We live in a world that is profoundly dazzled by the sharpest intellects. We elevate billionaires, tech visionaries, and high-achieving public figures to the status of modern deities, assuming that a high IQ or a massive net worth equates to human wisdom.
But massive wealth and world-changing intelligence alone cannot save anyone from the invisible, iron grip of the repetition compulsion. In fact, large-scale success often provides a larger stage—and a greater armor of immunity—to play out unresolved childhood dynamics on a massive scale.
Today, I watched a video about Shivon Zilis having four children with Elon Musk. And I was struck, once again, by a pattern I see constantly: people with the sharpest intellect are often the most emotionally blind.
The Infinite Need for Scapegoats
Elon Musk is a perfect exhibit because his life is a public mirror of a private truth we all avoid.
When public figures obsess over expanding their dynasties or advocate for massive population growth without the emotional presence to raise those children, we must look deeper than their intellectual arguments. We have to look at the unconscious motivations.
As I wrote in my book, A Dance to Freedom:
"People who idealize their childhoods, or otherwise ignore their pain, have limitless cravings for scapegoats on whom they can avenge themselves for the fears and anxieties of childhood. This is why some people have a lot of children, because unconsciously they want to make sure they have an endless supply of vulnerable, defenseless new victims."
Many people's desire to have children comes from their unconscious need to have a scapegoat or a poison container at their disposal. These words by Alice Miller could not be truer:
"Poisonous Pedagogy. The pedagogical conviction that one must bring a child into line from the outset has its origin in the need to split off the disquieting parts of the inner self and project them onto an available object. The child’s great plasticity, flexibility, defenselessness, and availability made it the ideal object for this projection. The enemy within can, at last, be hunted down on the outside. Peace advocates are becoming increasingly aware of the role played by these mechanisms, but until it is clearly recognized that they can be traced back to methods of child raising, little can be done to oppose them. For children who have grown up being assailed for qualities the parents hate in themselves, they can hardly wait to assign these qualities to someone else so they can once again regard themselves as good, 'moral,' noble, and altruistic. Such projections can easily become part of any Weltanschauung."
The Pro-Spanking, Pro-Life Paradox
It fascinates me—and haunts me—that so many of the pro-spanking people I know are also passionately pro-life. They fight ferociously for the unborn. They march. They donate. They pray.
But once that child is born? Once that baby is no longer a symbol, but a messy, demanding, inconvenient human being? Suddenly, the "right to life" does not include the right to safety, the right to dignity, or the right to be free from violence.
Where is the compassion in that?
As Alice Miller wrote:
"It is above all the children already born that have a right to life — a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of 'the right to life' remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction."
Let that land. To fight for the unborn while spanking, neglecting, or emotionally terrorizing the living is not moral. It is repetition compulsion dressed up in religious robes.
Idealizing Our Abusers Keeps the Cycle Spinning
When we idealize our childhoods, we become just like the people who hurt us when we were defenseless little children. Period. We cannot see the perversion of our parents because seeing it would require us to feel the pain we have spent a lifetime running from.
So instead, we hold onto false hope. We keep trying to earn love from our parents—or from partners, bosses, gurus, or celebrities who stand in for them. And when that love doesn't come, we discharge our rage onto the only people smaller than us: our children.
Alice Miller said it clearly:
"As long as we are compelled to protect our parents, we pay our loyalty with our depressions."
But once we discover and understand the pain of the neglected child we once were, we can finally love and cherish that child. Perhaps for the first time in our lives.
Otherwise? The body remembers. The body knows. The body never lies; it sticks to the facts. And the body will re-create the trauma, over and over, until we stop protecting the people who harmed us.
She writes in For Your Own Good:
"If the tragedy of a well-meaning person's childhood remains hidden behind idealizations, the unconscious knowledge of the actual state of affairs will have to assert itself by an indirect route. This occurs with the aid of the repetition compulsion. Over and over again, for reasons they don't understand, people create situations and establish relationships in which they torment or are tormented by their partners, or both. Since tormenting one's children is a legitimate part of child-rearing, this provides the most obvious outlet for bottled-up aggression."
Tormenting children is legitimate in our world. That is the horror. That is the engine.
"Wanted" Is Not Enough
People often say, "Unwanted children are usually mistreated." But Alice Miller corrected this, too.
She wrote to a reader:
"You are right, unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exists, as a rule, also a huge amount of people who were 'wanted' indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what their own parents had never given them: love, adoration, attention… Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently 'want'?"
The answer is painful: The never-felt pain of childhood calls for vengeance. They go to church. They honor their parents. They forgive everything. And then they go home and mistreat their children as if this were the most natural thing—because they learned it so early that it lives in their bones.
And so the perversion continues for millennia. Unless—unless we are willing to see the perversion of our parents and consciously refuse to imitate it.
How Repressed Childhood Sadism Manifests
Let me be direct: Women are by no means less aggressive than men. Yes, women are victimized by men who are avenging themselves for the beatings they received from their own mothers. Yes, patriarchy harms women.
But women avenge themselves for that victimization by taking it out on their little children. Women enjoy total immunity because society idealizes motherhood. No one wants to admit that their own mother oppressed them.
I see no real difference between the cruelty of women and that of men. Both sexes learned sadism at the hands of their parents when their brains were still forming. Both were not allowed to defend themselves. Both take out repressed anger on defenseless people.
In men: Frequently lived out overtly—victimizing employees at work, dominating lower military ranks, or participating in macro-level violence like war and terrorism.
In women: Frequently lived out covertly—venting acquired sadism on others, especially their children, behind closed doors.
Whether it is a CEO ruthlessly exploiting thousands, a mother pathologically controlling her household, or a suicide bomber seeking a "magnificent deed" to compensate for buried childhood humiliation, the root cause is identical: the denied, repressed suffering of childhood. People who were genuinely respected, protected, and loved in their early years are fundamentally incapable of sadism.
Even suicide bombers—men and women alike—are not acting out of religious fervor alone. They are trying to compensate for humiliations they never consciously felt, by means of one magnificent, self-destroying deed.
Breaking the Millennia-Old Cycle
The vicious cycle of repetition compulsion has been going on since the beginning of human history, passing perverted behavior from one generation to the next like a psychological torch.
It continues because facing the truth requires an immense, terrifying leap. It requires a person to give up their denial, to see the perversion and cruelty of their own parents, and to actively refuse to imitate it. The fear felt by the tormented child we once were can prevent us from facing and feeling painful truths and keep us frozen in denial for an entire lifetime. That is the tragedy.
But true liberation does not come from wealth, high intellect, or public adulation. It begins by discovering, understanding, and validating the pain of the neglected child within. Only when we dare to speak the truths that most people are afraid to see can we stop the cycle, step out of the illusion, and finally learn to cherish ourselves.
Here is the truth:
You cannot save the unborn by sacrificing the living.
You cannot raise healthy children by neglecting, spanking, or spoiling them.
You cannot break the cycle of repetition compulsion by idealizing the people who broke you.
The compassionate path is the honest one. Feel your pain. Stop protecting and idolizing your parents and childhood. And for the love of all that is sacred—do not have children to avenge a childhood you refuse to see and feel.
The children already born have a right to life. A right to safety. A right to adults who have done their own emotional work—the most important work of our lives.
That is the only pro-life position that matters.
