Marcus Johnson

“The only thing we accomplish by accenting the child’s constitution, his temperament, his natural dilemmas and his own synthesizing activity, is to take the parents “off the hook" of their own burden of guilt for how their children turn out. But why should they have such unreasonable guilt anyway? Didn’t Nietzsche point out that the only creatures who deserve to feel guilt (or pride) are gods, since only they have undisputed freedom of action? Perhaps we could say that if parents want to feel a bit godlike they are entitled to feel a little guilt; and if they were gods they would deserve to feel plenty.”
― Becker Ernest

“And so, beginning with the small early frustrations and deprivations, the child is helped to govern himself. his ego develops by learning to regulate his own food intake and feces evacuation: he has to learn to adapt to a social schedule, to an external measure of time, in place of a biological schedule of internal urges. In all this he makes a bitter discovery: that he is no longer himself, just by seeking pleasure. There may be more excitement in the world but the fun keep getting interrupted. For some strange reason the mother doesn’t share his glee over a bowel movement on the sofa. The child finds that he has to “earn" the mother’s love by performing in a certain way. He comes to realize that he has to abandon the idea of “total excitement" and “uninterrupted fun," if he wants to keep a secure background of love from the mother. This is what Alfred Adler meant when he spoke of the child’s need for affection as the “lever" of his education. The child learns to accept frustrations so long as the total relationship is not endangered. This is what the psychoanalytic word “ambivalence" so nicely covers: the child may hesitate between giving up what has previously been an assured satisfaction, and proceeding to a new type of conduct which will be rewarded by a new kind of acceptance. Does he want to keep the breast instead of switching to the bottle? He finds that if he makes this switch he gets a special cooing of praise and a little extra attention. Ambivalence describes the process whereby the infant is propelled forward into increasing mastery by his developing ego, while at the same time he is lulled backward into a safe dependence by his need for approval and easy gratification; he is caught in the bind, as we all are, between new and uncertain rewards and tried and tested ones.”
― Ernest Becker

“If, as Moses Mendelssohn maintains, Judaism is not a religion but a revealed legislation, it seems strange that such a God should be its author and symbol. He who has, precisely, nothing of the legislator about Him. Incapable of the slightest effort of objectivity, He dispenses justice according to His whim, without any code to limit His divagations and His impulses. He is a despot as jittery as He is aggressive, saturated with complexes, an ideal subject for psychoanalysis. He disarms metaphysics, which detects in Him no trace of a substantial, self-sufficient Being superior to the world and content with the interval that separates Him from it. A clown who has inherited heaven and who there perpetuates the wost traditions of earth, he employes means, astounded by His own power and proud of having made its effects felt. Yet His vehemence, His shifts of mood, His spasmodic outbursts finally attract, if they do not convince us. Not at all resigned to His eternity, He intervenes in the affairs of earth, makes a mess of them, sowing confusion and clutter. He disconcerts, irritates, seduces.”
― Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

“It’s not God I want, it’s someone in skin!" a child once cried out to his mother. With an almost unbearable honesty, he expressed the extravagant—and even sacrilegious—nature of parent-child love. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me," God boomed in the desert. But parents and children do have a way of filling the universe with each other.”
― Noelle Oxenhandler, The Eros Of Parenthood: Explorations In Light And Dark