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Alice Miller Quotes

Psychologist

Alice Miller, born on January 12, 1923, and died on April 12, 2010, was a renowned psychologist. Her research focused on child psychology and the psychology of abuse, delving deeply into the psychological impact of child abuse and neglect.

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All Children Childhood Parent Feelings Ifs Child Abuse Psychology Facts Long Mother Persons Suffering Needs People Has Beens Therapy Feels For Your Own Good Our Children Self

Famous Alice Miller Quotes

“Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.”

Ideas Real Facts Belief Our Lives Deny Traditional Obscure Clinging

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

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“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.”

Needs Children Facts Pain Mother Suffering Wish Felt Parent Imagine Childhood Emotional Filled Illness Frustration Wounded Forbidden Best Mother

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

People Needs Feels Should Believe Persons Doe Facts Strong Difficult Simple Childhood Victim Obvious Humiliate

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

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

“The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.”

Children Reason Character Facts Parent Reason Why Temperament Mistreated Mistreat

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

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

“Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.”

Facts Feelings Body Sticks Genuine Deceiving

Author:Alice Miller

“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.”

Long Real Facts Action Past Realizing Situation Childhood Danger Long Time Continuing Repressed Been Real

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

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“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.”

“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.”

Children Long Stills Facts Order Parent Emotion Beats Abuse Regard Treated Defined Tragic Our Society Child Abuse Child Rearing Rearing A Child

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

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“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.”