Alice Miller Quotes About Childhood

Quotes about: Childhood

• I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.

  Alice Miller

  Childhood, Parent, Survival

  Alice Miller (1998). “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child”, p.72, Macmillan

• The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

  Alice Miller

  Past, Childhood, Suffering

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.19, Macmillan

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Real, Past, Long

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.2, Basic Books

• It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.

  Alice Miller

  Ocean, Ignorance, Evil

  Alice Miller (2012). “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries”, p.139, Anchor

• The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Confused, Childhood

• The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.

  Alice Miller

  Childhood, Wish, Trying

  Alice Miller (1991). “Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth”, Penguin Press HC, The

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

  Alice Miller

  People, Childhood, Way

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Hurt, Children, Honesty

  "The Roots of Violence" by Alice Miller, www.alice-miller.com. 2015.

• The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Giving Up, Self Esteem

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Strong, Believe, Simple

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.249, Macmillan

• Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.

  Alice Miller

  Struggle, Acceptance, Unique

  "The Drama of the Gifted Child". Book by Alice Miller, 1979.

• Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Long, Childhood

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.265, Macmillan

• It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion - something that has always been disputed by the most respected schools of thought.

  Alice Miller

  School, Confusion, Childhood

  Alice Miller (1991). “Breaking down the wall of silence: the liberating experience of facing painful truth”, Penguin Press HC, The

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Pain

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.254, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin