemingly harmless physical "correction". Many parents still think: What didn't hurt me, can't hurt my child. They don't realize that their conclusion is wrong because they never challenged their assumption.
When in Sweden legislation laws prohibiting corporal punishment were launched in 1978, 70 % of the citizens, when asked for their opinion, were against it. In 1997, the figure had dropped to 10 %. These statistics show that the mentality of the Swedish population has radically changed in the course of a mere 20 years. A destructive tradition of millennia has been done away, thanks to this legislation.
It is imperative to launch legislation prohibiting corporal punishment all over the world. It does not set out to incriminate anyone but it is designed to have a protective and informative function for parents. Sanctions could simply take the form of the obligation for parents to internalize information on the consequences of corporal punishment available today. Information on the "well-meant smack" should therefore be distributed to all, since unconscious education to violence takes its roots very early and inflicts disastrous imprints. The vital interests of society as a whole are at stake.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Children should not be the scapegoats for the adults' painful experiences. The claim that mild punishments (slaps or smacks) have no detrimental effects is still widespread because we got this message very early from our parents, who had taken it over from their own parents. This conviction helped the child to minimize his suffering and to endure it. Unfortunately, the main damage it causes is precisely the numbness as well as the lack of sensitivity to our children's pain. The result of the broad dissemination of this damage is that each successive generation is subjected to the tragic effects of seemingly harmless physical "correction". Many parents still think: What didn't hurt me, can't hurt my child. They don't realize that their conclusion is wrong because they never challenged their assumption.
When in Sweden legislation laws prohibiting corporal punishment were launched in 1978, 70 % of the citizens, when asked for their opinion, were against it. In 1997, the figure had dropped to 10 %. These statistics show that the mentality of the Swedish population has radically changed in the course of a mere 20 years. A destructive tradition of millennia has been done away, thanks to this legislation.
It is imperative to launch legislation prohibiting corporal punishment all over the world. It does not set out to incriminate anyone but it is designed to have a protective and informative function for parents. Sanctions could simply take the form of the obligation for parents to internalize information on the consequences of corporal punishment available today. Information on the "well-meant smack" should therefore be distributed to all, since unconscious education to violence takes its roots very early and inflicts disastrous imprints. The vital interests of society as a whole are at stake.
www.alice-miller.com
© 2010 Alice Miller
Ask yourself why?
Amazon - Alice Miller MUST READS!
What is Hatred?
Friday April 01, 2005
We tend to associate the word hatred with the notion of a dangerous curse we need to free ourselves of as quickly as we can. An opinion also frequently voiced is that hatred poisons our very being and makes it all but impossible to heal the injuries stemming from our childhood. I take a very different view of this matter, and this has led to frequent misunderstandings. Accordingly, my attempts to cast light on the phenomenon of hatred and to subject the concept to more searching scrutiny have not yet been very successful.
I too believe that hatred can poison the organism, but only as long as it is unconscious and directed vicariously at substitute figures or scapegoats. When that happens, hatred cannot be resolved. Suppose, for example, that I hate a specific ethnic group but have never allowed myself to realize how my parents treated me when I was a child, how they left me crying for hours in my cot when I was a baby, how they never gave me so much as a loving glance. If that is the case, then I will suffer from a latent form of hatred that can pursue me throughout my whole life and cause all kinds of physical symptoms. But if I know what my parents did to me in their ignorance and have a conscious awareness of my indignation at their behavior, then I have no need to re-direct my hatred at other persons. In the course of time, my hatred for my parents may weaken, or it may resolve itself temporarily, only to flare up again as a result of events in the present or new memories. But I know what this hatred is all about. Thanks to the feelings I have actively experienced, I now know myself well enough, AND I HAVE NO COMPULSION TO KILL OR HARM ANYONE BECAUSE OF MY FEELINGS OF HATRED.
We frequently meet people who are grateful to their parents for the beatings they received when they were little, or who assert that they have long since forgotten the sexual molestation they suffered at their hands. They say that in prayer they have forgiven their parents for their "sins." But at the same time, they feel a compulsion to resort to physical violence in the upbringing of their children and/or to interfere with them sexually. Every pedophile openly displays his "love" of children and has no idea that deep down he is avenging himself for the things done to him as a child. Though he is not consciously aware of this hatred, he is still subject to its dictates.
Such LATENT hatred is indeed dangerous and difficult to resolve because it is not directed at the person who has caused it but at substitute figures. Cemented in different kinds of perversion, it can sustain itself for life and represents a serious threat, not only to the environment of the person harboring it, but also to that person him/herself.
CONSCIOUS, REACTIVE hatred is different. Like any other feeling, this can recede and fade away once we have lived it through. If our parents have treated us badly, possibly even sadistically, and we are able to face up to the fact, then of course we will experience feelings of hatred. As I have said, such feelings may weaken or fade away altogether in the course of time, though this never happens from one day to the next. The full extent of the mistreatment inflicted upon a child cannot be dealt with all at once. Coming to terms with it is an extended process in which aspects of the mistreatment are allowed into our consciousness one after the other, thus rekindling the feeling of hatred. But in such cases, hatred is not dangerous. It is a logical consequence of what happened to us, a consequence only fully perceived by the adult, whereas the child was forced to tolerate it in silence for years.
Alongside reactive hatred of the parents and latent hatred deflected onto scapegoats, there is also the justified hatred for a person tormenting us in the present, either physically or mentally, a person we are at the mercy of and either cannot free ourselves of, or at least believe that we cannot. As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome. It is hardly conceivable that a person being tortured will not feel hatred for the torturer. If we deny ourselves this feeling, we will suffer from physical symptoms. The biographies of Christian martyrs are full of descriptions of the dreadful ailments they suffered from, and a significant portion of them are skin diseases. This is how the body defends itself against self-betrayal. These "saints" were enjoined to forgive their tormentors, to "turn the other cheek," but their inflamed skin was a clear indication of the extreme anger and resentment they were suppressing.
Once such victims have managed to free themselves from the power of their tormentors, they will not have to live with this hatred day in, day out. Of course, the memories of their impotence and the horrors they went through may well up again on occasion. But it is probable that the intensity of their hatred will be tempered as time goes on. (I have discussed this aspect in more detail in my recent book "Our Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting", Norton, New York).
Hatred is only a feeling, albeit a very strong and assertive one. Like any other feeling, it is a sign of our vitality. So if we try to suppress it, there will be a price to pay. Hatred tries to tell us something about the injuries we have been subjected to, and also about ourselves, our values, our specific sensitivity. We must learn to pay heed to it and understand the message it conveys. If we can do that, we no longer need to fear hatred. If we hate hypocrisy, insincerity, and mendacity, then we grant ourselves the right to fight them wherever we can, or to withdraw from people who only trust in lies. But if we pretend that we are impervious to these things, then we are betraying ourselves.
The almost universal, but in fact highly destructive, injunction to forgive our "trespassers" encourages such self-betrayal. Religion and traditional morality constantly prize forgiveness as a virtue, and in numerous forms of therapy it is erroneously recommended as a path to "healing." But it is easy to demonstrate that neither prayer nor auto-suggestive exercises in "positive thinking" are able to counteract the body's justified and vital responses to humiliations and other injuries to our integrity inflicted on us in early childhood. The martyrs' crippling ailments are a clear indication of the price they had to pay for the denial of their feelings. So would it not be simpler to ask whom this hatred is directed at, and to recognize why it is in fact justified? Then we have a chance of living responsibly with our feelings, without denying them and paying for this "virtue" with illnesses.
I would be suspicious if a therapist promised me that after treatment (and possibly thanks to forgiveness) I would be free of undesirable feelings like rage, anger, or hatred. What kind of person would I be if I could not react, temporarily at least, to injustice, presumption, evil, or arrogant idiocy with feelings of anger or rage? Would that not be an amputation of my emotional life? If therapy really has helped me, then I should have access to ALL my feelings for the rest of my life, as well as conscious access to my own history as an explanation for the intensity of my responses. This would quickly temper that intensity without having serious physical consequences of the kind caused by the suppression of emotions that have remained unconscious.
In therapy, I can learn to understand my feelings rather than condemn them, to regard them as friends and protectors instead of fearing them as something alien that needs to be fought against. Though our parents, teachers, or priests may have taught us to practice such self-amputation, we must ultimately realize that it is in fact very dangerous. There can be no doubt that we are then the victims of severe mutilation.
There are still countries where physical correction is part and parcel of the acknowledged approach to "upbringing." But no teacher will beat the children entrusted to his care unless he himself was beaten as a child and forced to learn to suppress his anger. He will take it out on the children in the class without knowing why he does so. I believe that awareness of this fact could save many children from exposure to such brutality. And if statesmen had a genuine awareness of their own personal histories, this would spare whole nations the effects of their ignorance and cruelty.
It is not our feelings that make us a danger to ourselves and our environment, it is the dissociation of those feelings caused by our fear of them. It is here that we must seek the reasons for amok killers, for suicide bombers, and for the countless court judges who close their eyes to the real causes of crime, so as to spare the parents of the delinquents and to keep their own histories in the dark.
I too believe that hatred can poison the organism, but only as long as it is unconscious and directed vicariously at substitute figures or scapegoats. When that happens, hatred cannot be resolved. Suppose, for example, that I hate a specific ethnic group but have never allowed myself to realize how my parents treated me when I was a child, how they left me crying for hours in my cot when I was a baby, how they never gave me so much as a loving glance. If that is the case, then I will suffer from a latent form of hatred that can pursue me throughout my whole life and cause all kinds of physical symptoms. But if I know what my parents did to me in their ignorance and have a conscious awareness of my indignation at their behavior, then I have no need to re-direct my hatred at other persons. In the course of time, my hatred for my parents may weaken, or it may resolve itself temporarily, only to flare up again as a result of events in the present or new memories. But I know what this hatred is all about. Thanks to the feelings I have actively experienced, I now know myself well enough, AND I HAVE NO COMPULSION TO KILL OR HARM ANYONE BECAUSE OF MY FEELINGS OF HATRED.
We frequently meet people who are grateful to their parents for the beatings they received when they were little, or who assert that they have long since forgotten the sexual molestation they suffered at their hands. They say that in prayer they have forgiven their parents for their "sins." But at the same time, they feel a compulsion to resort to physical violence in the upbringing of their children and/or to interfere with them sexually. Every pedophile openly displays his "love" of children and has no idea that deep down he is avenging himself for the things done to him as a child. Though he is not consciously aware of this hatred, he is still subject to its dictates.
Such LATENT hatred is indeed dangerous and difficult to resolve because it is not directed at the person who has caused it but at substitute figures. Cemented in different kinds of perversion, it can sustain itself for life and represents a serious threat, not only to the environment of the person harboring it, but also to that person him/herself.
CONSCIOUS, REACTIVE hatred is different. Like any other feeling, this can recede and fade away once we have lived it through. If our parents have treated us badly, possibly even sadistically, and we are able to face up to the fact, then of course we will experience feelings of hatred. As I have said, such feelings may weaken or fade away altogether in the course of time, though this never happens from one day to the next. The full extent of the mistreatment inflicted upon a child cannot be dealt with all at once. Coming to terms with it is an extended process in which aspects of the mistreatment are allowed into our consciousness one after the other, thus rekindling the feeling of hatred. But in such cases, hatred is not dangerous. It is a logical consequence of what happened to us, a consequence only fully perceived by the adult, whereas the child was forced to tolerate it in silence for years.
Alongside reactive hatred of the parents and latent hatred deflected onto scapegoats, there is also the justified hatred for a person tormenting us in the present, either physically or mentally, a person we are at the mercy of and either cannot free ourselves of, or at least believe that we cannot. As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome. It is hardly conceivable that a person being tortured will not feel hatred for the torturer. If we deny ourselves this feeling, we will suffer from physical symptoms. The biographies of Christian martyrs are full of descriptions of the dreadful ailments they suffered from, and a significant portion of them are skin diseases. This is how the body defends itself against self-betrayal. These "saints" were enjoined to forgive their tormentors, to "turn the other cheek," but their inflamed skin was a clear indication of the extreme anger and resentment they were suppressing.
Once such victims have managed to free themselves from the power of their tormentors, they will not have to live with this hatred day in, day out. Of course, the memories of their impotence and the horrors they went through may well up again on occasion. But it is probable that the intensity of their hatred will be tempered as time goes on. (I have discussed this aspect in more detail in my recent book "Our Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting", Norton, New York).
Hatred is only a feeling, albeit a very strong and assertive one. Like any other feeling, it is a sign of our vitality. So if we try to suppress it, there will be a price to pay. Hatred tries to tell us something about the injuries we have been subjected to, and also about ourselves, our values, our specific sensitivity. We must learn to pay heed to it and understand the message it conveys. If we can do that, we no longer need to fear hatred. If we hate hypocrisy, insincerity, and mendacity, then we grant ourselves the right to fight them wherever we can, or to withdraw from people who only trust in lies. But if we pretend that we are impervious to these things, then we are betraying ourselves.
The almost universal, but in fact highly destructive, injunction to forgive our "trespassers" encourages such self-betrayal. Religion and traditional morality constantly prize forgiveness as a virtue, and in numerous forms of therapy it is erroneously recommended as a path to "healing." But it is easy to demonstrate that neither prayer nor auto-suggestive exercises in "positive thinking" are able to counteract the body's justified and vital responses to humiliations and other injuries to our integrity inflicted on us in early childhood. The martyrs' crippling ailments are a clear indication of the price they had to pay for the denial of their feelings. So would it not be simpler to ask whom this hatred is directed at, and to recognize why it is in fact justified? Then we have a chance of living responsibly with our feelings, without denying them and paying for this "virtue" with illnesses.
I would be suspicious if a therapist promised me that after treatment (and possibly thanks to forgiveness) I would be free of undesirable feelings like rage, anger, or hatred. What kind of person would I be if I could not react, temporarily at least, to injustice, presumption, evil, or arrogant idiocy with feelings of anger or rage? Would that not be an amputation of my emotional life? If therapy really has helped me, then I should have access to ALL my feelings for the rest of my life, as well as conscious access to my own history as an explanation for the intensity of my responses. This would quickly temper that intensity without having serious physical consequences of the kind caused by the suppression of emotions that have remained unconscious.
In therapy, I can learn to understand my feelings rather than condemn them, to regard them as friends and protectors instead of fearing them as something alien that needs to be fought against. Though our parents, teachers, or priests may have taught us to practice such self-amputation, we must ultimately realize that it is in fact very dangerous. There can be no doubt that we are then the victims of severe mutilation.
There are still countries where physical correction is part and parcel of the acknowledged approach to "upbringing." But no teacher will beat the children entrusted to his care unless he himself was beaten as a child and forced to learn to suppress his anger. He will take it out on the children in the class without knowing why he does so. I believe that awareness of this fact could save many children from exposure to such brutality. And if statesmen had a genuine awareness of their own personal histories, this would spare whole nations the effects of their ignorance and cruelty.
It is not our feelings that make us a danger to ourselves and our environment, it is the dissociation of those feelings caused by our fear of them. It is here that we must seek the reasons for amok killers, for suicide bombers, and for the countless court judges who close their eyes to the real causes of crime, so as to spare the parents of the delinquents and to keep their own histories in the dark.
FAQ: How to find the right therapist
I know how difficult it is to find the right therapist but I still believe that it is possible if you know what you need. So I try to answer here some questions that may encourage you to check the attitude of the candidate for your therapist; but please take this text as a draft and don't hesitate to make comments or additions. (I decided to speak of the therapist as a "she," but of course both genders are meant.)
What do I need to overcome my plight?
You need an empathic, honest person who would help you to take seriously the knowledge of your body, a person who already succeeded to do the same for herself because she had the chance to have found this kind of help that you are looking for.
How can I know if a therapist is this kind of person?
By asking many questions.
This idea scares me. Why don't I dare to ask questions?
As a child you were probably punished for asking questions because they might have shaken your parents' position of power. Your questions were often ignored or you were given lies instead of true answers. This was very painful. Now, you are afraid that this might happen again. It CAN happen that you will not be understood or that your questions trigger the fears and defenses of a therapist but you are no longer the helpless child without any options. You can leave and look for another therapist. The child could not leave, so he tried to change his parents, some people do it (symbolically) their whole life. But as an adult you have options. You can, with the support of the forum, recognize the lies, the poisonous pedagogy and the defenses. You must only take seriously what you hear, not deny your uneasiness, and not hope that you will be able to change this person (the parent) later. You will not. She will need therapy herself, and this shouldn't be your job as long as YOU pay the honorary.
I feel guilty because of my mistrust. If I can't trust I will never find what is good for me.
Your mistrust has a history and your need for SPECIAL understanding too. Your caregiver didn't deserve your trust and the child felt this very strongly because his body knew the truth. It couldn't develop trust. Now, trust your body signals, it is the silenced child who is speaking, who starts to talk and needs your truthfulness. If you don't feel good with a person, take your feelings seriously, don't push them away, try to understand these feelings. Once you feel truly and deeply understood by someone, your body will let you know this immediately and very clearly, it will be relaxed without any special exercises.
What do I risk by asking questions from the beginning?
Nothing. You can only win. If the answer is hostile or very incomplete or defensive, you can gain much money and time by leaving. On the other hand, if the answer you got is satisfying, you will feel encouraged to ask more. And this is what you should do.
Which kind of questions am I allowed to ask?
Whatever you need to know. But above all don't forget to ask the candidate for your therapist about her childhood and her experiences during her training. Where did she get her training, what was helpful to her, what was not? How does she feel about the defeats, does she have the freedom to see what was wrong or does she protect people who damaged her? Does she minimize the damage? Was she beaten as a child? How does she value this experience? Is she really aware of its consequences for her later life, or is she denying its importance? Does she avoid the confrontation with her own pain? In the last case she will do everything to silence you, not always visibly.
Is it a good sign if she tells me that she has read Alice Miller's "Drama?"
It doesn't say anything. Ask you how she FELT about "For Your Own Good" and the other books, also ask about her criticisms. What helped her personally, what didn't? What is in her opinion the main healing factor? Is she capable of deep feelings or does she prefer an intellectual analysis to keep distance? This you may even find with primal therapists who makes you feel the helpless child for years and years so that they can "help" you, but without being themselves able to feel on a deeper level. Then you may end up in a dependence on them and on your feelings of a helpless, unchangeable rage against your parents without being able to free yourself for what YOU really need. A good therapist must help you to find and fulfill YOUR OWN needs, neglected for such a long time, needs for free expression, for being understood, respected and taken seriously. When you begin to look for fulfillment and to protect the child, the rage and hatred will leave you, they will fade. They are alarm signals of your repetition of parental neglect and contempt; they do not have the therapeutic quality we are so often told they have.
Am I not intrusive when I ask so many questions?
Not at all. You have the right to be sufficiently informed and she must have the courage, the awareness and the honesty to answer you in a proper way. Otherwise she is not the right person for you.
With this position, am I then looking for an ideal that doesn't exist?
I don't think so. You see on the forum ourchildhood.int that honesty, awareness, compassion, courage, and openness DO EXIST. Why should these qualities not be expected from your therapist?
What do I need to overcome my plight?
You need an empathic, honest person who would help you to take seriously the knowledge of your body, a person who already succeeded to do the same for herself because she had the chance to have found this kind of help that you are looking for.
How can I know if a therapist is this kind of person?
By asking many questions.
This idea scares me. Why don't I dare to ask questions?
As a child you were probably punished for asking questions because they might have shaken your parents' position of power. Your questions were often ignored or you were given lies instead of true answers. This was very painful. Now, you are afraid that this might happen again. It CAN happen that you will not be understood or that your questions trigger the fears and defenses of a therapist but you are no longer the helpless child without any options. You can leave and look for another therapist. The child could not leave, so he tried to change his parents, some people do it (symbolically) their whole life. But as an adult you have options. You can, with the support of the forum, recognize the lies, the poisonous pedagogy and the defenses. You must only take seriously what you hear, not deny your uneasiness, and not hope that you will be able to change this person (the parent) later. You will not. She will need therapy herself, and this shouldn't be your job as long as YOU pay the honorary.
I feel guilty because of my mistrust. If I can't trust I will never find what is good for me.
Your mistrust has a history and your need for SPECIAL understanding too. Your caregiver didn't deserve your trust and the child felt this very strongly because his body knew the truth. It couldn't develop trust. Now, trust your body signals, it is the silenced child who is speaking, who starts to talk and needs your truthfulness. If you don't feel good with a person, take your feelings seriously, don't push them away, try to understand these feelings. Once you feel truly and deeply understood by someone, your body will let you know this immediately and very clearly, it will be relaxed without any special exercises.
What do I risk by asking questions from the beginning?
Nothing. You can only win. If the answer is hostile or very incomplete or defensive, you can gain much money and time by leaving. On the other hand, if the answer you got is satisfying, you will feel encouraged to ask more. And this is what you should do.
Which kind of questions am I allowed to ask?
Whatever you need to know. But above all don't forget to ask the candidate for your therapist about her childhood and her experiences during her training. Where did she get her training, what was helpful to her, what was not? How does she feel about the defeats, does she have the freedom to see what was wrong or does she protect people who damaged her? Does she minimize the damage? Was she beaten as a child? How does she value this experience? Is she really aware of its consequences for her later life, or is she denying its importance? Does she avoid the confrontation with her own pain? In the last case she will do everything to silence you, not always visibly.
Is it a good sign if she tells me that she has read Alice Miller's "Drama?"
It doesn't say anything. Ask you how she FELT about "For Your Own Good" and the other books, also ask about her criticisms. What helped her personally, what didn't? What is in her opinion the main healing factor? Is she capable of deep feelings or does she prefer an intellectual analysis to keep distance? This you may even find with primal therapists who makes you feel the helpless child for years and years so that they can "help" you, but without being themselves able to feel on a deeper level. Then you may end up in a dependence on them and on your feelings of a helpless, unchangeable rage against your parents without being able to free yourself for what YOU really need. A good therapist must help you to find and fulfill YOUR OWN needs, neglected for such a long time, needs for free expression, for being understood, respected and taken seriously. When you begin to look for fulfillment and to protect the child, the rage and hatred will leave you, they will fade. They are alarm signals of your repetition of parental neglect and contempt; they do not have the therapeutic quality we are so often told they have.
Am I not intrusive when I ask so many questions?
Not at all. You have the right to be sufficiently informed and she must have the courage, the awareness and the honesty to answer you in a proper way. Otherwise she is not the right person for you.
With this position, am I then looking for an ideal that doesn't exist?
I don't think so. You see on the forum ourchildhood.int that honesty, awareness, compassion, courage, and openness DO EXIST. Why should these qualities not be expected from your therapist?
by PPIClaim
Profile of Alice Miller
Towards the reality of childhood
Alice Miller received her PhD at the University of Basle and worked as a psychotherapist in...
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