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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

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Alice Miller
Age: 87 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 12
Died: 2010
Died: April 14
Painter
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Piotrkow Trybunalski
Unique
Weapon
Emotional
Illness
Taught
Acceptance
Struggle
Endure
Individual
Mental
History
Discovery
Experience
Weapons
Truth
Childhood
Enduring

More quotes by Alice Miller

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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
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The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.
Alice Miller
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Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
Alice Miller
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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
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Courage can be just as infectious as fear.
Alice Miller
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Regression to the stage of early infancy is not a suitable method in and of itself. Such a regression can only be effective if it happens in the natural course of therapy and if the client is able to maintain adult consciousness at the same time.
Alice Miller
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One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.
Alice Miller
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There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.
Alice Miller
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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
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Genuine feelings are never the product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent.
Alice Miller
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Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.
Alice Miller
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The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.
Alice Miller
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If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.
Alice Miller
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Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.
Alice Miller
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We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.
Alice Miller
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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
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We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.
Alice Miller
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Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.
Alice Miller
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Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.
Alice Miller
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Disrespect is the weapon of the weak
Alice Miller