Repressed Anger Is Very Dangerous

I hear all the time people saying: I don't understand why people hurt an animal or don't care about the suffering of animals? Well, people hurt animals or don't care because they were abused when they were defenseless 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. Some people 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 animals rights advocate without being children rights advocate also. 

Anyone that likes to understand why mad people do cowardly acts read the article Unlived Anger in the link below.
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlived-anger.html
It's quite a long article; here is the part where Dr. Alice Miller talks about a mad scientist.
“Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

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."
From the book: “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence” By Alice Miller
Read more here: http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlived-anger.html

I could not agree more with Ricky. A country that allows an animal to be tortured -- are showing the world how dangerous their level of repression is and all the people that participate in this barbaric violent act have grown to full-blown psychopaths. Only unfeeling robots psychopaths could participate and watch an animal being tortured.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ricky-gervais-says-f-anyone-6266272#rlabs=3

Below is my comment on José Pedro Namora post on Facebook against bullfights 

Let’s not forget that the witness of violence is a victim of violence. This is child abuse. I remember being a little girl growing up in Portugal and witnessing a bullfight for the first time on TV. It was horrifying for me to witness a bull being tortured like that and I started crying wanting to stop what I was witnessing. People watching told me that was Portuguese culture and my answer to them was: Fuck the culture and its traditions if it hurts and tortures others sentient beings.  I’m ashamed to be born in a country that allows animals to be tortured in the name of tradition, culture, and entertainment and call this art! 

Nao esquecer que a testemunha de violencia e vitima de violencia. Isto e abuso de criancas. Lembro-me de ser uma crianca a crescer em Portugal e a assistir a uma tourada pela primeira vez na televisao. Foi horripilante para mim testemunhar um touro sendo torturado assim, e eu comecei a chorar querendo parar o que estava testemunhando. As pessoas a ver disseram que era a cultura portuguesa e a minha resposta foi: lixe-se a cultura e a sua tradicoes, se maguar e torturar outros seres sencientes. Tenho vergonha de ter nascido em um pais que permite que os animais sejam torturados em nome da tradicao, da cultura e do entretenimento e chamarem isto arte!

Most People’s Love is Nothing But a Farce, a Sham, and a Façade

“We cannot really love if we are forbidden to know our truth, the truth about our parents and caregivers as well as about ourselves. We can only try to behave as if we were loving, but this hypocritical behavior is the opposite of love. It is confusing and deceptive, and it produces much helpless rage in the deceived person. This rage must be repressed in the presence of the pretended “love,” especially if one is dependent, as a child is, on the person who is masquerading in this illusion of love.” Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The search for the True Self) Page 23

 “MY MAIN CONCERN in this present book is with the effects the denial of our true and strong emotions have on our bodies. Such denial is demanded of us not least by morality and religion. On the basis of what I know about psychotherapy, both from personal experience and from accounts I have been given by very many people, I have come to the conclusion that individuals abused in childhood can attempt to obey the Forth Commandment* only by recourse to a massive repression and detachment of their true emotions. They cannot love and honor their parents because unconsciously they still fear them. However much they want to, they cannot build up a relaxed and trusting relationship.

Instead, what usually materializes is a pathological attachment, a mixture of fear and dutiful obedience that hardly deserves the name of love in the genuine sense of the word. I call this a sham, a façade. In addition, people abused in childhood frequently hope all their lives that someday they will experience the love they have been denied. These expectations reinforce their attachment to their parents, an attachment that religion creeds refer to as love and praise as a virtue. Unfortunately, the same thing happens in most therapies, as most people are still dominated by traditional morality. There is a price to be paid for this morality, a price paid by the body.

Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel will ultimately fall ill---unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projections onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves.

From the Preface the Body Nerve Lies, page 14, 15

 …In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place. On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions imposed on me. But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones.

The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation. Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like me) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Forth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this exacts both from their own bodies and from their children. As long as the children allow themselves to be used in this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one’s personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception.

A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words, But I believe that is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they most, and at the same time will allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception.

When children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate. If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yarning for the fulfilment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yarning will be directed at other people. In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of “upbringing,” the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things that those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most. This is a normal response on the part of the body. It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations. The deprivation or hole is there, waiting to be filled.

The older we get, the more difficult it is to find people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body’s expectations do not slacken with age---quite the contrary! They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren. The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial. In this way we can create in ourselves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfilment since birth, if not earlier. Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us.

To make this happen, we need one special experience: the experience of love for the child we once were. Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consist of.  

…once that energy is no longer required for the repression of one’s own truth. The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depression reasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down the memories stored in the body, and refuses them the attention they clamor for.

…But many people prefer to seek aid from medication, drugs, or alcohol, which can only block off the path to the understanding of the truth even more completely. Why? Because recognizing the truth is painful? This is certainly the case, But that pain is temporary. With the right kind of therapeutic care it can be endured. I believe that the main problem here is that there are not enough such professionals’ companions to be had. Almost all the representatives of what I’ll call the “caring professions” appear to be prevented by our morality system from siding with the children we once were and recognizing the consequences of the early injuries we have sustained. They are entirely under the influence of the Fourth Commandment, which tells us to honor our parents, “that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.’

It is patently obvious that this commandment is bound to thwart the healing of early injuries. It is equally obvious why this fact has never been publicly recognized and though about. The scope and power of the commandment is immeasurable, since it is nurtured by the infant’s natural attachment to its parents. The greatest philosophers and writers have shied away from attacking it. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, who was notable for his virulent attacks on Christian morality, never went so far to extend that criticism to his own family. In every adult who has suffered abuse as a child lies dormant that small child’s fear of punishment at the hands of the parents if he or she should dare to rebel against their behavior. But it will lie dormant only as long that fear remains unconscious. Once consciously experienced, it will dissolve in the course of time.

The morality behind the Fourth Commandment, coupled with the expectations of the children we once were, creates a situation in which the large majority of therapists will offer patients precisely the same principles they were confronted with during their upbringing. Many of the therapists are still bound up with their own parents by countless threads. They call this inextricable entanglement “love,” and offer this kind of love to others as a solution. They preach forgiveness as a path to recovery and appear not know that this path is a trap by which they themselves are caught. Forgiveness has never had a healing effect.  It is highly significant, perplexing to say the least, that we have been bound for thousands of years to a commandment that hardly anyone has questioned, simply because it underscores the physical reality that all children, whether abused or not, always love their parents. Only as adults do we have a choice. But we often behave as if we were still children who never had the right to question the commandments laid down to them by their parents. As conscious adults we have the right to pose questions, even though we know how much those questions would have shocked our parents when we were children”

From the introduction The Body Never Lies, page 20,21, 22, 23, 24,25

Deception Kills Love

"Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse. If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness. I no longer need to reenact what happened to me with the help of innocent people because now I KNOW what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.
..Am I saying that forgiveness for crimes done to a child is not only ineffective but actively harmful? Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. The body does not understand moral precepts. It fights against the denial of genuine emotions and for the admission of the truth to our conscious minds. This is something the child cannot afford to do, it has to deceive itself and turn a blind eye to the parents’ crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to do this, but if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or they make others pay the price – their children, their patients, the people who work for them, etc." -- Alice Miller


Above excerpt from the article Deception Kills Love by Alice Miller

CRUELTY CAN TAKE A THOUSAND FORMS

Cruelty can take a thousand forms, and it goes undetected even today, because the damage it does to the child and the ensuing consequences are still so little known.

 

The individual psychological stages in the lives of most people are:

 

1. To be hurt as a small child without anyone recognizing the situation as such.

2. To fail to react to the resulting suffering with anger.

3. To show gratitude for what are supposed to be good intentions.

4. To forget everything.

5. To discharge the stored-up anger onto others in adulthood or to direct it against oneself.

 

The greatest cruelty that can be inflicted on children is to refuse to let them express their anger and suffering except at the risk of losing their parents’ love and affection.  The anger stemming from early childhood is stored up in the unconscious, and since it basically represents a healthy, vital source of energy, an equal amount of energy must be expended in order to repress it.  An upbringing that succeeds in sparing the parents at the expense of the child’s vitality sometimes leads to suicide or extreme drug addiction, which is a form of suicide.  If drugs succeed in covering up the emptiness caused by repressed feelings and self-alienation, then the process of withdrawal brings this void back into view.  When withdrawal is not accompanied by restoration of vitality, then the cure is sure to be temporary.  Cristiane F., subject of an international bestseller and film, paints a devastatingly vivid picture of a tragedy of this nature.

 

It is difficult to write about child abuse without taking on a moralizing tone.  It is so natural to feel outrage at the adult who beats a child and pity for the helpless child that, even with a great deal of understanding of human nature, one is tempted to condemn the adult for being cruel and brutal.  But where will you find human beings who are only good or only cruel?  The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.  There are countless people like A.’s father who are kind, gentle, and highly sensitive and yet inflict cruelty on their children every day, calling it childrearing.  As long as children beatings was considered necessary and useful, they could justify this form of cruelty.  Today such people suffer when their “hand slips.”  When an incomprehensible compulsion or despair induces them to shout at, humiliate, or beat their children and see their tears, yet they cannot help themselves and will do the same thing again next time.  This will inevitable continue to happen as long as they persist in idealizing their own childhood.

 

Paul Klee is renowned as a great painter of magical and poetic canvases.  His only child may have been the one person who was familiar with his other side.  Felix Klee, the painter’s son, told an interviewer (Bruckenbauer; February 29, 1980):  “He had two sides; he was full of fun, but he was also capable of playing his part in my upbringing by giving me an energetic whipping.”  Paul Klee made wonderful puppets, presumably for his son, of which thirty are still preserved.  His son relates:  “Papa constructed the stage in a doorway of our small apartment.  He admitted that when I was in school he sometimes put on a performance for the cat...”  Yet the father performed not only for the cat but for his son as well.  In view of this, could Felix hold against his father the beating he was given?

 

I have used this example to help readers free themselves from clichés about good or bad parents.  Cruelty can take a thousand forms, and it goes undetected even today, because the damage it does to the child and the ensuing consequences are still so little known.  This section of the book is devoted to these consequences.

 

The individual psychological stages in the lives of most people are:

 

1. To be hurt as a small child without anyone recognizing the situation as such.

2. To fail to react to the resulting suffering with anger.

3. To show gratitude for what are supposed to be good intentions.

4. To forget everything.

5. To discharge the stored-up anger onto others in adulthood or to direct it against oneself.

 

The greatest cruelty that can be inflicted on children is to refuse to let them express their anger and suffering except at the risk of losing their parents’ love and affection.  The anger stemming from early childhood is stored up in the unconscious, and since it basically represents a healthy, vital source of energy, an equal amount of energy must be expended in order to repress it.  An upbringing that succeeds in sparing the parents at the expense of the child’s vitality sometimes leads to suicide or extreme drug addiction, which is a form of suicide.  If drugs succeed in covering up the emptiness caused by repressed feeling and self-alienation, then the process of withdrawal brings this void back into view.  When withdrawal is not accompanied by restoration of vitality, then the cure is sure to be temporary.  Cristiane F., subject of an international bestseller and film, paints a devastatingly vivid picture of a tragedy of this nature.

 

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

 

By Alice Miller