“In the recent past, young people have gone into the streets to demonstrate for all kinds of good causes, against war, for protection of the environment, and above all for more humanity. But there have never been any demonstrations supporting the rights of children not to be beaten by their caregivers. Why not? I wonder. Why have we been so slow to realize that many of the instances of violence that we campaign have their sources in the cradle and the playroom? And that we can prevent further acts of violence only by condemning that first devastating experience of violence right at the beginning of a child’s life?” Alice Miller ~ Paths of Life, page, 185
“Like any other form of exploitation practiced on children, sexual abuse may be accepted by the child as a kind of surrogate emotional nourishment if it has been starved of any other kind of affection. A child craving love, warmth, and protection may even avidly accept not only sexual interference but also blows, vilifications, and exaggerated demands if the only alternative is being rejected and abandoned altogether. I feel it is important for us not only to recognize and understand the illusion of infancy but also as adults to learn from the consequences of them. The denial of childhood suffering has far-reaching effects which are not limited to private life but also play an operative role in major political upheavals and crises.” Alice Miller ~ Paths of Life, page, 152
"For political leaders in the Hitler mold, the jubilation of the masses is as indispensable to still their effective craving as a drug is for an addict. The millions of cheering supporters do not realize that they are needed for the purpose and that purpose alone." Alice Miller ~ Paths of Life, page, 146
“but the unconscious memories drives them to reproduce those repressed scenes over and over again in the vain attempt to liberate themselves from the fears that cruelty and abuse have left with them. Some victims create situations in which they can assume the active role in order to master the feelings of helplessness and escape the unconscious anxieties. But this liberation is a specious one because the effects of the past don’t change as long as they remain unnoticed. Repeatedly the perpetrator will go in search of new victims. As long as one projects hatred and fear onto scapegoats, there is no way of coming to terms with these feelings. Not until the cause has been recognized and the natural reaction to wrongdoing understood can the blind hatred wreaked on innocent victims be dissipated. The function it performs, that of masking the truth, is no longer necessary. There is evidence, as I cite in my preface, that sex criminals who have worked through their lives in therapy may no longer run the risk of destructive reenactment of their traumas.
But what is hatred? As I see it, it is a possible consequence of rage and despair that cannot be consciously felt by a child who has been neglected and maltreated even before he or she has learned to speak. As long the anger directed at a parent or other first caregiver remains unconscious or disavowed, it cannot be dissipated. It can be taken out only on oneself or stand-ins, on scapegoats such as one’s own children or alleged enemies. The variety of hatred that masquerades as righteous ideological zeal is particularly dangerous because its imperviousness to moral categories makes it unassailable. Sympathetic observations of the cries of an infant brings home forcibly to the onlooker how intense feelings involved must be. The hatred can finally work as a life-saving defense against the life-threatening powerlessness. An animal will respond to attack with “fight or flight.” Neither course is open to an infant exposed to aggression from immediate family members. Thus the natural reaction remain pent up, sometimes for decades, until it can be taken out on a weaker object.” Alice Miller ~ Paths of Life, page 156 and 157
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