Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries

Quotes from the book " Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries" by Alice Miller

 

Preface  

The only possible recourse a baby has when his screams are ignored is to repress his distress, which is tantamount to mutilating his soul, for the result is an interference with his ability to feel, to be aware, and to remember. Page, 2

Parents who have never known love, who on coming into the world met with coldness, insensitivity, indifference, and blindness and whose entire childhood and youth were spent in this atmosphere, are unable to bestow love - indeed, how can they, since they have no idea of what love is and can be? Page, 2

A human being born into a cold, indifferent world will regard his situation as the only possible one. Everything that person later comes to believe, advocate, and deem right is founded on his first formative experiences. Page, 2

2 - Murdering for the Innocence of the Parents  

I was unable to question the actions of my own parents because of my lifelong fear of the feeling that re-experiencing my former situation might arouse: my sense of dependence on my parents who had no inkling of either their child's needs or their own responsibility. For everything they did to me and failed to do for me, I always found countless explanations, so I could avoid asking: 'Why did you do that to me? Why didn't you, Mother, protect me, why did you neglect me, ignore what I said? Why were your versions of me more important than the truth, why did you never tell me you were sorry, confirm my observations? Why did you blame me and punish me for something for which you were clearly the cause?' Page, 19

3 - The Wicked Child

When a child must consume all her capability and energy for the required labour of repression; when, in addition, she has never known what it is to be loved and protected by someone, this child will eventually also be incapable of protecting herself and organizing her life in a meaningful and productive manner. Page, 37

It is only from adults that an unloved child learns to hate or torment and to disguise these feelings with lies and hypocrisy. Page, 44

I have seen difficult children, even in psychiatric clinics where they resisted the most ingenious pedagogic methods - for instance, by not speaking, by refusing food, by tearing out their hair - because there was no one around who was genuinely interested in their torment and able to understand their pain. Page, 46

A loved child receives the gift of love and with it that of knowledge and innocence. It is a gift that will provide him with orientation for his whole life. An injured child lacks everything because he lacks love. Page, 48

4 - Theories as a Protective Shield

According to Baurman, ninety percent of rape victims are young girls or women, two thirds of them between the ages of five and thirteen. Page, 68

Child prostitution is also a problem in the industrial countries. UNICEF has estimated that some two million children of both sexes are being sexually exploited throughout the world. This does not take into account the sexual abuse that occurs within the family. Page, 70

In the therapy I personally underwent, I discovered that, with every inner confrontation with my parents, the guilt feelings that had been instilled in me reinforced my repression, barred my access to reality, and blocked my experiencing of pain. It was only when I could query my supposed guilt that those feelings surfaced. And only when I could feel that, without and guilt on my part, I had been ignored, not taken seriously, scarcely even noticed by my parents, did I realize what had happened. It became clear that it had not been up to me to teach my parents a sense of responsibility, that it has not been in my power as a babe in arms to render them capable of loving. The only thing I had been able to do was show them that I was useful, that I could be exploited, and that I would never respond with reproaches. At the time, life offered me no other option.  Page, 70  

How I longed to believe that all signals were deceiving me, that things weren't really that bad, and that only my suspicion was wicked and unfair. How I wished that psychoanalysis might be right, because of my longing to cling to the illusion of loving parents. Page, 71

Every patient clings to fantasies in which he sees himself in the active role so as to escape the pain of being defenseless and helpless. To achieve this he will accept guilt feelings, although they bind him to neurosis. Page, 72

The patient must uncover the facts with the aid of his feelings; he must examine his discoveries, query his own statements, until he arrives at the certainty: such and such actually happened. This knowledge enables the therapist to accompany the patient on his journey, a journey that often leads through hells and torture chambers. These must be returned to, again and again, until every detail of the traumatic scene can be experienced, to allow the effect of the trauma to dissolve and the injury at last to heal. Page, 73

It is only in the child that traumas are bound to lead to psychic wounds because they damage the organism in its growth process. These injuries can heal if one dares to see them, or they can remain unhealed if one is forced to go on ignoring them. Page, 78

7 - Without Truth there can be no Help

A great deal of understanding is shown for an unemployed father who beats his children. There is no problem understanding an overburdened executive who does the same thing, especially when he is irritated by his wife. The wife also meets with understanding when she can't help beating her child after the milk boils over. Page, 130

The Jungian doctrine of the shadow and the notion that evil is the reverse of good are aimed at denying the reality of evil. But evil is real. It is not innate but acquired, and it is never the reverse of good but rather its destroyer. Page, 142

Evil people
Our knowledge cannot alter them. They can change only if they sense, not merely intellectually but with their feelings, how they have been turned into evil people. Only then will they be able to remove the blockages and, by experiencing the blocked pain, liberate the abused child who had to wish to harm anyone on coming into the world, the child who wanted love but found no one to make that possible for him. All he found was barbed wire and walls on all sides, and he believed this to be the world. When he grew up he built gigantic worlds full of walls and barbed wire, or complicated philosophical and psychological systems, in the hope and expectation of receiving love in return, the love he never received from his parents when he was an 'unworthy life.  Page, 143

8 - The Enlightened Witness

Formerly abused children could never say, 'How dreadful my childhood was!' Instead they said, 'That's life, that's normal. That's how I'll bring up my own children too. After all, I've turned out all right'. The early destruction of their learning capacities bears late fruit. Page, 149

People who from earliest childhood have been taken seriously, have been respected, loved, and protected, cannot but treat their own children in the same way because their souls and their bodies have absorbed and stored this lesson at an early age. From the very beginning they learned that it is right to protect and respect the weaker, and it becomes something they take for granted. They will need to psychology textbooks to raise their children. Page, 151

Appendix - The Way Out of the Trap

The child is not a toy or a kitten; he is a bundle of needs requiring a great deal of loving care to develop his potential. Those not prepared to give the child this must not have children. Page, 160

To beat a child, to humiliate him or sexually abuse him, is a crime because it damages a human being for life. It is important for third parties also to be aware of this, since enlightenment and the courage of witnesses can play a crucial, life-saving role for the child.  Page, 160

This is not inevitable is, during childhood, he had the chance - be it only once to encounter someone who offered him something other than pedagogy and cruelty: a teacher, an aunt, a neighbor, a sister, a brother. It is only through the experience of being loved and cherished that the child can ever discern cruelty as such, be aware of it, and resist it. Without the experience he has no way of knowing that there is anything in the world except cruelty; the child will automatically submit to it and, years later, when as an adult he accedes to power, will exert it as being perfectly normal behavior. Page, 161

What happens when a child reared in love, protection, and honesty is suddenly beaten by someone? The child will scream, give vent to his anger: Why are you doing this to me? None of this is possible when a child trained from the very outset to be obedient is beaten by his own parents, whom he loves. The child must stifle his pain and anger and repress the whole situation to survive. For to be able to show anger the child needs the confidence based on experience that he will not be killed as a result. A battered child cannot build up this confidence; children are indeed sometimes killed when they dare to rebel against injustice. Hence the child must suppress his rage to survive in a hostile environment, must even stifle his massive, overwhelming pain in order not to die of it. So now the silence of forgetting descends over everything, and the parents are idealized - they have never done any wrong. 'And if they did beat me, I deserved it.' This is the familiar version of the torture that has been endured. Page, 162

To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. Page, 162