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The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.

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
Person
Central
Need
Center
Children
Activity
Needs
Actor
Really
Child
Respected
Time
Actors
Regarded
Given
Primaries
Persons
Primary

More quotes by Alice Miller

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Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.
Alice Miller
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We can never do the right thing as long as we are out to please someone else.
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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Empathy grows as we learn.
Alice Miller
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The free expression of resentment against one's parents represents a great opportunity. It provides access to one's true self, reactivates numbed feelings, opens the way for mourning and - with luck - reconciliation.
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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Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.
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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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.
Alice Miller
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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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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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Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.
Alice Miller
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Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.
Alice Miller
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someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.
Alice Miller
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The abused children are alone with their suffering, not only within the family, but also within themselves. They cannot crate a place in their own soul where they could cry their beart out.
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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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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Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.
Alice Miller
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One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.
Alice Miller
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Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Alice Miller