Alice Miller (psychologist)

Alice Miller (born Alicija Englard; 12 January 1923 – 14 April 2010) was a Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher of Jewish origin, who is noted for her books on parental child abuse, translated into several languages.

Quotes

Prisoners of Childhood / The Drama of the Gifted Child (1981)

Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child was originally published in Germany as Das Drama des begabten Kindes (1979). Unless otherwise specified, all quotes are from the third edition of Ruth Ward's English translation. The first edition of Ward's translation was first published by Basic Books in 1981, under the title Prisoners of Childhood. Some editions were published under the fuller title Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child. Miller revised and updated the text in the 1990s; Ward's translation of this revision (the third edition) was first published in 1997.

• The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child's eyes follow her everywhere. A child cannot run away from her as her own mother once did.
  • From "The Lost World of Feelings" in chapter 1: "The Drama of the Gifted Child and How We Became Psychotherapists"
• Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the "as-if personality." This person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self. He cannot develop and differentiate his true self, because he is unable to live it. Understandably, this person will complain of a sense of emptiness, futility, or homelessness, for the emptiness is real. A process of emptying, impoverishment, and crippling of his potential actually took place. The integrity of the child was injured when all that was alive and spontaneous in him was cut off.
  • From "The Lost World of Feelings" in chapter 1: "The Drama of the Gifted Child and How We Became Psychotherapists"
• The true self cannot communicate because it has remained unconscious, and therefore undeveloped, in its inner prison. The company of prison warders does not encourage lively development. It is only after it is liberated that the self begins to be articulate, to grow, and to develop its creativity. Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fantasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home.
  • "In Search of the True Self" in chapter 1: "The Drama of the Gifted Child and How We Became Psychotherapists"
• Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
  • From "Depression as Denial of the Self" in chapter 2: "Depression and Grandiosity: Two Related Forms of Denial"
• Everyone probably knows about depressive moods from personal experience since they may be expressed as well as hidden by psychosomatic suffering. It is easy to notice, if we pay attention, that they hit almost with regularity—whenever we suppress an impulse or an unwanted emotion.
  • From "The Inner Prison" in part 2: "Depression and Grandiosity: Two Related Forms of Denial"
• If a person is able … to experience the reality that he was never loved as a child for what he was but was instead needed and exploited for his achievements, success, and good qualities—and that he sacrificed his childhood for this form of love—he will be very deeply shaken, but one day he will feel the desire to end these efforts. He will discover in himself a need to live according to his true self and no longer be forced to earn “love” that always leaves him empty-handed, since it is given to his false self—something he has begun to identify and relinquish.
  • From "The Inner Prison" in part 2: "Depression and Grandiosity: Two Related Forms of Denial"
• The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human experience, including envy, jealousy, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief. But this freedom cannot be achieved if its childhood roots are cut off.
  • From "The Inner Prison" in part 2: "Depression and Grandiosity: Two Related Forms of Denial"
• When our children can consciously experience their early helplessness and rage, they will no longer need to ward off these feelings, in turn, with the exercise of power over others.
  • From "Humiliation for the Child, Disrespect for the Weak, and Where It Goes from There" in chapter 3: The Vicious Circle of Contempt

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (1991)

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence was first published in Germany under the title Abbruch der Schweigemauer (1990). It was translated from German by Simon Worrall.

• Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.

• Hard as it is to believe, in the entire world there is not a single faculty in which a degree is offered in the study of psychic injuries in childhood.

• Psychoanalysis does not distort the truth by accident. It does so by necessity. It is an effective system for the suppression of the truth about childhood, a truth feared by our entire society. Not surprisingly, it enjoys great esteem among intellectuals... Fear of the truth about child abuse is a leitmotif of nearly all forms of therapy known to me.

• The danger does not lie with individuals, however criminal they may be. Far more, it lies in the ignorance of our entire society, which confirms these people in the lies that they were obliged to believe in childhood. Teachers, attorneys, doctors, social workers, priests, and other respected representatives of society protect parents from the mistreated child's every accusation and see to it that the truth about child abuse remains concealed. Even the child protection agencies insist that this crime, and this crime alone, should go unpunished.

• It is the resentment of the past, we are told, that is making us ill. In those by now familiar groups in which addicts and their relations go into therapy together, the following belief is invariably expressed. Only when you have forgiven your parents for everything they did to you can you get well. Even if both your parents were alcoholic, even if they mistreated, confused, exploited, beat, and totally overloaded you, you must forgive.

• The majority of therapists work under the influence of destructive interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child. Thereby, they create a new vicious circle for people who, from their earliest years, have been caught in the vicious circle of pedagogy. For forgiveness does not resolve latent hatred and self-hatred but rather covers them up in a very dangerous way.

• In my own therapy it was my experience that it was precisely the opposite of forgiveness —namely, rebellion against mistreatment suffered, the recognition and condemnation of my parents' destructive opinions and actions, and the articulation of my own needs— that ultimately freed me from the past.

• By refusing to forgive, I give up all illusions. Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to? I mean, my parents refuse to understand and to know what they did to me. So why should I go on trying to understand and forgive my parents and whatever happened in their childhood, with things like psychoanalysis and transactional analysis? What's the use? Whom does it help? It doesn't help my parents to see the truth. But it does prevent me from experiencing my feelings, the feelings that would give me access to the truth. But under the bell-jar of forgiveness, feelings cannot and may not blossom freely.

• I cannot conceive of a society in which children are not mistreated, but respected and lovingly cared for, that would develop an ideology of forgiveness for incomprehensible cruelties. This ideology is indivisible with the command "Thou shalt not be aware" [of the cruelty your parents inflicted to you] and with the repetition of that cruelty on the next generation.

• The possibility of change depends on whether there is a sufficient number of enlightened witnesses to create a safety net for the growing consciousness of those who have been mistreated as children, so that they do not fall into the darkness of forgetfulness, from which they will later emerge as criminals or the mentally ill.

• But who is there to help when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history? Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations, and confusion in our methods of childrearing all make this experience harder and hinder our initiative. Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness and despondency.

• If one day the secret of childhood were to become no longer a secret, the state would be able to save immense sums that it spends on hospitals, psychiatric clinics, and prisons maintaining our blindness. That this might deliberately happen is almost too incredible a thought.

The Body Never Lies (2005)

The Body Never Lies is an English translation of Miller's book Die Revolte des Körpers (2004). It was translated from German by Andrew Jenkins.

• A genuine relationship is possible only if both partners can admit their feelings, experience them and communicate them to each other without fear.
  • Chapter 14: "The Right to Awareness"

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Alice Miller (psychologist) on Wikipedia