For Your Own Good Quotes

“What becomes of all those people who are the successful products of a strict upbringing?
It is inconceivable that they were able to express and develop their true feelings as children, for anger and helpless rage, which they were forbidden to display, would have been among these feelings - particularly if these children were beaten, humiliated, lied to, and deceived. What becomes of this forbidden and therefore unexpressed anger? Unfortunately, it does not disappear, but is transformed with time into a more or less conscious hatred directed against either the self or substitute persons, a hatred that will seek to discharge itself in various ways permissible and suitable for an adult.”
― Alice Miller

“If not consciously acknowledged and mourned, uncertainty about one's descent can cause great anxiety and unrest, all the more so if, as in Alois's case, it is linked with an ominous rumor that can neither be proven nor completely refuted”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Obedience, coercion, severity, and lack of feeling are no longer recognized as absolute values. But the road to the realization of the new ideals is frequently blocked by the need to repress the sufferings of one's childhood, and this leads to a lack of empathy. It is precisely little Katies and Konrads who as adults close their ears to the subject of child abuse (or else minimize its harmfulness), because they themselves claim to have had a "happy childhood". Yet their very lack of empathy reveals the opposite: they had to keep a stiff upper lip at a very early age. Those who actually had the privilege of growing up in an emphatic environment (which is extremely rare, for until recently it was not generally known how much a child can suffer), or who later create an inner emphatic object, are more likely to be open to the suffering of others, or at least will not deny its existence. This is a necessary precondition if old wounds are to heal instead of merely being covered up with the help of the next generation.”
― Alice Miller

“Better a curse from God than a blessing from Satan.”
― Criss Jami

“The child's dependence on his or her parents' love also makes it impossible in later years to recognize these traumatizations, which often remain hidden behind the early idealization of the parents for the rest of the child's life.”
― Alice Miller

“Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.”
― Alice Miller

“In the tradition we are dealing with, it was considered obstinacy and was therefore frowned upon to have a will and mind of one's own. It is easy to understand that an intelligent child would want to escape punishments devised for those possessing these traits and that he or she could do so without any difficulty. What the child didn't realize was that escape came at a high price.”
― Alice Miller