Dear Alice Miller, This May 2008, Oprah Winfried's talk with Andrew Vachss from 1993 has been posted on youtube. Have you seen this interview? In this talk, Andrew Vachss confronts Oprah with her belief that anger resulting from an abusive childhood is a bad thing that one needs to overcome, and that the way to "healing" is through forgiveness. And he thoroughly questions it.What do you think?
Alice Miller: I saw the interview. These are some of my thoughts about it: We will never be able to stop child abuse as long as we say: "I put the past behind me, I don't feel anger, have forgiven and forgotten and get on with my life." This advice, given very often, never actually helps. Why? Because the endured abuse, if it is not worked out, drives the former victims to do the same with their children as long as they deny the pain and the anger, which the abuse left in their bodies. Our feelings may stay for a long time repressed, unconscious, but they wake up when we become parents. Advice like the one given by Oprah wants to help people who suffer by saying: "Enjoy your life, you should no longer suffer because of things that happened so long ago". We must know that this advice works at the expense of the next generation, supporting our blindness. Feeling and understanding the causes of our old pain does not mean that the pain and the anger will stay with us forever. Quite the opposite is true. The felt anger and pain disappear with time and enable us to love our children. It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drives us to repeat what has been done to us and to say: "Spanking didn't harm me, it was good for me and will thus also not harm my children." People who talk like this go on writing books on how we should spank babies early enough so that they learn to behave and NEVER EVER realize what had been done to them so early in their lives.
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Hello Sylvie,Quite sadly I must point out that this wonderful video has been taken down because Harpo (Oprah's company) will not allow her programs to air for free on YouTube.I have seen the video before and would love to see it again, or at least to read a transcript of the exchange between Vachss and Oprah.Vachss has some poignant articles on his site but unfortunately I haven't found any link to text from that interview. If you come across the text, please post it up for us all to read. It was a very interesting interview...for a moment it almost seemed like Oprah took heed of his words. I know it's disappointing to you as well as me that she has not faced her past and used the tremendous platform she has through her show to educate others on childhood issues and rejecting the "forgiveness" mantras.It is such a shame that this particular episode is a lost episode. If only we could show it again to all the Oprah followers. It really was perhaps one of her most important interviews.Best wishes to you Sylvie,
KK
Hello KK,Thank you for informing me about Oprah taken down the video from YouTube. It just shows her controlling issues and how she is more concerned with her image than with her personal truth. It’s very sad that she is passing her psychological virus to millions of people around the world and she doing it under the disguise of help, which will make her audience more confused than they already are.I also read most Vachss’s very poignant articles on his website In this article in his website By Ian O'Doherty Originally published by Independent, January 19, 2009it mentions why Oprah and Vachss fell out.“Vachss and Oprah Winfrey made rather unusual bedfellows when they joined forces to change the 'Incest laws' which gave more protections to predators than it did the victims, but the pair eventually fell out.The television host had picked Vachss as one of her "American Heroes" and a show was dedicated to him.To her horror, it didn't go according to plan: "She started going on about the importance of the victim forgiving their rapist and that is just bullshit," he says. "It's the kind of nonsense that psychiatrists and sociologists come out with, but what it actually does is place the burden of guilt back at the victim's feet."After all, when you tell someone that they can't heal themselves until they have forgiven the person, what happens to them when they can't forgive? They feel that there's something wrong with them and not the scum who committed the crime."
This just shows how Oprah refuses to look at facts. She and her followers cannot see, but Oprah is passing to the world the abuse she received in her childhood, but she is passing it in a converted way and under the disguise of help. All she has done was to reverse the roles, now she is the all-powerful, just like her abusers were to her, she could not have confronted her abusers when she was little and now no one will be able to confront her either, because she has too much power. What is very sad is that she and people like her make a lot of money deceiving themselves and the whole world. It makes me sick to my stomach. Sylvie
Schiavonne: I watched a 1993 interview of hers with Michael Jackson, which is available on Youtube. She thought that it was cool that he had no anger towards his father regardless of how much Joe had hurt him and his siblings. As much as I like his music, it was pitiful to see Michael apologizing on screen for telling of the abuses he suffered. No one should apologize for being abused. Joe should be the one apologizing and mourning his own history.
Michael also said that his plastic surgeries had nothing to do with his father teasing his physical appearance. He even mentioned that when he was younger, he was so ashamed of his looks that he would wash his face in the dark. That is an obvious lie since you can't love yourself and have plastic surgery. Forgiveness led to his death.
I was never a big fan of Oprah, but I thought she was a pretty cool person since she's such a philanthropist and all. But since she pushes people to forgive the unforgivable, I like her less now.
Posted by Schiavonne on Sunday, June 06, 2010 - 10:07 AM
Schiavonne, Thank you for sharing. You gave me more evidence, Oprah is just concerned with her image than exposing the lies of society. Why would she remove the interview with Andrew Vachss and not the interviews with Michael Jackson? The only reason she removed Andrew Vachss’s interview was because he was confronting her screwed up beliefs.
Your words are so true. Michael Jackson forgave his abusers, but he died because of it. Everyone should read the article “Concerning Forgiveness: The Liberating Experience of Painful Truth”
Comments from the sharing of this blog on Facebook:
James Warren Alice Miller is like white light
Sylvie Imelda Shene Thank you James, I agree, I will carry her torch as far as I can, I will not rest until I see all her books on display in every bookstore around the world and every single person on this planet knows her very important work, so parents can no longer use the excuse they did not know better and they did the best they could. I feel there is a conspiracy to keep her work hidden because people’s façade in power positions would be exposed, Oprah included. Why all these years she never invited Alice Miller or endorses her books on her show? But all the phonies like the guy James Frey with his book Million Little Pieces she had no problems inviting on her show, she said she was fooled by him, well, if she had truthful dealt with her repression she would have been able to see through him and see he was a phony pretending to be healed inventing things just to get attention and make money, by chance I saw the show with James Frey and I remember very well saying to myself, he is full of BS. Oprah is not one bit interested in people that have truthfully dealt with their repression, she is threatened by them and she only likes to invite people to her show that tell misleading information and disconnected truths or lies coated with little bits of truths, because in this way she can keep her illusions alive and sale it to her followers and in the process keep getting richer and richer, very sad. And this is why I canceled my cable TV and I don’t watch TV anymore, because all you hear on TV are lies and misleading information. When I called to cancel my cable, the person on the phone asked me the reason why I was canceling their services and I responded that I did not want to pay to listen to lies and misleading information anymore
James Warren Any conspiracy to hide human truth will, by its very nature, fail. The naked reality of events around the globe and around the human soul reveal the hidden truths we don't want to acknowledge. When the building catches fire there are only a few at first who smell the smoke. People like Alice Miller and those who are moved by her work are already evacuating the premises. The building still burns.
Sylvie Imelda Shene Thank you for your comment James. I enjoyed reading your words. Very well said, are you a writer? I like your writing style! For sure I have evacuated the premises!!! I feel so lucky to have found the books of Alice Miller, otherwise I would still be in the burning building trying to convince everyone that the building is burning, but thanks to Alice Miller I learned that I cannot force anyone to see that does not want to see and I saved my life and let go of everyone that refuses to open his/her eyes.
James Warren Thanks for your kind words. I was a journalism major and did some writing after graduation but got distracted by getting a job in a hospital and found out I loved it--stayed for nearly 20 years. And I really appreciated reading your comment in boldface on your page above. You elegantly explained Miller's insight about how we can get trapped in the cycle if we don't do our inner work first.
I am pretty optimistic re: nonviolence with our fellow travelers. Sort of like John Lennon saying you can call me a dreamer but I'm not alone. My irrational optimism is based on by belief that we're naturally wired for cooperation, not competition--or else our ancestors would have never made it once they left the safety of the trees for the open grasslands.
Sylvie Imelda Shene Ah! Journalism! I am working on a project that I could use your writing skills. I wish I could share your optimism, but I don’t have much faith in humanity, it seems the more “educated” people are the more they use their intellect to rationalize it all and avoid from seeing, facing and feeling these psychological mechanisms and the madness just keeps going on but with a new deceiving pretty face hiding it all. In her article “The Ignorance or How we produce the Evil” Alice Miller says: “Evil is born anew with each every new generation. “ --- So true.
http://www.alice-miller.com/en/the-ignorance-or-how-we-produce-the-evil/
James Warren Basically, maybe not in my lifetime... But my irrational optimism comes from the fact that never before in the entire history of the human species on the earth have we all been basically living in the same room. Everybody's with us, nobody's passenger anymore, everyone's crew--the global village idea.
Of COURSE, it's the "more educated" who resist despair until the last minute. And if we're all in a crowded room, just think how effective you might be in presenting a seminar or workshop on the topic "Evil with Another Deceiving Pretty Face." Evil AND good are born anew each instant moment. And die away in each moment.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart." --Solzhenitsyn
Sylvie Imelda Shene "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart." --Solzhenitsyn
I love this quote! Thank you for posting it. Yes if only was that simple! Very few people are able to look in the mirror and take responsibility for their ignorance/evil; your comment reminds me the answer below Alice Miller gave to one of her readers. It seems everywhere I go I see people pretending or faking it to have healed. It comes to mind when I use to go to al-anon and codependents anonymous and the elders use to say: “fake it until you make it” and I could tell they all were pretending and faking it and I use to think to myself: you can’t pretend and fake it forever and going to have to face it sooner or later. I share a little tiny bit of your optimism; otherwise, I would give up completely.
AM: You write: "My main point in the allegory is that by necessity none of us are passengers anymore. Everybody's crew." I agree with you. But to become aware of the fact that our obedience learned in childhood doesn't allow us to think freely needs probably more than many hundred years. I am not sure if the tortured planet leaves us the necessary time to understand this fact, to protest against it, and to become a conscious, responsible member of the crew.
http://www.alice-miller.com/en/we-all-are-the-crew/
James Warren I totally get what you are saying. I guess I could add that maybe we are missing all of the little trees growing up amidst a dysfunctional forest. Perhaps the people of the world are just now beginning to tend to the little trees because these types of people, groups, and organizations are getting the message that thinking globally but acting locally is the only way. And enough of us might find out we can be even more effective in the world if we can remember the little tree we all once were and start taking care of that forgotten little plant as well.
And, hey, I could be full of it. too. I could be just "barking at the moon instead. But geeze Louise, I just HATE to be wrong about anything!
James Warren We're all living in a pretty high-class china shop, too. And if we DON'T take responsibility for our ignorance and evil, we're going to break things we aren't even aware of yet. Or we will jostle someone else with our clumsy elbow and cause the same sort of damage.
Most of us are still like two-year-olds who need to learn and understand limits and how to set them in ourselves first. Once uncomprehending and ignorant two-year-olds grow up we're liable to have a few bulls in our china shop (which is what we have now!).
Hopefully, we will all learn not to go around unconsciously waving around red flags anymore. Remember "Ferdinand the Bull"?
James Warren, By the way, I was glad to see that letter again you posted the link to because I wrote it to Alice and she sent me back her personal answer. After I deleted all evidence of our exchange I had second thoughts and wished I had kept it. Now it belongs to everyone! Way cool!
Sylvie Imelda Shene When I read your earlier comment, I knew it right way, you had been the one writing that letter to Alice Miller. I am glad you are happy I posted a link here to it.
James Warren It was great to read the remarks from Alice. She tells the Big Truth and manages to express it so differently and so eloquently each time. That really helps me to keep it close to me always...
Also, read Letters to Oprah and Comments on a Facebook Post About a Book on Oprah's Book Club
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