Alice Miller
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Web: http://www.alice-miller.com

Interview with Alice Miller, November 1992

Depression: Compulsive Self-Deception 05/05

See: Poisonous pedagogy  James W. Prescott, Ph.D. John Bowlby

Quotes
"The commandment to refrain from placing blame on our parents, deeply imprinted in us by our upbringing, skilfully performs the function of hiding essential truths from us."(61)—— Alice Miller.

In the year 2000, the US Department of Health and Human Services received 3 million reports of child maltreatment involving 5 million American children. Approximately 879,000 children (of the 5 million reported) were confirmed victims of child maltreatment, comprising neglect and medical neglect (63%) , physical abuse (19%), sexual abuse (10%), and psychological maltreatment (8%). These numbers do not include the 400,000 children who were paddled that year - legally paddled - in American schools. How Adults Can Survive A Childhood of Violence and Untruth 01/04

There is a good deal else that would not exist without “poisonous pedagogy.” It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty clichés to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these clichés with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed. (*“Poisonous pedagogy” refers to that tradition of child-rearing which attempts to suppress all vitality, creativity, and feeling in the child and maintain the autocratic, godlike position of the parents at all costs. See the author’s book For Your Own Good, especially the section entitled “Poisonous Pedagogy.”)  — by Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware http://www.inclusiveorthodox.

100 million Islamic women living today have had their genitals mutilated as children. Millions of Jewish or Arab children are, for the sake of dogma, subjected to circumcision, as infants or at an advanced age. Such cruelty is only possible with the total denial of the child's sensibility. But who can seriously say today that a child does not feel? In India, millions of girls have been raped as "brides" and this in the name of the religiously sanctioned doctrine of marriage. Countless initiation rites, condoned by religion, are nothing more than the sadistic mistreatment of children. The history of art abounds with such scenes, yet no one bats an eyelid. We have been brought up not to feel. As soon as individual human beings begin to feel, however, many things will inevitably change. Interview with Alice Miller, November 1992

Hitler was also proud that he could count the 32 strokes his father once gave him, without feeling a thing. Rudolf Hoss and Adolf Eichmann made similar proud assertions. What came next is well enough know, though the connections have never been properly understood. Interview with Alice Miller, November 1992

Books
For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller, Hildegarde Hannum, and Hunter Hannum

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins (Paperback - Aug 21, 2006)

For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller, Hildegarde Hannum, and Hunter Hannum (Paperback - Jan 1, 1990)

The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins (Paperback - Dec 17, 2002)