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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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Famous Alice Miller Quotes

“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

“The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.”

Needs Children Persons Actors Given Activity Primaries

Book:Prisoners of Childhood

Source: Prisoners of Childhood

“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 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

“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

“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.”

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

“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.”

People Needs Feels Children Use Able Parent Hurt Pleasure Childhood Honesty Youth Integrity Protect Ethics Intelligent Including Treated Sensitive Protected Adulthood Moral Ethics

Author:Alice Miller

“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

“All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection”

Needs Children Self Feelings Grows Born Protection Self Protection

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