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Alice Miller

Alice Miller Quotes

Psychologist

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Famous Alice Miller Quotes

“It is not the trauma itself that is the source of illness but the unconscious, repressed, hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness. This causes many people to commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self.”

PsychologyLonelinessExpressionDespairSuicideTraumaTherapyTrueHelplessnessAuthentic Self
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“The more one-sided a society's observance of strict moral principles such as orderliness, cleanliness, and hostility toward instinctual drives, and the more deep-seated its fear of the other side of human nature vitality, spontaneity, sensuality, critical judgment, and inner independence the more strenuous will be its efforts to isolate this hidden territory, to surround it with silence or institutionalize it. Prostitution, the pornography trade, and the almost obligatory obscenity typical of traditionally all-male groups such as the military are part of the legalized, even requisite reverse side of this cleanliness and order. Splitting of the human being into two parts, one that is good, meek, conforming, and obedient and the other that is the diametrical opposite is perhaps as old as the human race, and one could simply say that it is part of "human nature." Yet it has been my experience that when people have had the opportunity to seek and live out their true self in analysis, this split disappears of itself. They perceive both sides, the conforming as well as the so-called obscene, as two extremes of the false self, which they now no longer need. (...) This case and similar ones make me wonder if it will not one day be possible to let children grow up in such a way that they can later have more respect for all sides of their nature and not be forced to suppress the forbidden sides to the point where they must be lived out in violent and obscene ways. Obscenity and cruelty are not a true liberation from compulsive behavior but are its by-products. Free sexuality is never obscene, nor does violence ever result if a person is able to deal openly with his or her aggressive impulses, to acknowledge feelings such as anger and rage as responses to real frustration, hurt, and humiliation. How can it have come about that the split I have just described is attributed to human nature as a matter of course even though there is evidence that it can be overcome without any great effort of will and without legislating morality? The only explanation I can find is that these two sides are perpetuated in the way children are raised and treated at a very early age, and the accompanying split between them is therefore regarded as "human nature." The "good" false self is the result of what is called socialization, of adapting to society's norms, consciously and intentionally passed on by the parents; the "bad", equally false self is rooted in the child's earliest observations of parental behavior, visible only to the child's devoted, unsuspecting eyes and stored up in his or her unconscious, this behavior is what comes to be regarded, generation after generation, as "human nature".”

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Author:Alice Miller
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“The individual psychological stages in the lives of most people are: 1. To be hurt as a small child without anyone recognizing the situation as such 2. To fail to react to the resulting suffering with anger 3. To show gratitude for what are supposed to be good intentions 4. To forget everything 5. To discharge the stored-up anger onto others in adulthood or to direct it against oneself”

SufferingAngerChild AbuseAdulthoodForgetting
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“When we consider the major role intimidation plays in this ideology, which was still at the peak of its popularity at the turn of the century, it is not surprising that Sigmund Freud had to conceal his surprising discovery of adults' sexual abuse of their children, a discovery he was led to by the testimony of his patients. He disguised his insight with the aid of a theory that nullified this inadmissible knowledge. Children of his day were not allowed, under the severest of threats, to be aware of what adults were doing to them. and if Freud had persisted in his seduction theory, he not only would have had his introjected parents to fear but would no doubt have been discredited, and probably ostracized, by middle-class society. In order to protect himself, he had to devise a theory that would preserve appearances by attributing all “evil”, guilt and wrongdoing to the child's fantasies. in which the parents served only as the objects of projection. We can understand why this theory omitted the fact that it is the parents who not only project their sexual and aggressive fantasies onto the child but also are able to act out these fantasies because they wield the power. It is probably thanks to this omission that many professionals in the psychiatric field, themselves the products of "poisonous pedagogy" have been able to accept the Freudian theory of drives, because it did not force them to question their idealized image of their parents. With the aid of Freud's drive and structural theories, they have been able to continue obeying the commandment they internalized in early childhood: "Thou shalt not be aware of what your parents are doing to you.”

ParentsMiddle ClassChild AbusePsychoanalysisSigmund Freud
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“It is also a part of "poisonous pedagogy" to impart to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation and dutifully accepted by the young even though they are not only unproven but are demonstrably false. Examples of such beliefs are: 1. A feeling of duty produces love. 2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it. 3. Parents deserve respect simply because they are parents. 4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children. 5. Obedience makes a child strong. 6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful. 7. A low degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic. 8. Tenderness (doting) is harmful. 9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong. 10. Severity and coldness are a good preparation for life. 11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude. 12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are. 13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended. 14. The body is something dirty and disgusting. 15. Strong feelings are harmful. 16. Parents are creatures free of drives and guilt. 17. Parents are always right.”

TraumaParentsChild Abuse
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“[The mutually dependent child] cannot rely on his own emotions, has not come to experience them through trial and error, has no sense of his own real needs, and is alienated from himself to the highest degree. Under these circumstances he cannot separate from his parents, and even as an adult he is still dependent on affirmation from his partner, from groups, and especially from his own children ... Unless the heir casts off his 'inheritance' by becoming fully conscious of his true past, and thus of his true nature, loneliness in the parental home will necessarily be followed by an adulthood lived in emotional isolation.”

ChildhoodParents
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“The patient does not make light of manifestations of herself anymore, does not so often laugh or jeer at them, even if she still unconsciously passes them over or ignores them, even in the subtle way her parents dealt with the child before she had words to express her needs.”

HealingDark HumorHealing ProcessSelf DeprecationSelf Deprecating HumorLaughing At YourselfHealing From Child AbuseJeering At YourselfMaking Fun Of Yourself
Book:Drama of Being a Child Book Club
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“This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering… Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?”

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Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground. Daudet, who was to die from an illness of the spinal cord, wrote following this story: This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering… Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?”

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Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“As adults, we will hate only if we remain trapped in a situation in which we cannot give free expression to our feelings. It is this dependency that makes us start to hate. As soon as we break that dependency (which as adults we can normally do, unless we are prisoners of some totalitarian regime), as soon as we free ourselves from that slavery, then we will no longer hate.”

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Book:The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
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“Narcissistic cathexis of the child by the mother does not exclude emotional devotion. On the contrary, she loves the child as her self-object, excessively, though not in the manner that he needs, and always on the condition that he presents his "false self." This is no obstacle to the development of intellectual abilities, but it is one to the unfolding of an authentic emotional life.”

PsychologyNarcissismNarcissistic Abuse
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“Adolescents can divert this hatred from their parents if they are given a clear-cut enemy whom they are permitted to hate freely and with impunity. This may be why so many young painters and writers volunteered for the front in World War I. The hope of freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by their family enabled them to take pleasure in marching to the music of a military band. One of heroin’s roles is to replace this function, with the difference that in the case of drugs the destructive rage is directed against one’s own body and self.”

WarChildhoodDestructionSelf DestructionPedagogy
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“Adolescents can divert this hatred from their parents if they are given a clear-cut enemy whom they are permitted to hate freely and with impunity. This may be why so many young painters and writers volunteered for the front in World War I. The hope of freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by their family enabled them to take pleasure in marching to the music of a military band.”

WarChildhoodDestructionPedagogy
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can--depending on the decree of government or party--be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.”

ChildhoodDutyMoralityChild Abuse
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“In the following pages I shall apply the term "poisonous pedagogy" to this very complex endeavor. It will be clear from the context in question which of its many facets I am emphasizing at the moment. The specific facets can be derived directly from the preceding quotations from child-rearing manuals. These passages teach us that: 1. Adults are the masters (not the servants!) of the dependent child. 2. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong. 3. The child is held responsible for their anger. 4. The parents must always be shielded. 5. The child's life affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic adult. 6. The child's will must be "broken" as soon as possible. 7. All this must happen at a very early age, so the child "won't notice" and will therefore not be able to expose the adults. The methods that can be used to suppress vital spontaneity in the child are: laying traps, lying, duplicity, subterfuge, manipulation, "scare" tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation, distrust, humiliating and disgracing the child, scorn, ridicule, and coercion even to the point of torture.”

TraumaChild AbusePedagogyChild Rearing
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“Sense such humiliation, combined with prohibiting a child's verbal expression, is a constant and universally encountered factor in child-rearing, the influence of this factor in the child's later development is easily overlooked.”

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Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.”

AbuseChild Sexual AbuseHealing InsightsRepressed MemoriesAbuse RecoveryTrauma MemoryRepressed Memory
Book:Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
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“But as the correspondence progresses, it becomes obvious that now, unlike earlier with his mother, he can perceive and articulate his needs more and more clearly, that although he is in constant danger of subordinating his need to be a writer and to be alone to bourgeois ideals of familial happiness, he never succumbs to this danger. In the end, he knows he can never give up his writing without giving up himself, and he accepts the consequences. Since it is not possible for him to go on writing in the world from which he comes without suffering from guilt feelings, he pays for his decision by becoming ill. 5. Kafka's insight into the origins of his tuberculosis can help us in our attempts to understand psychosomatic illnesses and their societal context. Don't we as therapists make it difficult for patients to live their own lives if we have preconceived ideas about what constitutes happiness, psychic health, social commitment, altruism and goodness in a person? According to these conventional standards, still very prevalent today, Franz Kafka was a neurotic or an eccentric, whom a psychotherapist would be tempted to "socialize" in order to enable him to marry Felice. One of my goals in this chapter is to make clear how absurd such an attempt would be. A visionary of rare greatness and dept came into being, and it is obvious that his attempts to adhere to bourgeois norms were bound to fail. Whether humankind cares to pay heed or not, the prophetic power of "In the Penal Colony" endures (...) because he took his own experiences seriously and thought them through to their bitter end. Advocates of manipulative strategies in psychotherapy could counter my views by saying that not everyone has the talent of a Franz Kafka and that most people seek help because they would like to get along better with others, because they suffer from their symptoms, want to improve their relationships, cannot being themselves to marry, and the like. I would reply that these were precisely the complains Kafka had. It would be disastrous, however, not to perceive the longing to find one's true self inherent in these complains.”

Socialization
Author:Alice Miller
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“We admire people who oppose the regime in totalitarian country and think they have courage or a "strong moral sense" or have remained "true to their principles" and the like. We may also smile at their naïveté, thinking, "Don't they realise that their words are of no use at all against this oppressive power? That they will hath to pay dearly for their protest?”

TotalitarianismSense Of SelfTrue To OneselfResistance Movement
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“Theoretically, I can imagine that someday we will regard or children not add creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.”

PunishmentChildhood AbuseSpankingAbusive ParentsCorporal PunishmentManipulatingChild MaltreatmentManipulativenessChild AbuserManipulative MotherCold Physical AbuserManipulating And Distorting
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“If the path to experiencing one's feelings is blocked either the prohibitions of "poisonous pedagogy" or by the needs of the parents, then these feelings will have to be lived out. This can occur either in a destructive form, as in Hitler's case, or in a self-destructive one, as in Christiane F.'s. Or, as in the case of most criminals who end up in prison, this living out can lead to the destruction both of the self and of others.”

HatredCriminalsDestructiveSelf Destructive BehaviorSelf Destructive QuotesRepressed Feelings
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“What becomes of all those people who are the successful products of a strict upbringing? It is inconceivable that they were able to express and develop their true feelings as children, for anger and helpless rage, which they were forbidden to display, would have been among these feelings - particularly if these children were beaten, humiliated, lied to, and deceived. What becomes of this forbidden and therefore unexpressed anger? Unfortunately, it does not disappear, but is transformed with time into a more or less conscious hatred directed against either the self or substitute persons, a hatred that will seek to discharge itself in various ways permissible and suitable for an adult.”

For Your Own Good
Author:Alice Miller
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“Obedience, coercion, severity, and lack of feeling are no longer recognized as absolute values. But the road to the realization of the new ideals is frequently blocked by the need to repress the sufferings of one's childhood, and this leads to a lack of empathy. It is precisely little Katies and Konrads who as adults close their ears to the subject of child abuse (or else minimize its harmfulness), because they themselves claim to have had a "happy childhood". Yet their very lack of empathy reveals the opposite: they had to keep a stiff upper lip at a very early age. Those who actually had the privilege of growing up in an emphatic environment (which is extremely rare, for until recently it was not generally known how much a child can suffer), or who later create an inner emphatic object, are more likely to be open to the suffering of others, or at least will not deny its existence. This is a necessary precondition if old wounds are to heal instead of merely being covered up with the help of the next generation.”

For Your Own Good
Author:Alice Miller
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“A mother cannot truly respect her child as long as she does not realize what deep shame she causes him with an ironic remark, intended only to cover her own uncertainty. Indeed, she cannot be aware of how deeply humiliated, despised, and devalued her child feels, if she herself has never consciously suffered these feelings, and if she tries to fend them off with irony.”

MotherParentingEmotional AbusePsychoanalysisChildhood TraumaMother Wound
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“Time after time, the amazing fact is uncovered that sons and daughters are unconsciously re-enacting their parents fate— all the more intensely the less precise their knowledge of it.”

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Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.”

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Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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