Thursday, April 25, 2024

Salazar's Dictatorship


Interesting! I didn't know Salazar was a candidate to become a Catholic priest, but I'm not surprised! I grew up in Portugal under the Salazar fascist regime. So I know what fascism and authoritarian regimes look and feel like firsthand. "the cult-group phenomenon is an indication that there is a growth in the number of totalitarian systems to which people voluntarily submit themselves. People growing up in a spirit of liberty and tolerance, accepted in childhood for what they are, rather than being throttled and stunted by their upbringing, would hardly place themselves at the mercy of a cult group of their own accord. And if by chance or skillful manipulation, they did fall afoul of such an organization, they certainly would not stay there very long." Alice Miller


 
I was there! A lot of excitement on the streets! I was 15 years old!



So far I have not met anyone who explains the mechanics of fascism and authoritarian regimes better than Alice Miller.

She really goes to the root cause of Fascism and authoritarian regimes. Lies, misinformation, and propaganda are the fuel that fuels conflicts and wars everywhere. "Children who are told the truth and are not brought up to tolerate lies and cruelty can develop as freely as a plant whose roots have not been attacked by pests (in our case, lies)" Alice Miller

The words below by Alice Miller explain beautifully why so many "intelligent" and "talented" people fall for authoritarian politicians, the capacity to resist a totalitarian state has nothing to do with intelligence, but with the degree of access to our true self.

"Just as in the symbiosis of the "diaper stage," there is no separation here of subject and object. If the child learns to view corporal punishment as "a necessary measure" against "wrongdoers," then as an adult he will attempt to protect himself from punishment by being obedient and will not hesitate to cooperate with the penal system. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His "will" is completely identical to that of the government.

Now that we have seen how easy it is for intellectuals in a dictatorship to be corrupted, it would be a vestige of aristocratic snobbery to think that only "the uneducated masses" are susceptible to propaganda. 

Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.

Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation.

Educators have always known this and have exploited it for their own purposes, as the following proverb suggests: "The clever person gives in, the stupid one balks." 

For example, we read in a work on child raising by Grünwald (1899): "I have never yet found willfulness in an intellectually advanced or exceptionally gifted child" (quoted in Rutschky). Such a child can, in later life, exhibit extraordinary acuity in criticizing the ideologies of his opponents--and in puberty even the views by his own parents-- because in these cases his intellectual powers can function without impairment. 

Only within a group--such as one consisting of adherents of an ideology or a theoretical school--that represents the early family situation will this person on occasion still display a naïve submissiveness and uncritical attitude that completely belie his brilliance in other situations. 

Here, tragically, his early dependence upon tyrannical parents is preserved, a dependence that--in keeping with the program of "poisonous pedagogy"--goes undetected. This explains why Martin Heidegger, for example, who had no trouble in breaking with traditional philosophy and leaving behind the teachers of his adolescence, was not able to see the contradictions in Hitler's ideology that should have been obvious to someone of his intelligence. He responded to this ideology with an infantile fascination and devotion that brooked no criticism.”

From the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence pages 42 and 43


*Alice Miller on "Poisonous Pedagogy"
Poisonous pedagogy is a phrase I use to refer to the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child’s will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation, and emotional blackmail.
— Alice Miller, The Truth Will Set You Free
There is a good deal else that would not exist without “poisonous pedagogy.” It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty cliches to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these cliches with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed.
— Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Being Truthful and Authentic Will NOT Get You Many Fans

Being truthful and authentic will not get you many fans. I speak from experience, and I can testify to that.

Yes, when our goal is to control and manipulate others perceptions we lose what is important and what really matters in life. 

"The period of influence consists in leading someone, without argument, to think, make decisions, and behave other than he would spontaneously on his own. During the "seductive stalking" period, the targeted is unable to freely consent a priori because his sensibilities and vulnerabilities are influenced and manipulated.  As in any manipulative process, the victim must first be made to believe he is free, even when he is insidiously deprived of the freedom to act. There can be no question of a discussion between equals; the abuser must subtly impose himself while preventing the other from becoming aware of the process and from discussing or resisting it. The victim's ability to defend himself is withdrawn, and his judgment is negated, thereby eliminating any possibility of rebellion. We find here the types of situations in which one individual exerts undue and abusive influence over another without his knowledge. In daily life, we are constantly being manipulated, destabilized, and muddled, and every time it happens we are furious at the perpetrator but even more ashamed of ourselves." 
Except from the book Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and Erosion of Identity by Marie-France Herigoyen, page 90.

“…I really want to reinforce the idea that so-called therapists and gurus only substitute one dangerous illusion for another. As Alice Miller writes, “What can happen when a doctor doesn’t stop at self-deception in his flight from pain, but deceives his patients, even founding dogmatic institutions in which further ‘helpers’ are recruited to a faith advertised as scientific truth,’ can be catastrophic.”64 

The key to effective therapy is learning how to use your present triggers productively. They can help us clarify, understand and consciously feel our intense emotions within the context of our own childhoods without losing our adult consciousness. 

A good therapist can help us regain our adult consciousness if we lose it and encourage our autonomy, so we can deal with present issues from an adult perspective. 

But when a therapist regresses us to the state of the desperate child we once were and keeps us feeling old pain over and over again, that just reinforces our dependency, keeps us vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations, and makes our addiction to pain harder to shake.

Why do people keep punishing themselves? As Alice Miller writes, “… the awareness was borne in upon me that in a state of regression, it is not possible to judge the competence and integrity of the person one has turned to for such guidance. 

This opens up all kinds of opportunities for abuse. The intensive phase with which primal therapy begins is an immediate obstacle to the formation of a balanced, critical, independent assessment of the therapist’s abilities by the client. 

The fact that the attendant uncritical and irrational expectations of healing and ‘salvation’ can lead to the establishment of totalitarian sects is borne out by the crass example of mass abuse at the hands of the exponents of ‘feeling therapy’ as described in detail by Carol Lynn Mithers in her book Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betrayed (1994). But this study was possible only after the community she describes had disbanded, something that frequently takes decades. 

Today we know that such groups exist and that members of sects are done irremediable harm before they become aware of the fact.”65 

In another book, she goes on to say, “The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it. 

At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cults and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a different level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance, we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals. … First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. 

From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the childrearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.”66 

Most people who search for answers never actually find them, because people suffering with their own repression are the ones who practice traditional therapies. Since the beginning of human history, priests, teachers, gurus, psychics, doctors, philosophers, and psychologists have all duped people into thinking they could provide real assistance, when it was never possible because the healers were also victims of their own childhoods.” 

From the book:  A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions, pages 129, 130 and 131


Monday, April 22, 2024

What Happens To The Children Of Extreme Narcissists?

I know of a narcissist who once told me she wanted to have a child to have an heir for her money because she didn't want some of her family members to get her money. 

She's misplacing or transferring all of her unresolved repressed hatred into some of her aunts and cousins. That's sad to have a child to take revenge on her aunts and cousins. 

These are lies she is telling herself to mask her compulsion to bring a child into her emotional prison and the fears of being alone. She would be better off giving her money to a charity. That's what I'm going to do! Give most of my money to a charity that helps animals like PETA. 

She is turning 43 years old this year, the same age her mother was when gave birth to her. As of now, she has been following in the footsteps of her mother, her compulsion to have a child too has to be kicking in at full force. If she succeeds in carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being, this child will become her scapegoat or poison container of all her unresolved repressed emotions, just like she was to her parents when she was a small child. And the vicious circle will go on endlessly. 

Some of her aunts and mother, whom she hates so much never had access to enlightened information when they were young to help them break the vicious circle. She on the other hand has been introduced to enlightened information and still can't break free from the chains of compulsion repetition. She is taking the same footsteps as the people she judges and hates so much. 

As long as people's childhood repression goes unresolved they will be driven by the repressed emotions of the child they once were into the state of repetition compulsion sooner or later in one form or another. There is no escape. 

The easiest way to guarantee to always have a scapegoat or a poison container at your disposal to constantly use to alleviate your unresolved childhood repression is to give birth to them.

 If the repression stays unresolved, the parents’ childhood tragedy is unconsciously continued on in their children

“…unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist 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 the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention, and so many other things. 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 never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged.
 
They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. 

Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. 

Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.

You are not being "sickeningly sarcastic," you only dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.

....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 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.

…society we live in continues to turn a blind eye to the facts of child abuse in all its forms. Among thousands of professors at hundreds of universities, there is not one single university chair for teaching about child abuse and cruelty to children. 

Why? Because that cruelty successfully masquerades as parenting and education” Alice Miller, taken from the book “The Truth Will Set You Free” page, 101

"I think that violent teenagers are demonstrating what happened to them emotionally when they were small. I have no doubt about that. 

It might not always be a harsh discipline but in most cases, there is emotional neglect, lack of authentic communication, of warm, friendly contact. 

If this lack is also covered by what is called "spoiling" (buying a lot of expensive objects to replace love), the child is often unable to detect the neglect and stays bound to denial. 

Anyway, every child must deny the pain in order to survive. 

Only in adulthood is it possible to realize the truth. 

But the more the childhood history is repressed, the more its cruelty is denied, the less these young people are able to feel, to confront the actual reasons for their distress, and the stronger they feel urged to act destructively. 

They do not always have conscious memories of what happened in their childhood, especially in infancy, but this knowledge is stored up in their body's cells and, amazingly enough, they threaten others exactly the same way as they were threatened at the beginning of their life.

Unfortunately, the common, ever-present avoidance of the issue of "childhood" doesn't make things easier. I discuss this problem in my book Paths of Life, 1999, and The Truth Will Set You Free, 2002.


"A loving parent values their child, just for who they are. This parent loves their child unconditionally and nurtures them so that they can grow into the best version of themselves.

The narcissistic parent, by contrast, sees their child as an extension of their own ego and as their “property.” The child is a reflection of the parent and belongs to the parent. Either the child is seen by this parent as conferring some advantage in life, or the child is seen as a burden and a nuisance; often both.

The child of extreme narcissists is never seen for who he or she is, and is never appreciated just for him or herself. The extremely narcissistic parent can only enjoy and exploit their child for what the child does for them or how the child makes them look to others.

The “love” the extreme narcissist gives to their child is a pseudo-love that’s shallow and conditional and doesn’t come close to meeting the child’s real needs. As a result, the child grows up with an empty space inside them that was supposed to have been filled with parental love and validation.

As they’re growing up, the child of the extreme narcissist can go in one of two directions. They can channel their low self-esteem and need for love and approval into people-pleasing, trying to get others to accept and validate them. Or, they can compensate for their deep feelings of inadequacy by inflating their fragile ego and becoming grandiose. They can become as narcissistic as their parent was.

The children who grow up to be people-pleasers seem, on the surface, to struggle a lot more in their lives, as they look to others to make them feel good about themselves. They are insecure and they go to great lengths to obtain approval from those around them. They focus on making other people happy, rather than on taking care of themselves.

The children who grow up to be narcissists might achieve some measure of success, in that their inflated self-worth can lead them to attain certain goals, but they can never be truly happy. The emptiness within them will never be filled by following in their narcissistic parent’s footsteps. They will never have real love in their lives and all their accomplishments will ultimately feel meaningless.

The paradox is that the children who grow up to be narcissists don’t see that they have a problem. Their inflated ego denies the deep wound within them. They’re unable to recognize the empty hole where self-love should be, so they can’t conceive of real ways to fill this void. They’re doomed to remain narcissists, pursuing external gratification and seeing others merely as a source of this gratification or an obstacle to it.

The children who grow up to be people-pleasers, on the other hand, have the capacity for insight into their own behavior. They’re able to look at their choices and take responsibility for their behaviors. These people-pleasers can use counseling or therapy to build their self-esteem and fill that emptiness within them. They can learn to love themselves and receive love from others, without having to earn it through pleasing.

The child of the extreme narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves is doomed, in the same way as their parent is, to a life of empty, exploitative relationships and the compulsive pursuit of external solutions – money, fame, power, influence – for their real inner needs for closeness, happiness, and meaning.

The child of a narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves might look like they’re doing better, but they’ll never live a good life. The child of the narcissist who grows up to be a people-pleaser is the much luckier one, as they have a real chance to change and to live a full and satisfying life with real love and real meaning."

Read more in the link below:

https://marciasirotamd.com/psychology-popular-culture/happens-children-extreme-narcissists-2

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Just Walk Away


Cut your losses and walk away.

Do not believe the person has changed. Most therapists agree that malignant narcissists or sociopaths cannot be treated effectively. 

Instead, take steps to protect yourself. Consider drastic solutions like moving, changing jobs and making new friends. 

Remember that it is all a game to the malignant narcissist or sociopath. She or he does not care if you're hurt. The only goal they have is winning. The only way you can beat a malignant narcissist or sociopath is to get away from the malignant narcissist or sociopath.

"Sociopaths hate us. All sociopaths know in their “heart-of-hearts” (so to speak) that we are the ones with the real power. 

We have the advantage of being real people who can love and feel. We are flexible, reasonable. We have wisdom mingled in compassion. 

A potent elixir for the ills and sorrows of life; the stuff human kindness is made of. Sociopaths hate us – they are loveless, and without conscience. – They also know while they hate us and use us – we can ruin them by exposure. 

This evokes rage.
When individuals operate without a conscience they are able to do horrible things we would never dream of doing – and there is no moral compass or guilt feelings to stop them. ~ Dr. Deborah Ettel, PhD. Psychology

Sociopaths are limited. Sociopaths are reactionary, defensive, and grasping for what they perceive as power in money, and position.

Whatever ‘status’ they seem to hold is always fake. 

They have nothing without hijacking other people’s lives. This can be on a grand scale involving millions of dollars, or at a low economic level for basic needs: housing, food, internet, clothes, a phone – and all else in between. 

They crave a good reputation. Sometimes in the heat of being discovered, or in fear of losing a gain, they’ll take unplanned, improvised actions that may even cause themselves harm directly or indirectly in over-the-top criminality. 

Their weakness is a constant fear of being unmasked. This and their limited minds makes them predictable. This leaves gaps and leverage for our escape from these monsters." 
Read more here


Thursday, April 18, 2024

Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in US

What John Barnett did that's what the corrupted people at my job of nine and a half years were hoping I would do too! When exposing corruption, you have to be able to stand alone on your own two feet and be flexible enough to bend when punched hard by the bullies so you can get back up stronger!  Corrupted people only care about money and power over others and don't care about anyone's safety and well-being. Sadly, John Barnett didn't find the strength to stand alone. 

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/search?q=psychological+lynching++


"A former Boeing employee known for raising concerns about the firm's production standards has been found dead in the US.

John Barnett worked for Boeing for more than 30 years before retiring in 2017.

In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.

Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett's passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

Mr Barnett had worked for the US plane giant for three decades, until his retirement in 2017 on health grounds.

From 2010, he was employed as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant. The facility builds the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.

In 2019, Mr Barnett told the BBC that under-pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line.

He also said he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems, which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency.

He said soon after starting work in South Carolina he had become concerned that the push to get new aircraft built meant the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised, something the company denied."

Read more in the link below:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703


What Narcissists Hide After Being Dumped


That's exactly what they do!

As a teen I was stalked by my older sister and now her daughter is stalking me also.