Alice Miller Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

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

  Alice Miller

  People, Childhood, Way

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• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

  Alice Miller

  Real, Ideas, Facts

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.42, Basic Books

  15 Copy quote

• I sincerely believe that we not only have the right to know what is good and what is evil; we have the duty to acquire that knowledge if we hope to assume responsibility for our own lives and those of our children. Only by knowing the truth can we be set free.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Truth, Believe

  Alice Miller (2002). “The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self”, p.9, Basic Books

  7 Copy quote

• Empathy grows as we learn.

  Alice Miller

  Empathy, Grows

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.101, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.

  Alice Miller

  Truth, Healing, Emotional

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

  9 Copy quote

• Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.

  Alice Miller

  Education, Children, Learning

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.101, Macmillan

  92 Copy quote

• The abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression, and threats. When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Moving, Psychosis

  7 Copy quote

• Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Responsibility, Reality

  Alice Miller (2012). “The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness”, p.169, Anchor

  9 Copy quote

• The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.

  Alice Miller

  Judging, Abuse, Process

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

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Taken

  Alice Miller (1981). “Prisoners of Childhood”, New York : Basic Books

  6 Copy quote

• If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

  Alice Miller

  Friendship, Real Friends, Gossip

  19 Copy quote

• It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.

  Alice Miller

  Strong, Children, Wall

  Alice Miller (2008). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Third Edition”, p.33, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

• For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable tollon society--a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and--if disseminated widely enough--should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Years, Fundamentals

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.285, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Growing Up

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.115, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• The father receives his power from God (and from his own father). The teacher finds the soil already prepared for obedience, and the political leader has only to harvest what has been sown.

  Alice Miller

  Teacher, Father, Leader

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.44, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Needs, Actors

  Alice Miller (1981). “Prisoners of Childhood”, New York : Basic Books

  8 Copy quote

• One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.

  Alice Miller

  Remember, Has Beens

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.17, Basic Books

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• Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Independent, Order

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.58, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.

  Alice Miller

  Self, Hypocrisy, Giving

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• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Home, Vitality, Fans

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.19, Basic Books

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• 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.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Father

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.3, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

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

  Alice Miller

  Children, Parent, Capable

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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

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