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Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.

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
Solved
Problems
Words
Experience
Cannot
Problem

More quotes by 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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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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Courage can be just as infectious as fear.
Alice Miller
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The only possible recourse a baby has when his screams are ignored is to repress his distress, which is tantamount to mutilating his soul, for the result is an interference with his ability to feel, to be aware, and to remember.
Alice Miller
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Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.
Alice Miller
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It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.
Alice Miller
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The grandiose person is never really free first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.
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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There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.
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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Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Alice Miller
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Discipline is ... life-inhibiting, is at the very least curtailment of vital activity insofar as the latter cannot develop as it wishes but is confined within specific limits and subjected to specific rules.
Alice Miller
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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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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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Empathy grows as we learn.
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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Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.
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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Every child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks and months of life he needs to have the mother at his disposal, must be able to use her and to be mirrored by her.
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