my e-mail to CNN

I am very disappointed at CNN for giving air time to the author of the book “Tiger Mother” because you just put a lot of children at risk of being even more abused by their unconscious parents. My question was: how unconscious can they all be? Well this is the reason China is an abuser of Human rights because they are unconsciously reenacting their childhood drama by treating others cruelly, the same way they were treated as small children and unconsciously tell their true story of what happened to them as small children to the world by reenacting their childhood drama over and over again. And when they don’t have other human beings below them to unconsciously reenact their childhood drama with, what’s left? The animals and this is why people there skin cats and dogs alive for their skin and treat them so cruelly. Wake up people if we really want to make the world a better place we need to become aware of all forms of child abuse and do every thing to stop it, otherwise every thing else we do will be a superficial and temporary fix.

“...but wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one’s parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for respect for the child.” Alice Miller

I recommend you read the article “Unlived Anger” in the link below and read all Alice Miller’s books and give her the air time she deserves, but I have come to the conclusion that if someone is speaking the naked truth will never be able to get on TV, but the more lies or lies coated with bits of disconnected truths or the bigger the illusions someone is able to create the more attention they get on TV, very sad, and this is why I have cancel my cable and don’t have TV at all at home, because I refuse to pay for lies and misleading information anymore, but it happened CNN was on at my place of work this morning and I listen to the lies of this woman and it just reminded why I don’t watch TV anymore.  

UNLIVED ANGER

In October 1977 the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski was awarded the Prize of the German Booksellers’s Association. In his acceptance speech he spoke about hatred, with special reference to the event that was on many people’s minds at the time, the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu.

Kolakowski said that time after time there have been instances of people who are completely free of hatred and who therefore offer proof that it is possible to live without it. It is not surprising for a philosopher to talk like this if he identifies humanness with consciousness. But for someone who has been confronted with manifestations of unconscious psychic reality on a daily basis and who sees over and over again how serious the consequences of overlooking this reality are, it will no longer be a simple matter of course to divide people into those who are good or bad, loving or hate-filled. Such a person knows that moralizing concepts are less apt to uncover the truth than to conceal it. Hatred is a normal human feeling, and a feeling has never killed anyone. Is there a more appropriate reaction than anger or even hatred in response to the abuse of children, the rape of women, the torture of the innocent---especially if the perpetrator’s motives remain hidden? A person who has had the good fortune from the beginning to be allowed to react to frustration with rage will internalize his empathic parents and will later be able to deal with all his feelings, including hatred, without need for analysis. I don’t know if such people exist; I have never met one. What I have seen are people who did not acknowledge their hatred but delegated it to others without meaning to and without even knowing they were doing it. Under certain circumstances, they developed a severe obsessional neurosis accompanied by destructive fantasies, or, if this did not occur, their children had the neurosis. Often they were treated for years for physical illness that was really psychic in origin. Some suffered from severe depressions. But as soon as it became possible for them to experience their early childhood hatred in analysis, their symptoms disappeared, and with them the fear that their feelings of hatred might cause someone harm. It is not experienced hatred that leads to acts of violence and destructiveness but hatred that must be warded off and bottled up with the aid of ideology, a situation that can be examined in detail in the case of Adolf Hitler. Every experienced feeling gives way in time to another, and even the most extreme conscious hatred of one’s father will not lead a person to kill---to say nothing of destroying a whole people. But Hitler warded off his childhood feelings totally and destroyed human life because “Germany needed more Lebensraum,” because “the Jews were a menace to the world,” because he “wanted young people to be cruel so they could create something new”---the list of supposed reasons could go on and on.

How are we to explain the fact that, in spite of growing psychological awareness in the last decades, two-thirds of the people polled in Germany still believe that corporal punishment is necessary, good, and right for children? And what about the remaining third? How many of parents among them feel compelled to strike their children against their better judgment and is spite of their good intentions? This situation is understandable if we take the following points into consideration.

1. For parents to be aware of what they are doing to their children, they would also have to be aware of what was done to them in their own childhood. But this is exactly what was forbidden them as children. If access to this knowledge is cut off, parents can strike and humiliate their children or torment and mistreat them in others ways, without realizing how they are hurting them; they simply are compelled to behave this way.

2. If the tragedy of 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 do not understand, people will create situations and establish relationships in which they torment or are tormented by their partner, or both.

3. Since tormenting one’s children is a legitimate part of child-rearing, this provides the most obvious outlet for bottled-up aggression.

4. Because an aggressive response to emotional and physical abuse is forbidden by parents in almost all religions, this outlet is the only one available.

There would be no incest taboo, say the sociologist, if sexual attraction among members of a family were not a natural impulse. That is why this taboo exists in every civilized nation and is an integral part of child-rearing from the beginning.

I sense a similarity here to the way a child’s aggressive feelings toward the parents are traditionally treated. I do not know how people in other cultures who have not grown up, as we have, with the Fourth Commandment have solved this problem, but wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one’s parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for respect for the child. Could this be analogous to the incest taboo and indicate that respect is instilled in the child as early as possible because the child’s natural reactions toward the parents can be so violent that parents would have to fear being beaten by their children or even killed by them?

We constantly hear about the cruelty of the times, and yet it seems to me there is a ray of hope in the trend to examine and question inherited taboos. If parents need the Fourth Commandment to keep their children from expressing natural and legitimate aggressive feelings from the outset, with the result that the child’s only option is to pass this same commandment on to the next generation, then it would be a sign of great progress if this taboo were done away with. If the mechanism becomes conscious, if people are allowed to become aware of what their parents did to them, they would surely try to direct their response to the preceding generation and not the following one. This would mean, for example, that Hitler would not have needed to kill millions of human beings if it had been possible for him as a child to rebel directly against his father’s cruelty.

It would be an easy matter to misunderstand my claim that the untold deep humiliation and mistreatment Hitler suffered at his father’s hands without being allowed to respond was responsible for his insatiable hatred. Someone may object by saying that an individual human being cannot destroy an entire people on such a scale, that economic crises and the humiliation suffered by the Weimar Republic contributed to producing the catastrophe. There can be no doubt that this is true, but it was not “crises” and “systems” that did the killing, it was human beings whose fathers were able to point with pride to the obedience instilled in their little ones at a very early age.

Many of the facts we have reacted to for decades with moral indignation and uncomprehending aversion can be understood from this perspective. An American professor, for example, has been conducting experiments for years with brain transplants. In an interview with the magazine Tele, he reports that he has already succeeded in replacing the brain of one monkey with that of another. He does not doubt that in the foreseeable future it will be possible to do the same thing with human beings. Readers have a choice here: they can be thrilled at so much scientific progress, or they can wonder how such absurdity can be possible and what purpose such pursuits can serve. But a piece of seemingly unimportant information may produce an “aha” reaction in them, for Professor White speaks of “religious feelings” connected with his endeavor. Questioned by the interviewer, he explains that he had a very strict Catholic upbringing and in the opinion of his ten children had been raised like a dinosaur. I don’t know what is meant by this, but I can imagine that this image refers to antediluvian methods of child-rearing. What does that have to do with his scientific work? Perhaps this is the unconscious background for Professor White’s experiments: by devoting all his energy and vitality to the goal one day being able to transplant brains in human beings, he is fulfilling his long-harbored infantile wish to be able to replace his parents’ brains. Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has 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.

Every experienced analyst is familiar with ministers’ children who were never allowed to have so-called bad thoughts and who managed not to have any, even at the cost of a severe neurosis. If infantile fantasies are finally allowed to come to the surface in analysis, they generally have a cruel and sadistic content. In these fantasies, the early fantasies of revenge of the child who has been tormented by his or her upbringing merge with the interjected cruelty of the parents, who have attempted to stifle or have actually stifled the child’s vitality by making impossible moral demands.

Everyone must find his own form of aggressiveness in order to avoid letting himself be made into an obedient puppet manipulated by others. Only if we do not allow ourselves to be reduced to the instrument of another person’s will can we fulfill our personal needs and defend our legitimate rights. But this appropriate form of aggression is unattainable for many people who have grown up with the absurd belief that a person can have nothing but kind, good, and meek thoughts and at the same time be honest and authentic. The effort to fulfill this impossible demand can drive sensitive children to the brink of madness. No wonder they try to free themselves from their prison by means of sadistic fantasies. Yet this attempt is also forbidden and must be repressed.

Thus, the comprehensible an empathic part of these fantasies remains fully concealed from consciousness, covered over by the gravestone of a dismaying, split-off cruelty. Although this gravestone is not totally invisible, it is carefully avoided and is feared for a lifetime. Nevertheless, there is no other path to one’s true self in the entire world than this one leading past the gravestone that has been shunned for such a long time. For before a person can develop an appropriate form of aggressiveness, he or she must discover and experience the old fantasies of revenge, which were repressed because they were forbidden. Only these fantasies can lead one back to genuine childhood indignation and rage, which can then give way to mourning and reconciliation.

The career of the Swiss writer Friedrich Durrenmatt, who in all probability has never undergone analysis, can serve as an example here. He grew in a Protestant parsonage, and his first act as a young writer was to confront the reader with the grotesque absurdity, hypocrisy, and cruelty of the world. Even his studied emotional coldness, even the most abrasive cynicism cannot completely erase the traces of his early experiences. Like Hieronymus Bosh, Durrenmatt depicts an experienced hell, even though he probably no longer has any clear memory of it.

The visit could never have been written by someone who had not learned for himself that hatred finds its strongest and most cruel expression when there are very close ties to the hated object. In spite of all he has sensed so deeply, the young Durrenmatt consistently displays the cold-heartedness acquired by a child who must always conceal his feelings from those around him. In order to free himself from the moral strictures of the parsonage, he must first reject those highly extolled virtues, such as pity, altruism, and mercy, that he has come to distrust, and finally express his forbidden cruel fantasies in a loud and distorted voice. In his more mature years, Durrenmatt seems less compelled to conceal his true feelings. In his later works we sense not so much the provocative nature of the earlier ones as the urgent need to do humankind the service of confronting it with uncomfortable truths. For, as a child, Durrenmatt must have been able to see through the world around him uncommonly well. Because he is able to describe what he has seen in a creative way, he also helps his readers to become more attentive and aware. And having seen things with his own eyes, he has no need to submit to the stultifying influence of ideologies.

This is one form of working through childhood hatred that is of immediate benefit to humankind---it doesn’t have to be “socialized” first. Likewise, those who have benefited from analysis will not have the need to inflict harm on others once they have confronted their childhood “sadism.” Quite the contrary, they become much less aggressive if they are able to live with their aggressions and not in opposition to them. This is not a case of sublimation but a normal process of maturation that can begin when certain obstacles have been removed. It does not require any great effort, because the warded-off hatred has been experienced and not abreacted. These people become more courageous than they were before: They no longer aim their hostility at those “below” them (e.g., their children), but directly at those “above” (who wounded them and thus caused their anger). They are no longer afraid of standing up to their superiors and are no longer compelled to humiliate their partners or their children. They have experienced themselves as victims and now do not have to split off their unconscious victimization and project it onto others. Yet there are still countless numbers of people who utilize this mechanism of projection. As parents they use it on their children; as psychiatrists, on the mentally ill; and as research scientist, on animals. No one is surprised or indignant at this. What Professor White is doing with the brains of monkeys is acclaimed as science, and he himself is quite proud of his activities. Where is the line to be drawn between him and Dr. Mengele, who performed experiments on human beings in Auschwitz? Since Jews were considered nonhuman, his experiments were deemed “morally” legitimate. In order to understand how Mengele was able to remove the eyes and others organs of healthy people, we only have to know what was done to him in childhood. I am convinced that something almost inconceivably horrible to outsiders would be uncovered, which he himself no doubt regarded as the best upbringing in the world, one to which, in his opinion, he “owed a great deal.”

The choice of available objects on which a person can take revenge for his or her childhood suffering is practically limitless, but one’s own children provide an almost automatic outlet. In nearly all of the old child-rearing manuals, major emphasis is placed on how to combat willfulness and the tyranny of the infant and how to punish infantile “obstinacy” with the severest of measures. Parents who were once tyrannized by these methods are understandably eager to try to free themselves from the burden of the past as quickly as possible by means of an ersatz object; they experience their own tyrannical father in their child’s anger, but here they finally have him at their mercy---like Professor White his monkeys.

Analysts are often struck by the fact that their patients regard themselves as very demanding for having the most modest---but vitally important---of needs and by the fact that they hate themselves for this. A man who has bought a house for his wife and children, for example, may find he does not have a room he can retire to, although he ardently wishes for one. That would be too demanding or “bourgeois.” But because he feels smothered without this space of his own, he considers abandoning his family and escaping to the desert. A woman who entered analysis after a series of operations considered herself especially demanding because she was not grateful enough for all that she had been granted in life and wanted still more. In analysis it was revealed that for years she had had a compulsion to keep buying new dresses that she really didn’t need and seldom wore and that this behavior was in part a substitute for the autonomy she had never been given. From the time she was a little girl, her mother had told her how demanding she was; she was very ashamed and tried all her life to be frugal. For this reason, she did not even consider psychoanalysis. Not until she had several organs removed in surgery did she reach the point of allowing, herself the expense of treatment. And then it slowly became clear that this woman had provided the arena in which her mother tried to assert herself against her own father. No resistance whatsoever had been possible against this tyrannical man. But from the very beginning her daughter accepted a pattern of behavior that made all her wishes and needs look like exaggerated and extravagant demands, which her mother then opposed with moral indignation. As a result, any impulses on the daughter’s part in the direction of autonomy were accompanied by guilt feelings, which she tried to hide from her mother. Her most fervent wish was to be undemanding and frugal, while at the same time she suffered from the compulsion to buy and amass unneeded things, thereby proving to herself that she had the demanding nature attributed to her by her mother. She had to undergo many difficult sessions of analysis before it was possible for her to cast aside the role of her tyrannical grandfather. Then it became obvious that basically this woman had very little interest in material things---now that she was able to realize what her true needs were and to be creative. She no longer was compelled to buy what she didn’t need in order to make her mother believe she was tyrannically demanding or to secretly seize autonomy for herself, and she was finally able to take seriously her true spiritual and emotional needs without feeling guilty.

This example illustrates several of the ideas advanced in this chapter.

1. Even when the needs a child expresses are quite harmless and normal, she can be perceived by her parents as demanding, tyrannical, and threatening if the parents have suffered under a tyrannical father, for example, without being able to defend themselves against him.

2. A child can respond to these “labels” with demanding behavior that comes from his or her false self, thereby embodying the aggressive father the parent is seeking.

3. Reacting to the behavior of the child or later patient on the level of drives, or even trying to help him or her learn “drive renunciation,” would mean ignoring the true history of this tragic substitution and leaving the patient alone with it.

4. There is no need to attempt “drive renunciation” or “sublimation” of the “death wish” if the personal roots of an aggressive or even destructive way of acting are understood, for then psychic energy will of itself be transformed into creativity, provided that no attempts have been made to “educate” the patient.

5. Mourning over what has happened, over the irreversibility of the past, is the prerequisite for this process.

6. This mourning; when experienced in analysis with the aid of transference and counter transference, leads to an intrapsychic, structural transformation and not simply to new forms of interaction with present partners. This distinguishes psychoanalysis from other forms of therapy, especially family therapy.

From the book: “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence” By Alice Miller

www.sylvieshene.com

PROTECTING LIFE AFTER BIRTH

PROTECTING LIFE AFTER BIRTH

 

DESPITE THE MANY GLIMMERS OF TRUTH THAT 1989 brought to us, the same year was seen out in Germany with an unexpected, and unsettling, event. In numerous Catholic churches, the bells were rung for fifteen minutes to proclaim to the faithful that abortion was a sin.  In the midst of the euphoria at the tearing down of the Berlin wall and the growing consciousness among young people, we were thrown back into the Middle Ages--an era in which much of what we know today was as yet undiscovered, and which, anyway, had little interest in enlightenment.

 

Church bells have never been rung to proclaim the mistreatment of children sinful.  They weren’t rung as Hitler organized the mass deportation of Jews throughout Europe, or as Stalin presided over the extermination of millions.  And they didn’t ring as Ceausescu terrorized his nation, using its children as apprentice “Securitate” men, who would later open fire on real children.  But now they did ring, for a full fifteen minutes, so that even more unwanted and later tortured children could be born into the world!

 

In disbelief, one asks oneself:  Is it possible that the people behind such actions really are so clueless?  Do they not know that no less than one hundred percent of all seriously abused children are unwanted?  Do they not know what that can lead to?  Do they not know that mistreatment is a parent’s way of taking revenge on the children they never wanted?  Shouldn’t the authorities do everything in their power, in the light of this information, to see to it that the only children who are born are wanted, planned for, and loved?  If they did, then we could put an end to the creation and continuation of evil in our world.  To force the role of a mother on a woman who does not wish to be mother is an offense not just against her, but against the whole human community, because the child she brings into the world is likely to take criminal revenge for its birth, as do the many (mis)leaders threatening our lives.  All wars we ever had were the deeds of once unwanted, heinously mistreated children.  It is the right to lived life that we must protect wherever and whenever it is threatened. And it should never be sacrificed to an abstract idea.

 

Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms.  Many seek refuge in religious beliefs.  In their weakness, they place their trust in “relics,” awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves.  Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people, and to be acting on their behalf, has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts.  If they aren’t, if they ignore or neglect that duty, claiming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of “life” are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and trust of the faithful and dangerously confusing them.  The injunction against abortion goes even further:  Consciously or unconsciously, it represents support for cruelty against children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted existences, existences that can easily become a liability for the community at large.

 

When I see the passion with which Catholic priests - men childless by choice - fight against abortion, I can’t help asking what it is that motivates them.  Is it a desire to prove that unlived life, as perhaps their own destinies suggest, is more important and more valuable than lived life?  Was that, perhaps, how the parents of those passionately committed to stopping abortion thought, though they expressed it in different ways?  Or is it a case of seeing to it that others share the same fate as oneself?  Both are possible.  Both are dangerous, when people are driven to blind and destructive actions by the dead hand of their own repression.

 

It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life.  Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children.  But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer:  the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.

 

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.

 

Few countries in Europe have, in fact, made parental violence against children a criminal act.  Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and recently, Austria have done so.  The largest European countries, however - France, Great Britain, and Germany - still refuse to enact such legislation.  Their argument against it employs the familiar language of pedagogy.  It is, they say, “in the interest of the child” not to have such laws.  It is even claimed that the mistreatment of children would increase if parents were to be threatened with prosecution.  In my book Banished Knowledge, I analyzed in detail the motives and reasons behind such arguments in connection with the writing of a number of “professional helpers,” so I will not go into it again here.  Suffice it to say ten years’ experience in Sweden has proved precisely the opposite.  The law against corporal punishment, introduced ten years ago in Sweden, has set in motion an irreversible process that sets that country apart from its European neighbors.  Thanks to that legislation, the fact that the physical maltreatment of children is a manifestly criminal act has now become anchored in the consciousness of the Swedish people.  Which is not to say criminality has been abolished overnight as a result of such legislation.  It does mean, however, that only a small minority of the population, through their ignorance, furthers the cause of criminality.  There is, for instance, a religious sect in Sweden that counsels the use of physical force against children with recourse to biblical precedent.  But in the society at large such views win few friends.  In the eyes of the aware majority, such a sect is merely a destructive fringe element.

 

In the most powerful European countries, however, the situation is quite different.  There, only a minority is committed to the abolition of child abuse.  The majority, drawing on a long tradition, rest comfortably in the conviction that the use of force is the best way of rearing children.  Peter Newell, founder of the organization EPPOCH, has reported in his book Children Are People, Too (London, 1989) that since legislation was introduced in Sweden only one case----involving a father, and punished with a small fine---has come before the courts.  And though such information needs to be supplemented by other data, it nonetheless appears perfectly logical that a criminal act is committed less often when it is made illegal than when it is permitted.  Why, then, do the powers-that-be go on ignoring this self-evident logic, two hundred years after the declaration of human rights?  Why is it still not illegal to hit a defenseless child when it is an indictable offense to strike a grownup---someone who can, after all, defend him-or herself?  How many arguments must still be mustered before this inhuman practice is finally, and unequivocally, outlawed?

 

Even if most civic authorities do not know---or do not wish to know---that their refusal to pass legislation only contributes to the growth of crime, terrorism, drug addiction, widespread psychic illness and the survival of ignorance, they surely have to recognize the indisputable fact that children are people and have the right not be beaten, as do we all.  It is to be assumed, therefore, that Peter Newell’s initiative to change the laws governing the mistreatment of children in England will spread to France and Germany, thereby putting an end to ignorance of and complicity in this, the gravest of crimes against humanity.

 

I agree with Peter Newell’s view that such legislative reform would be of epochal significance.  At last, victims of mistreatment would be freed from their acute, and paralyzing, guilt-fears---feelings that later prompt them to be in their turn the persecutors of others.  By categorically condemning the criminal actions of the past generations, such laws would also enlighten the coming generation and help it to avoid the blind repetition of its forefathers’ guilt.  It would also bring an immediate change to the way that parents behave.

 

Only then, when the law has unequivocally condemned the mistreatment of children as a criminal offense---making it punishable, say, with a fine---can a change in public awareness be expected.  Criminality may not disappear in a trice, as a result.  But such legislation will a least fill all those gaps in our consciousness that allow us to go on referring to such crimes as “socialization” or “upbringing.”  It would set an important caesura, marking the beginning of a process leading to a real humanity, a humanity that would create the necessary conditions for fundamental change to our way of living.

 

The horror of Hitler and Stalin, and the way in which their deed and ideologies spread across the continent of Europe like a grotesque plague when I was young, taught me what price human being pay ---or make others pay---for their blindness.  It also taught me that this blindness cannot be allowed to continue.  Young people can today learn the same lessons from Ceausescu’s example and others---above all, that dictators, once they have established themselves, can, with the help of the technical means available to them today, hold in to power far longer than they could before and are more difficult to topple without the loss of many lives.  Only under the favorable conditions created by Gorbachev’s courage to face the facts the Rumanian people manage to free themselves from the maniacal and destructive political machine one madman, attempting---and failing---to save himself from the fears rooted in his childhood, had created.

 

One of today’s tasks is to take preventive measures and thereby see to it that our children’s future is not left to chance.  That can only happen if we attempt to understand and avoid the origins of the kind of situation that the Rumanian people were forced to endure for twenty years.  And we must do everything we can to prevent similar situations from occurring.  In the light of our knowledge today, they do not need to occur.  Once the wall of silence surrounding childhood has been completely demolished, once people have access to the information they need---from the press, from books dealing with the subject, or in their own experiences in therapy---to explain how fantasies of revenge and the hunger for revenge arise, and once legislation outlawing the mistreatment of children has been passed, we will stop helping ignorance breed destructiveness and crime.

 

Then it will finally be visible to the great majority of people that a human being comes into the world as a highly sensitive creature, and that, from the first day of its life, it learns the nature of good and evil--learning faster, and more effectively, than it ever will again.  Only then will we realize with horror, what these tiny, immensely sensitive creatures did learn, and learn indelibly, as they were treated like so much inert matter that their parents---our forefathers---sought to mold into malleable objects.  Hammering at this creature as they would at a piece of metal, they finally got the obedient robot they wanted. In the process, they fashioned tyrants and criminals.  The products of this process---those who managed to come through with a small part of their potential intact---spent the rest of their lives claiming that the mistreatment they were subjected to as children had not harmed them one bit.  And how could it be otherwise, if they did not know how mutilated they had been?  Many still don’t know, don’t know that they forfeited a wealth of possibilities as their souls---and that means also their capacity to perceive---were mutilated.  Only their children’s children, who grew up with more freedom, will realize this in all its implications.  Thanks to their consciousness and knowledge of such crimes in the past, they will be able to avoid them in the future.  They will, I am sure, also do everything they can to counter blindness with enlightenment, knowing that it is just this blindness that enables ignorant and irresponsible people to climb to the pinnacles of power.

 

From the book: "Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth" By Alice Miller

www.sylvieshene.com

Stripping the Gurus

I just started reading this book and so far the little bit I have read it’s awesome.
The words below in Geoffrey’s book are so true! It’s exactly what is happening to some members at the cult group am talking about it in the letter to XA.  Some members of this group have become very phobic of the outside world and live in fear if they leave the group they will die.  The leaders give the members the illusion of freedom and love, but the reality is, they are in a very closed emotional prison very hard to escape from.
“…. For, that in no way offsets the blind belief inherent in the claimed necessity of keeping the guru-disciple vow, where the punishment for breaking that vow is to be cast into Vajra hell or the like. East or West, southern U.S. or northern India/Tibet, agrarian or postindustrial, all makes absolutely no difference. Rather, the fear of long-term punishment will produce exactly the same rigid reactions, and inability to walk away from toxic situations, in the East as in the West.  The universal nature of known psychological structures and dynamics throughout the human species guarantees this.
  When [alleged] cult leaders tell the public. Members are free to leave any time they want; the door is open,” they give the impression that members have free will and simply choosing to stay. Actually, members may not have a real choice, because they have been indoctrinated to have a phobia of the outside world. Induced phobias eliminate the psychological possibility of a person choosing to leave the group merely because he is unhappy or wants to do something else (Hassan,1990) That is, individuals in so-called cults who have been taught that bad things will happen to them should they leave will be no more “free” to exit those environments than someone who is petrified of water would be “free” to go swimming.”
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/index.html

Daniel Mackler -- Book Review

Hi Petra,
Thank you for your detail review of Daniel Mackler’s book. I really liked it and I enjoyed reading very much.  It is brilliant! You brought to my attention certain points that I had missed, like his gender roles discrimination.

Petra:“By no means DM "takes Alice Miller to the next level" as it says on the cover and as he seems to see himself, there is nothing  much new in this book that Alice Miller hasn't already said, but in a much better, clearer and  more convincing way. He has no real arguments to prove what he says and just repeats what he has read or heard elsewhere and adds some of his own personal points of view, which he has a right to of course, but which he shouldn't present as general truths, for example his views on sex, relationships, abortion and having children or even keeping pets.”

Sylvie: Completely agree. I too disliked so much his views on sex, relationships, abortion, having children and keeping pets, even though a lot of people unconsciously and compulsively  recreate their childhood drama with their pets and cause much unnecessary suffering to the animals, just like they do to their children, but doing it with children affects the whole society and keeps the vicious circle going. He says having an abortion is murder and mutilates our soul, I see it the other way around: carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being that I am not able to take care of and protect, THAT, would be mutilating my soul and would be soul murdering, and would have robbed me the chance at freedom and I talk from experience, knowledge is experience, everything else is just information and experience has taught me that most information out there is misleading information and lies. I know without a doubt if I had carry a pregnancy to term when I was not ready, my soul would have been mutilated and would have been soul murder by bringing a new being into an abusive vicious circle and my soul would not have become whole and free like it is today, and I was able to liberate a soul instead of contributing two more mutilated lost and confused souls into this world and continue the painful vicious circle. Some people see a fertilized egg (Zygotes) as a person, but that is not reality. The reality is a fertilized egg is nothing but a fertilized egg (Zygotes).  Pro-lifers fight so hard for the un-born beings because unconsciously they want an endless supply of innocent powerless beings to use, exploit and project their disowned parts. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to new being we are not ready to nurture, take care of and protect, THAT, is soul murdering and contributes to the destruction of the world, Just as Alice Miller says: “It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life.  Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children.  But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer:  the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society. 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.”
http://www.sylvieshene.com/articles-protecting_life_after_birth.htm

Petra: “To me he seems a very frustrated person who has not overcome his own traumas as much as he thinks. The whole book seems more like a personal diary, which may help him in his own personal quest to find himself, but I don't find it very helpful for someone who is looking for a way out of his or her childhood trauma.”

  Sylvie: Completely agree.

Petra: “Before he works as a therapist or gives advice to others, he should get a lot of more things settled for himself, in my opinion. He touches a lot of general subjects and truths without getting deeper into any of them, unlike Alice Miller who concentrates on concrete cases and uses them to explain the general mechanism of how mistreatment affects the individual and the society.”

Sylvie: Completely agree, I could not have articulated better myself. These are the same problems with many people calling themselves “experts” but in fact are just causing harm to the general public by creating a smoke screen and keeping people in the dark. They pass their psychological virus into others under the disguise of help vey silently and covertly, which will be very hard for emotionally blind people to detect and become aware of. These people are very dangerous, because they keep themselves and society stuck in the vicious circle. I call people like this parrots with very good memories and articulate repeating words they heard else where, but they have not fully understood and are disconnected from their own personal truths.

Petra: “Apart from that, I don't really understand his criteria for enlightenment, who defines when a person is fully, partially or not at all enlightened and thus has the right to have children for example? I think he generalizes far too much without giving convincing explanations for his opinions, which is ok, as long as it is just his opinion and not an expectation to others.”

Sylvie:  I agree, he says that a very disassociated person can mimic an enlightened person, to me it’s so easy to distinguish between the two; a very disassociated person can only fool himself and others that are still very emotionally blind.  He also says that an enlightened person can be mistaken or confused with a person from the far right, what a bunch of BS. An enlightened person can never be confused with a person from the far right, because an enlightened person no longer uses crutches like dogma, morality, religion, spirituality, ideologies and theories to hide behind, so he/she does not have to face and feel his painful truths. I have not met one single person from the far right that does not use one of these crutches.


Petra: “In general I don't disagree with what he writes, because it's obvious that his intentions are good and he wants to defend children.”

Sylvie: Having good intentions means nothing to me, the path to hell is full of good intentions, my older sisters had very good intentions, but they caused me much pain and unnecessary suffering for many, many years under the disguise of wanting to protect me.  A lot of people and parents out there proclaiming to have the best interests of the children at heart and with their best intentions unconsciously and very deceptively they continue the painful abusive circle. Anyone still vulnerable that goes to him for help will be emotionally abused all over again under the mask of help, he is silently and covertly passing the psychological virus or lies his parents passed on to him, but now these lies are coated with abstract knowledge, disconnected truths he has taken from Alice Miller  and others and with these lies coated with bits of truths serving as hooks to allure people to him, much like cult leaders do. I find people like that very dangerous and abusive that exploits emotionally blind people and they only contribute to creating more confusion and keeping people in the state of confusion and trapped.  Did you read Alice Miller’s comment about DM, she call him MR X
http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=1037
I too don’t like to mention his name because that is giving him publicity he does not deserve, because consciously or unconsciously only he wants to do is create confusion.

Petra: “I think he will rather confirm the negative options of people who reject or minimize the idea of the importance of childhood traumas than convince them. To me he seems to be a perfectionist and a puritan.”

Sylvie: Totally agree, while I was reading his book, it reminded me of my older sisters that were perfectionist and puritans.

petra: “As to his language I found it simply horrible, hammering the same phrases over and over again into the reader's mind, using anaphors ( all the sentences starting with the same words) all the time ( p.e.: it comes as no surprise...if he is fortunate...he conceives....he imagines....etc....This is the typical stylistic device used by  a preacher or a politician who wants to convince his audience of something he has not completely understood himself, trying  to give power to  his words and to make up for the lack of genuine meaning. His style is demagogic, polemic and fanatic and he states a lot of common places and platitudes (something that he criticises in other writers). When I was reading the book, especially the first part, I visualized a fanatic man preaching to a big crowd. Besides I don't like his distribution of gender roles, whenever he speaks of the abused child he refers to HIM as HE, while the abusive parent is always a SHE, the same when he speaks of the therapist: the (enlightened) therapist is always a HE while the patient is a SHE, I think this is just discriminating and sexist use of language, even if it is exchangeable, it's quite significant.”

Sylvie:  I completely agree with everything you say here, I would not be surprised if one of his parents is a preacher, children that are preached to, learn to preach, I mentioned it in one of my comments on the book discussion and when DM read my comments, he did not deny it, so provably was true otherwise he would have deny it.

I had to look up the definition of the word “Demagogic” the dictionary definition is: “making an appeal to people's emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a way that is considered to be politically manipulative and dangerous” So true and this is why he can be abusive to a person that still is emotionally blind and vulnerable.  This is what cult leaders do also.

Petra: “To his defense I must say, that I liked what he says about the environment that favours the way to enlightenment, living a  simple life in a healthy environment helps a lot to focus on the essentials without being distracted by consumerism and superflous things as I am lucky enough to know from my own experience.”

Sylvie: I too also know from experience that a simple life favors the way to enlightenment, I intuitively knew that material goods would not be a long term solutions to the painful feelings I was feeling and I needed to explore and find out the real causes of my pain and I did not distracted myself with consumerism and superfluous things, but unfortunately some people are not as fortunate to find a true enlightened witness  to help them understand the roots of their painful feelings or lack courage to face and feel  their painful truth and they distract themselves with all kind of things or become addictive to all kind of things and it seems DM is running, distracting himself from facing and feeling his repressed painful feelings  by becoming fanatic or addicted to spirituality, morality and his own ideologies. 

Petra:  “Back to DM I think his book is definitely not a great work of art, but whoever writes a book writes it from his or her own point of view and, it's up to the readers what we make of it, if we like it or if we consider it worthwhile. Every attempt to make people aware of the connection between childhood dramas and the state of our world is good.”

Sylvie: Yes, is up to the reader to decide if the book is worthwhile and I definitely  have made the decision that is not a worthwhile book and I have the responsibility to warn people that might still emotionally blind of all the red flags and dangers I see in it, When I was still emotionally blind I wished I had someone warming and explaining to me of the dangers of some people’s  Ideologies and theories, and how illusory they can be, but I had to go by touch for many, many years and sometimes I got really burned by people that are very articulate and say very convincing and seductive pretty lies  coated with a little bits of truth that ring like authentic truths, it would have prevented me unnecessary suffering for so many years.  Yes every attempt to make people aware of the connection between childhood dramas and the state of our world is good, but if a person is not genuine, all it does is reenacting the illusions we lived with as a children,  he has not faced and felt his own repression, but instead turns around and unconsciously passes the same lies passed on to him into others, but now coated with abstract knowledge or  bits of disconnected truths under the disguise of help and that only makes him another emotional abuser, preacher, phony and a hypocrite person trying to manipulate people.
We both see and feel things very similar, I just might be more blunt and direct and you are more sophisticated and a diplomat, maybe the difference is because I am self educated with only six grade education that drop out of school in the seven grade and you have a formal education from an University, and like the French say: vive la difference! Maybe together we can help balance each other out.
Again thank you for your time and thoughts.
Love, Sylvie

Hi Sylvie,

How are you? I finished reading the book and I agree with you to a great extent. By no means DM "takes Alice Miller to the next level" as it says on the cover and as he seems to see himself, there is nothing  much new in this book that Alice Miller hasn't already said, but in a much better, clearer and  more convincing way. He has no real arguments to prove what he says and just repeats what he has read or heard elsewhere and adds some of his own personal points of view, which he has a right to of course, but which he shouldn't present as general truths, for example his views on sex, relationships, abortion and having children or even keeping pets. To me he seems a very frustrated person who has not overcome his own traumas as much as he thinks. The whole book seems more like a personal diary, which may help him in his own personal quest to find himself, but I don't find it very helpful for someone who is looking for a way out of his or her childhood trauma.Before he works as a therapist or gives advice to others, he should get a lot of more things settled for himself, in my opinion. He touches a lot of general subjects and truths without getting deeper into any of them, unlike Alice Miller who concentrates on concrete cases and uses them to explain the general mechanism of how mistreatment affects the individual and the society.Apart from that, I don't really understand his criteria for enlightenment, who defines when a person is fully, partially or not at all enlightened and thus has the right to have children for example? I think he generalizes far too much without giving convincing explanations for his opinions, which is ok, as long as it is just his opinion and not an expectation to others.

In general I don't disagree with what he writes, because it's obvious that his intentions are good and he wants to defend children. Maybe I wouldn't go as far as you to call him abusive, I think it's a question of definition, but I also found him confusing and not very precise, especially for people who read this book without knowing Alice Miller. I think he will rather confirm the negative options of people who reject or minimize the idea of the importance of childhood traumas than convince them. To me he seems to be a perfectionist and a puritan.

As to his language I found it simply horrible, hammering the same phrases over and over again into the reader's mind, using anaphors ( all the sentences starting with the same words) all the time ( p.e.: it comes as no surprise...if he is fortunate...he conceives....he imagines....etc....This is the typical stylistic device used by  a preacher or a politician who wants to convince his audience of something he has not completely understood himself, trying  to give power to  his words and to make up for the lack of genuine meaning. His style is demagogic, polemic and fanatic and he states a lot of common places and platitudes (something that he criticises in other writers). When I was reading the book, especially the first part, I visualized a fanatic man preaching to a big crowd. Besides I don't  like his distribution of gender roles, whenever he speaks of the abused child he refers to HIM as HE, while the abusive parent is always a SHE, the same when he speaks of the therapist: the(enlightened) therapist is always a HE while the patient is a SHE, I think this is just discriminating  and sexist use of language, even if it is exchangeable, it's quite significant.

To his defense I must say, that I liked what he says about the environment that favours the way to enlightenment, living a  simple life in a healthy environment helps a lot to focus on the essentials without being distracted by consumerism and superflous things as I am lucky enough to know from my own experience. I'm in the fortunate situation to live in such an environment (because I chose to, I'll tell you about myself in another mail, it would lead too far here and now), in a very small village of only 30 inhabitants, the nearest bigger village has about 2,500 and is 10 km away. That's where I work and where you can get everything you need to live a comfortable life but without the excess of consumerism of a bigger town or city. I personally don't need much but I do appreciate some of the commodities of modern life like household machines that help you have more time for more pleasant things or the internet for example, because if you can handle it in a reasonable way it's a great way to exchange ideas with people you had never met otherwise. I love the simple life, but I'm not one of those "alternative" people whose aim it is to live self-sufficiently working as slaves in their vegetable gardens in order not to starve.

Back to DM I think his book is definitely not a great work of art, but whoever writes a book writes it from his or her own point of view and, it's up to the readers what we make of it, if we like it or if we consider it worthwhile. Every attempt to make people aware of the connection between childhood dramas and the state of our world is good.Conclusion...let's write a better book....a more practical one that might really appeal to people who usually don't read this kind of books.

Hope to hear from you soon Love, Petra

 

by Schiavonne: I know who you two are talking about. (I'll call him Mr. Mackler.) While Mr. Mackler does have good intentions, he does come off as a bit of a zealot. Even I got a little sucked in by his messages.

"Besides I don't like hi...s distribution of gender roles, whenever he speaks of the abused child he refers to HIM as HE, while the abusive parent is always a SHE, the same when he speaks of the therapist: the(enlightened) therapist is always a HE while the patient is a SHE, I think this is just discriminating and sexist use of language, even if it is exchangeable, it's quite significant." (In this passage he probably is unconsciously depicting his own childhood and reversing the role to blind other victims.)

Since I have been a bit confused by what he says, this is a sign that I need to do some more emotional work. I have to admit that I sometimes get carried away by some ideologies, but thankfully they're short-lived. He seems kind of arrogant, too, the way he preaches and all. (At least I'm honest about my tendency to be misled sometimes and not like him who thinks he's perfect or something.)

I also find it weird that he seems to praise Ms. Miller, yet he bashes her, too. How can you admire and harshly criticize a person? You and XX are correct that he needs to do some more emotional work before he blind people with his illusions.

Posted by Schiavonne on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 7:14 AM

Sylvie Imelda Shene: “Since I have been a bit confused by what he says, this is a sign that I need to do some more emotional work. I have to admit that I sometimes get carried away by some ideologies, but thankfully they're short-lived. He seems kind of arrog...ant, too, the way he preaches and all. (At least I'm honest about my tendency to be misled sometimes and not like him who thinks he's perfect or something.)”

I too still sometimes get confused by what some so called “experts” say, but like you not for long.

“I also find it weird that he seems to praise Ms. Miller, yet he bashes her, too. How can you admire and harshly criticize a person? "

He praises Alice Miller and then bashes her, because he is trying to make a name for himself by stepping on her. I find it very disturbing.

Posted by sylvieshene.com on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 1:07 PM

Raymond Lambert: Thank you Sylvie and XX for your comments. I think they will do for a LIFE-TIME and maybe we can let him drift into obscure neighbourhoods where I will not venture or stray.

Arizona Humane Society unconsciously are part of cruelty to animals

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=211993602160226&ref=notif&notif_t=event_invite

I left the comment below in the link above, but they could not deal with the painful truths I mentioned in my comment, so they deleted my comment and unfriended me, hypocrites. How are they going to help the animals and anyone for that matter if they can’t handle the truth?

Many organizations that supposedly help and care for animals are part of the problem. These people call themselves experts in the care of animals and proclaim to love them and to know what’s best for them, but all they do is create the illusion of love for animals and under the disguise of helping and caring, covertly are part of cruelty to animals and they prolong their suffering. I lost complete faith in organizations like the Arizona Humane Society and all the people who proclaim to love animals. I know they know where the people in trouble are that need help and assistance, but they put their blinds on and they just go rescue the animals when the people get in trouble and the law gets involved and the cameras are on, then they do what should have been done long ago to prevent cruelty and suffering, in this way, they look good in front of the public’s eyes and manipulate the public to donate money to their organizations, but really secretly don’t care about the animals or anyone else’s suffering. They don’t fool me anymore.

Below is a letter I wrote to the Arizona Humane Society.

To the person in charge of the Arizona Humane Society,

It is with sadness I inform you that I am no longer a fan of the Arizona Humane Society and unless you change the policy I will no longer be supporting your foundation, so until you change the policy please remove me from your donors list.

The attached letters explain the reasons I will no longer be supporting the Arizona Humane Society, if you like to read them.

Wishing you much courage to open your eyes and be able to see and do what is best for the suffering animals in our community and I hope in the future the Arizona Humane Society will be able to respect the feelings of humans and of the animals that come to your organization for help.

Sincerely,

Sylvie Shene

Arizona Humane Society unconsciously is part of cruelty to animals

by Sylvie Imelda Shene on Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 3:18pm

The person in charge of the Arizona Humane Society in the late 80s and early 90s was much more in reality and doing a much better job of preventing cruelty to animals, but whoever is in charge today must be in complete denial of his own reality and the reality of the animals in our community and under the mask of caring and the disguise of helping is unconsciously part of cruelty to animals.

These words by Alice Miller in her article “What is Hatred?” came very true for me yesterday: “…there is also the justified hatred for a person tormenting us in the present, either physically or mentally, a person we are at the mercy of and either cannot free ourselves of or at least believe that we cannot. As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=53&grp=11

I my case yesterday the Arizona humane society was my tormenter, they showed no respect for my feelings and the cat’s feelings, I have no doubt when they were little their own parents had no respect for their feelings and now they have no respect for other feelings either and unconsciously show how they were treated as little children, by reenacting their childhood drama with the public they are “suppose” to help and under the mask of caring for animals, they really are part of cruelty to animals with their judgments and self-righteous attitude. They deceived me by agreeing to respect my wishes, but after they charged $100 to my credit card, they changed their mind and did not respect my wishes, and from now on they will no longer see another dime from me, as long the Arizona humane society is run by unconscious people. A lot of these people trying to help animals a lot of times unconsciously are part of cruelty to animals under the disguise of help, because really people cannot help other beings without healing their own childhood traumas first, just like “therapists” cannot help their patients without facing their own history first and under the disguise of help harm even more their patients, how they can help the general public if the “helping professionals” fear their own personal history and repressed feelings.

My experience has been the same as Alice Miller’s in her article “The Longest Journey” she says: “…It has taken me all my life to allow myself to be what I am and to listen to what my inner self is telling me, more and more directly, without waiting for permission from others or currying approval from people symbolizing my parents.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=56&grp=11

J L commented on your status:

"You are 100% correct. I was heavily abused as a child and I have acted that out on pets in the past. In my late teens, I became aware of it, and have corrected it, but the urges are still there when my stress level gets high. At this time in my life, I have decided not to have children because of this, but perhaps one day I will trust myself enough with a child. I will be happy either way. There is nothing inside of me screaming "HAVE A FAMILY!"

You are right about your analysis of therapists too. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and tried twice to advance my degree, only to be met with disaster each time. I had not (have not?) dealt with (remembered?) everything."

J, I am so sorry to hear you were heavily abused as a child; it should not hurt to be a child. Congratulations on becoming conscious of it and taking responsibility for your wounds and freeing yourself of the compulsion of wanting children to unconsciously use as scapegoats, like most parents do in our society. These people at the Arizona Humane Society use unconsciously the animals as scapegoats to hide behind, so they don’t have to feel their own pain and unconsciously pass their suffering onto the animals under the disguise of caring for them, pretending they really love animals, but only they give is the illusion of love, like their parents gave them and really don’t care about the suffering of the animals just like no one cared about their suffering when they were small children. It comes to mind these words by Alice Miller: “Thank you so much for your brave and insightful statement. You are right, 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.”

http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=723458921&notes_tab=app_2347471856#!/note.php?note_id=454954705451

Unlived Anger

by Sylvie Imelda Shene on Monday, August 9, 2010 at 11:20am

Unlived Anger

I hear all the time people saying: I don't understand why people hurt animals or don't care about the suffering of animals? Well, people hurt animals or don't care because they were abused when they were little children and some people never acknowledge their abuse and work through it and they unconsciously and cowardly take it out on the most vulnerable, defenseless beings in our society, children and animals. When they were little children nobody really cared how they felt and now they don't care about other beings feelings either. The Arizona Humane Society blindly, silently, covertly, and unconsciously is passing their suffering into the animals that cannot express their true feelings under the mask of caring and the disguise of helping -- We cannot be animal rights advocates without being children's rights advocate.

Anyone that would like to understand why mad scientists do cowardly acts in the link below:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm..?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=203..423202&albumId=2065138

Read the article "Unlived Anger" by Dr. Alice Miller in the link below.

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlived-anger.html

It's quite a big article; here is the part where Dr. Alice Miller talks about a mad scientist.

"An American professor, for example, has been conducting experiments for years with brain transplants. In an interview with the magazine Tele, he reports that he has already succeeded in replacing the brain of one monkey with that of another. He does not doubt that in the foreseeable future it will be possible to do the same thing with human beings. Readers have a choice here: they can be thrilled at so much scientific progress, or they can wonder how such absurdity can be possible and what purpose such pursuits can serve. But a piece of seemingly unimportant information may produce an "aha" reaction in them, for Professor White speaks of "religious feelings" connected with his endeavor. Questioned by the interviewer, he explains that he had a very strict Catholic upbringing and in the opinion of his ten children had been raised like a dinosaur. I don't know what is meant by this, but I can imagine that this image refers to antediluvian methods of child-rearing. What does that have to do with his scientific work? Perhaps this is the unconscious background for Professor White's experiments: by devoting all his energy and vitality to the goal one day being able to transplant brains in human beings, he is fulfilling his long-harbored infantile wish to be able to replace his parents' brains. Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has 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."
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlived-anger.html
 

Hi J,

Thank you for passing along my message. Eric from PETA called me and it was nice to talk with someone with their eyes open and able to see. I felt understood and not as alone.

I appreciate it

 

Also thank you to you too for all that you do to prevent cruelty to animals.

 

Best wishes, Sylvie 

 

 

Hi again,

Yes, I do work for PETA.

Thank you so much for letting me know about all of this--I've passed along all of that information to the appropriate PETA staff members.

Thanks again for all that you do for animals!

-J with peta2
J@peta2.com

 

 

I saw your post about the Arizona Humane Society abusing animals.

What exactly are they doing to hurt the animals?

Thank you for all that you do for animals.

-J with PETA

 

Hi J,

I am wondering, do you work for Peta? Maybe I should clarify my bad experience with the Arizona Humane Society. I was very aware that the Arizona Humane Society over the last 20 years has been run by people very emotionally blind, who cannot deal with their own reality and the reality of the animals, and with their policy not to euthanize, they send the animals back into the community into bad situations when they are overcrowded they go on TV saying they have waved their adopting fee asking the public to please to adopt their animals. Who are they fooling? Don’t they know that in order to prevent cruelty to animals you must never waive the adoption fee, the only fee that must be waived is the surrendering fee, but now they charge surrendering fees and waive adoption fees! How emotionally blind can they be? Can’t they see in this way they are being part of cruelty to animals? Because most people in our community if they have to pay surrendering fees, they just abandon the animal somewhere or kill it inhumanely. 

Anyway last Saturday I went there to euthanize two sick cats, one was sick and feral and the other one was friendly, they were stray, but I have been taking care of them for over a year, I had them fixed because in my entire life, no animal has ever had babies under my watch. I was happy to pay them $100 for this service and to let me see the animal’s bodies afterward, but after taking the $100 from my credit card they changed their minds. They told me they put to sleep the feral one, but they did not let me see his body, the other one they refused to put to sleep, so I asked them to give me the cat back so that I would take him to a regular vet, but they refused to do that too, they showed no considering for my feelings or the cat’s feelings because I am sure if the cat could express his feelings would rather be with me than with these judgmental and self-righteous people, with me he would know for sure would never be hurt or put in a bad situation. I felt abused and deceived by them and I will never go there again and for sure I will not donate another dollar to them Thanks for your interest and for listening.

 Sylvie

www.sylvieshene.com

www.myspace.com/sylne

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 J, thank you for writing, they motto of being a “No kill Shelter” and not wanting to euthanize they are just prolonging the animals suffering and putting them right back in bad situations, they put their blinds on refusing to see the real plight of the animals in our community and that makes them part of cruelty to animals and to people that real want to help prevent cruelty to animals, it’s very frustrating, because its hard to find conscious people with courage to face reality and willing to help and support you. Sadly if we want to prevent animal abuse, pain and suffering euthanasia is needed in today’s world. People that fight against euthanasia are not able to deal with their own reality and are projecting their beliefs and fears of death into the animals. Animals are not afraid of dying, they are afraid of getting hurt.  Like it or not people that are against euthanasia is part of cruelty to animals. Is the same thing with the pro-lifers fighting for the unborn children -- people that fight to stop abortion is part of child abuse. Alice Miller’s words in her book “Breaking Down The Wall of Silence” are so true. She says:”Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms.  Many seek refuge in religious beliefs.  In their weakness, they place their trust in “relics,” awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves.  Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people, and to be acting on their behalf, has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts.  If they aren’t, if they ignore or neglect that duty, clamming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of “life” are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and trust of the faithful and dangerously confusing them.  The injunction against abortion goes even further:  Consciously or unconsciously, it represents support for cruelty against children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted existences, existences that can easily become a liability for the community at large.

 

When I see the passion with which Catholic priests - men childless by choice - fight against abortion, I can’t help asking what it is that motivates them.  Is it a desire to prove that unlived life, as perhaps their own destinies suggest, is more important and more valuable than lived life?  Was that, perhaps, how the parents of those passionately committed to stopping abortion thought, though they expressed it in different ways?  Or is it a case of seeing to it that others share the same fate as oneself?  Both are possible.  Both are dangerous, when people are driven to blind and destructive actions by the dead hand of their own repression.

 

It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life.  Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children.  But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer:  the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.

 

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.”

 I also agree so much with the article below by Heather Moore

“Why No-Kills Are No Solution” by Heather Moore

Euthanasia is a touchy, emotional subject. Some people get upset because animal shelters and animal rights organizations like PETA must euthanize animals (many of whom are abused, aggressive, and otherwise unadoptable). People need to understand that a painless injection of sodium pentobarbital, administered by a trained, caring individual, is a merciful alternative to a life of misery and loneliness.

As long as people buy animals from breeders and pet stores and don't spay or neuter their animal companions, open-admission shelters and organizations like PETA will be forced to do society's dirty work. Every year, between three and four million dogs and cats are euthanized in U.S. shelters alone. There simply aren't enough homes for them all. Shoving animals into cages or kitchen cabinets, or warehousing them wherever else there is space is not a humane or effective solution.

It can be hard to accept this though. I once volunteered at a no-kill cat shelter. There were cages full of cats everywhere and countless more cats littered the floor, the kitchen counter, and everywhere else there was a spot. They were fed regularly, but they were starved for attention. The few volunteers spent as much time with them as possible, but between dishing out plate after plate of food, changing pan after pan of litter, and trying to keep the place presentable, there was just never enough time. Too many people came by to drop off unwanted cats (so many, in fact, that they were often turned away) and too few came by to adopt.

No-kill shelters may assuage our consciences, but they are simply not in the animals' best interests. They're often filled beyond capacity and cannot provide adequate care for the animals. Animals at these shelters often spend years living in cages with little human contact. Many become withdrawn, depressed, or acquire other anti social behaviors that further decrease their chances of being adopted.

Because of space limitations, no-kill shelters often can't take new animals in. So while a no-kill shelter can claim that it doesn't kill animals that doesn't mean that it "saves" them either. If "refused" animals are lucky, they're taken to another shelter that does euthanize. Others, however, may be dumped by the roadside, where they suffer fates far worse than a humane death by sodium pentobarbital.

Euthanasia may be unpopular, but those who truly care about animals must do what's best for them. They deserve a peaceful release from a world in which they are often abused and neglected. All too often, the only kind word or gentle touch a homeless animal ever receives is from the person who must end the animal's life.

Of course, open-admission shelters and groups like PETA wouldn't need to euthanize animals if people would sterilize their animals; adopt animals from full-service shelters instead of buying them, and push for mandatory spay/neuter legislation. To learn more about PETA's position on euthanasia, see www.PETA.org. To find out how you can help support PETA's Animal Birth Control campaign, and its mobile SNIP ("Spay Neuter Immediately Please") clinic, see www.HelpingAnimals.com

"TNR doesn't reduce cat populations. There are zero studies that shows that. Removing cats from the environment by adoption and humane euthanasia is the only thing that actually reduces cat populations. Outdoor feeding is the absolute worst thing because people seeing cats being fed think that is a safe place to dump their cats and well fed cats produce more kittens."

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