Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alice Miller
Alice Miller

Alice Miller Quotes

Psychologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllChildrenChildhoodParentFeelingsIfsChild AbusePsychologyFactsLongMother

Famous Alice Miller Quotes

“It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.”

ChildrenFeelingsStrongGrowthEmotionalSeriousWallConsequenceStrongerPrisonPrisonerRepressedEmotional GrowthPrison Walls
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition
Create image

“I sincerely believe that we not only have the right to know what is good and what is evil; we have the duty to acquire that knowledge if we hope to assume responsibility for our own lives and those of our children. Only by knowing the truth can we be set free.”

IfsKnowsBelieveChildrenTruthEvilResponsibilityKnowingDutyOur ChildrenAssumingAcquireGood And EvilSincerelyKnowing The Truth
Book:The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self
Create image

“Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to accept certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.”

IfsKnowsWantChildrenMotherCertainFatherParentDifficultAcceptingHonestAspectOur ChildrenIndividualityPainfulLove Our Children
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
Create image

“Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.”

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

“The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring”

WayWellsMayChildrenMotherSufferingFatherGrowsParentGrowing UpStyleBeatsUnconsciousBeatenOffspringMother And FatherBatteredMistreatedParenting Styles
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
Create image

“The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child--well behaved and dutiful--of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me.”

IfsNeedsGivingWellsChildrenLittlesMotherParentResultsEffortEmpathyIdealsEssenceRaisesMy ChildrenBehaveUnnoticedGood MotherBeing A Good Mother
Author:Alice Miller
Create image

“For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable tollon society--a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and--if disseminated widely enough--should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence.”

IfsShouldYearsChildrenHas BeensStillsEnoughFactsViolenceEffectsConcernFundamentalsBlindProofInevitableForbiddenHaltEscalationChanges In Society
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
Create image

“Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.”

ChildrenHas BeensStillsStoriesRealityDesireParentResponsibilityPrinciplesTheoryCreaturesAdultsVictimBlameInnocentCrueltyWickedProtectedGrandparentBlindnessSexuallyCraftyGreat Grandparents
Book:The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
Create image

“Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.”

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

“We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.”

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

“It is unlikely that someone could proclaim "truths" that are counter to physical laws for very long (for example, that it is healthy for children to run around in bathing suits in winter and in fur coats in summer) without appearing ridiculous. But it is perfectly normal to speak of the necessity of striking and humiliating children and robbing them of their autonomy, at the same time using such high-sounding words as chastising, upbringing, and guiding onto the right path.”

ChildrenLongRunningLawSpeakPathExampleHealthyNormalSummerWinterRidiculousSuitsCoatsAutonomyUnlikelyUpbringingFurAppearingRight PathHumiliatingBathingRobbingBathing SuitsPerfectly NormalFur Coats
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
Create image

“It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful or confused, and above all, sad and lonely. It was precisely through these experiences, which I had shunned for so long, that I became certain that I now understood something about my life, stemming from the core of my being, something that I could not have learned from any book.”

MeanLongMadeBookFeelingsBeautifulCertainUnderstoodLonelyInsightCorePleasantConfusedHelplessPettyHumiliatedResentfulShabbySad And Lonely
Author:Alice Miller
Create image

“Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.”

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

“It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.”

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

“The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.”

ProcessResultsJudgingAbuseOriginalsCarefulEmotional AbuseFacetsTherapeuticDisclosureTraumatic ExperiencesArticulating
Book:Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth
Create image

“Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fan­tasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home.”

HomeWealthFansCreationEmptinessUnexpectedFearfulFrighteningVitalityHomecomingGrandiose
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Create image

“The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”

IfsFeelsChildrenPersonsArtFeelingsMotherOrderEmotionAcceptingSupportRiskMissingLosingSubstitutesMother's Love
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Create image

“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.”

PeopleNeedsChildrenFeelingsMightSufferingParentDutyPeriodsIntellectualExpectationsArgumentTasksOvercomingStrongerGuiltInsightIntensityGuilt Feelings
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Create image

“Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.”

LongRealFactsActionPastRealizingSituationChildhoodDangerLong TimeContinuingRepressedBeen Real
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Create image

“In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.”

FeelsMayChildrenLongFactsHelpingHandsPainTermResultsViolenceProduceDevelopmentDrugResearchAngerSuicideAddictionRagePunishmentCrueltyWitnessObedienceLong TermEnlightenedBullyingInabilityShort TermDrug AddictionDrug AddictCorporal Punishment
Author:Alice Miller
Create image

“Quite often I have been faced with people who were praised and admired for their talents and their achievements... According to prevailing attitudes, these people-the pride and joy of their parents-should have had a strong and stable sense of self-assurance. But the case is exactly the opposite... Whenever they suddenly get the feeling they have failed to live up to some ideal image or have not measured up to some standard, then they are plagued by anxiety or deep feelings of guilt and shame. What are the reasons for such disturbances in these competent, accomplished people?”

PeopleShouldHas BeensSelfReasonFeelingsJoyStrongParentAttitudeCasesTalentPrideAchievementAnxietyStandardsIdealsShould HaveOppositesShameGuiltAccomplishedStableAssuranceCompetentSense Of SelfPrevailingDisturbanceSelf AssuranceDeep Feeling
Author:Alice Miller
Create image

“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”

PainSufferingLanguageUnderstandingPsychologyAnxietyUnderstoodAddictionRecoveryDistressAnguishSignalsSymptomsDiscomfortPlightAddiction RecoveryAddicts In RecoveryAlcohol Recovery
Book:Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth
Create image