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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.

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
Known
Experienced
Actually
Essential
Always
Survival
Never
Essentials
Patient
Idealization
Childhood
Negatively
Parents
Portray
Parent
Positively

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That probably greatest of narcissistic wounds -- not to have been loved just as one truly was -- cannot heal without the work of mourning.
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The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.
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Empathy grows as we learn.
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What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.
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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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It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.
Alice Miller
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The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.
Alice Miller
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Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.
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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The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.
Alice Miller
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I sincerely believe that we not only have the right to know what is good and what is evil we have the duty to acquire that knowledge if we hope to assume responsibility for our own lives and those of our children. Only by knowing the truth can we be set free.
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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Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.
Alice Miller
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Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Alice Miller
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Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.
Alice Miller
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One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.
Alice Miller
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Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.
Alice Miller
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Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.
Alice Miller
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If we do not work on all three levels -- body, feeling, mind -- the symptoms of our distress will keep returning, as the body goes on repeating the story stored in its cells until it is finally listened to and understood.
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