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Alice Miller

Alice Miller Quotes

Psychologist

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Famous Alice Miller Quotes

“People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be-both in their youth and in adulthood-intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience.”

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Author:Alice Miller
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“Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.”

WayChildrenPersonsFoundDangerIgnoranceInvolvedSolutionsAbuseDamageChild AbusePerpetratorsUncovering
Book:Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
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“People who, as children, were intellectually far beyond their parents and therefore admired by them, but who also therefore had to solve their own problems alone. These people, who give us a feeling of their intellectual strength and will power, also seem to demand that we, too, ought to fight off any feeling of weakness with intellectual means. In their presence one feels one cannot be recognized as a person with problems just as they and their problems were unrecognized by their parents, for whom he always had to be strong.”

PeopleGivingFeelsMeanChildrenPersonsFeelingsProblemSeemsFightingStrongParentOughtDemandIntellectualWeaknessSolveWill Power
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition
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“Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.”

ChildrenLongStillsFactsOrderParentEmotionBeatsAbuseRegardTreatedDefinedTragicOur SocietyChild AbuseChild RearingRearing A Child
Book:The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.”

ChildrenStillsWholeFeelingsBodySpiritAcceptingChildhoodOur ChildrenBillsExcuseIntellectCompromiseConfusedSomedayConceptionDeceivedMedicationNo Compromise
Author:Alice Miller
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“Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.”

LoveChildrenCarePsychologyEnvironmentGrewRespectIdealsExperienceCaringToleranceIntoleranceHumaneRaising ChildrenCaring For OthersLove And RespectChildren Learning
Book:Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child
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“It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.”

HumansEndsMatterFormSufferingHumanityEvilExistenceMillionsChildhoodIgnoranceOne DayOceanProductionsRepressionAwakenedHuman ExistencePerversionDestructiveness
Book:Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
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“The abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression, and threats. When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.”

ChildrenStoriesMovingLanguageDarknessHeardGoes OnAdultsThreatAddictionOppressionTortureSurvivedSymptomsResortsRepressionHeedPsychosisCriminalityAbused Children
Author:Alice Miller
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“The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.”

TryingMayWishConsciousnessImpossibleChildhoodEndurePainfulMonstrousIntegratingRepressedScandalous
Book:Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth
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“Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.”

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Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply.”

IfsGivingChildrenPersonsAbleFeltAbilityQualityCreativityChildhoodSelf EsteemGiving UpAchievementIllusionEsteemMourningShakesVitalityMournVery DeepGood QualityHappy Childhood
Author:Alice Miller
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“He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.”

GivingLooksSelfFactsFacesGivenDecisionQualitySituationDegreesSolutionsEvidenceBlindDrivenAbsenceAbsurdHypocrisyPersonal LifeFlexibleRespecting OthersGrandeurStatesmenAssertionGive And Take
Author:Alice Miller
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“Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality.”

IfsMindMaySelfPhilosophyHelpingBodyLastsLanguagePsychologyExpressionDrugDemandMessagesMedicineSensesDeceptionRebellionRebelCigaretteTrue SelfLast WordsVitalitySelf DeceptionSoma
Author:Alice Miller
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