Home / Authors / Alice Miller

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.

Filter quotes by topic

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

“I've spoken of the patient Peter who was obsessively forced to make conquests with women, to seduce and then to abandon them, until he was at last able to experience how he himself had repeatedly been abandoned by his mother.”

Mother Women Abandonment Seduce

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

“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?”

Love Mother Suffering Sacrifice

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

“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.”

Mother Parenting Emotional Abuse Psychoanalysis Childhood Trauma Mother Wound

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 child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks and months of life he needs to have the mother at his disposal, must be able to use her and to be mirrored by her.”

Needs Firsts Children Use Able Mother Taken Week Months Understood Narcissistic

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood

“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.”

Ifs Knows Want Children Mother Certain Father Parent Difficult Accepting Honest Aspect Our Children Individuality Painful Love Our Children

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

“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

“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”

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

“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.”

Ifs Needs Giving Wells Children Littles Mother Parent Results Effort Empathy Ideals Essence Raises My Children Behave Unnoticed Good Mother Being A Good Mother

Author:Alice Miller

“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.”

Ifs Feels Children Persons Art Feelings Mother Order Emotion Accepting Support Risk Missing Losing Substitutes Mother's Love

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

“If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.”

Ifs Needs Firsts Children Mother Teach Respecting Others

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood