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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

“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

“We produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.”

People Way Childhood Produce Destructive

Author:Alice Miller

“There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.”

People Past Therapy

Author:Alice Miller

“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

“We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.”

People Ifs Knows World Children Might Grows Parent Growing Up Learning Humiliation Unschooling

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

“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?”

“Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.”

People Knows Heart Matter Courses Democracy College Broken Dare Graduation Broken Promises

Author:Alice Miller

“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

“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.”

People Giving Feels Mean Children Persons Feelings Problem Seems Fighting Strong Parent Ought Demand Intellectual Weakness Solve Will Power

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

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