Alice Miller: Quotes about childhood

Alice Miller was Swiss psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on childhood.

Alice Miller: 48 quotes9 likes

“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.”

Source: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : Society's Betrayal of the Child

“If one day the secret of childhood were to become no longer a secret, the state would be able to save immense sums that it spends on hospitals, psychiatric clinics, and prisons maintaining our blindness. That this might deliberately happen is almost too incredible a thought.”

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

“By refusing to forgive, I give up all illusions. Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to? I mean, my parents refuse to understand and to know what they did to me. So why should I go on trying to understand and forgive my parents and whatever happened in their childhood, with things like psychoanalysis and transactional analysis? What's the use? Whom does it help? It doesn't help my parents to see the truth. But it does prevent me from experiencing my feelings, the feelings that would give me access to the truth. But under the bell-jar of forgiveness, feelings cannot and may not blossom freely.”

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

“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.”

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“Psychoanalysis does not distort the truth by accident. It does so by necessity. It is an effective system for the suppression of the truth about childhood, a truth feared by our entire society. Not surprisingly, it enjoys great esteem among intellectuals… Fear of the truth about child abuse is a leitmotif of nearly all forms of therapy known to me.”

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

“Hard as it is to believe, in the entire world there is not a single faculty in which a degree is offered in the study of psychic injuries in childhood.”

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

“The danger does not lie with individuals, however criminal they may be. Far more, it lies in the ignorance of our entire society, which confirms these people in the lies that they were obliged to believe in childhood. Teachers, attorneys, doctors, social workers, priests, and other respected representatives of society protect parents from the mistreated child's every accusation and see to it that the truth about child abuse remains concealed. Even the child protection agencies insist that this crime, and this crime alone, should go unpunished.”

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)