Comments to Robin Williams’ Suicide Post – Humor Entices you to be Blind

Robin Williams' current Wikipedia page seems to have most or all of the "unhappy childhood" stuff that was there before edited out, whatever reason." 
According to Alice Miller, a person’s repression will keep escalating until it’s finally heard. “The truth about childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it,” she writes in Thou Shalt Not Be Aware. “Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill.”. Page 107, I write in my book A Dance to Freedom: “Even those who realize that real change is more difficult still take the easy way out and focus their energy on getting rid of symptoms, instead of searching out the root cause. “There are plenty of means to combat symptoms of distress: medications, sermons, numerous ‘treatments,’ ‘miracles,’ threats, cults, pedagogical indoctrination and even blackmail,” Alice Miller says. “They can all work for a while, but only because they reinforce the repression and reinforce the fear of resolving it. … A lot of money and fame comes from this business of repression because it satisfies the longing of so many grown-up children: to be loved as a good child. … In the long term, we have to pay a high price for this repression.” The typical methods people use to search for answers — which are really ways to run away from the truth — are futile because our real, repressed story continues to attempt to make itself heard no matter what we do. Alice Miller believed that our true plight, the root cause of all our repeated problems, will keep trying to gain our attention in more extreme ways until we finally take notice.”

Robin Williams Suicide
Robin Williams suicide was very sad, but not because of the suicide itself, but how he did it without conscious preparation.  His suicide was an act of being in extreme despair.  Current events in his life triggered the repressed despair of the child he once was and because he did not understand what was happening, it drove him into an act of desperation, the way he committed suicide, he showed the world the terror and despair he lived with as a child that he used humor all of his life to keep repressed, but whatever people use as a form of medication to repress eventually stops working and in the long run makes it worse. It's very sad that in his last hours on this earth he was in such despair and dies in the emotional prison of his childhood. No amount of money and fame could have saved him.

I could not agree more with J’s observations below. Also these words by Alice Miller came to mind; at the end laughter did not help Robin Williams survive:

“But how are we to stand up for children in our society and improve their situation if we laugh at and tolerate cruelty, arrogance, and dangerous stupidity? …Humor saved Frank McCourt’s life and enabled him to write his book. His readers are grateful to him for it. Many of them have shared the same fate and they want nothing more dearly than be able to laugh it off. Laughter is good for you, so they say, and it certainly helps you survive. But laughter can also entice you to be blind. You may be able to laugh at the fact that someone has forbidden you to eat of the tree of knowledge, but that laughter will not really wake you up from your sleep. You must learn to understand the difference between good and evil if you want to understand yourself and change anything in the world as it is. Laughter is good for you, but only when there is reason to laugh. Laughing away one’s own suffering is a form of fending off pain, a response that can prevent us from seeing and tapping the sources of understanding around us. “Alice Miller, taken from the book “The Truth Will Set you free” pages, 101.102,103

“…the necessity of repressing pain in childhood leads not only to the denial of one’s personal history but also to a denial of the suffering of children in general, and thus to major deficits in our cognitive capacity. This desensitization finds expression in the use of corporal punishment in educational settings and in the practice of circumcision (for both sexes). I am deeply convinced that the absence of good relationship with the mother or some mother substitute, coupled with physical abuse, including the kind of corporal punishment meted out in the name of good parenting, is among the sources that give rise to this lack of sensitivity and barriers in the mind.” Alice Miller, taken from the book “The truth Will Set you free” page, 117

“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

“If the repression stays unresolved, the parents’ childhood tragedy is unconsciously continued on in their children” Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The search for the True Self) Page 23

“I thought about Robbin Williams death so much...I loved the "Death Poets Club". It was THE film of my youth, the first film I saw in a cinema ever...

I feel so sorry for him, that he was in so much despair and I actually longed for a comment from you on this topic...Thank you for writing!

What I found "strange", and wonder how you see this, was the reaction of his wife:    “This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken. (...). As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions.”
Read more here

She is talking about herself and the loss...of course... But who talks about HIS pain, he must have suffered before, and about what HE has lost? And then she withdraws from the tragedy and uses "the trick", he had always used as well by being the funny guy: kind of positive thinking: Not looking at his death is not looking at the reasons of his death... (The Roots of Violence are not Unknown...AM) ...A lot of reactions on his death sound like this: We are sorry, but we want to stick on the positive, what he gave to us... Isn't this kind of a selfish attitude???

I observed another "typical" reaction, in which people point out, that Robbin Williams has lost his struggle against depression, alcoholism and Parkinson's disease...Well, he has lost this fight, but depression, addictions, and other diseases don’t come over us as weather- events... They come out of a reason, they have a history. Why are we all so blind??? Why haven't we found ways to really help people like Robbin Williams? We have to work together to unveil our stories and understand the reasons.  It is about really dealing with the cause for such tragedies. This is the war we have lost. Robbin Williams hadn't any witness for his pain at all around him...So sad... It is not enough to stand up and say "Capitan, my Capitan" and wish him a save travel and eternal laughter...How probably could one lough with such an end??? We have to start to ask for reasons honestly...Otherwise, we can't change the world and there will be never peace on this planet...” J

"As I have repeatedly stressed, it is not the trauma itself that is the source of illness but the unconscious, repressed, hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness. This causes many people to commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self. Naturally, we cannot require parents to face something they are unable to face, but we can keep confronting them with the knowledge that it was not suffering per se that made their child ill but its repression, which was essential for the sake of the parents. I have found that this knowledge often provides parents with an "aha!" experience that opens up for them the possibility of mourning, thus helping to reduce their guilt feelings."

-- Alice Miller

Above excerpt from Sylvia Plath: An Example of Forbidden Suffering

from the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing

and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller

Monica Chelagat:  Would be interesting to know more about his childhood. Thanks for your reflections.

Steve Thomas: Williams' current Wikipedia page seems to have most or all of the "unhappy childhood" stuff that was there last week edited out, whatever reason. As an adult he certainly used 12-step programs, may have been taking brain meds, and if so he likely had been getting "professional help". I've dropped Williams now, haven't explored more than this. But I'd like to see more Jonathan Pincus-style research done into not just cases like this but into the backgrounds of anyone involved in violent crapola.
Pincus' book (not pleasant reading, if you try it be warned it could ruin a few days for you. And btw I think Pincus' conclusions still bow a little too much to the old standard, conventional explanations):

Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill?

Here's a 3-day-old version of Williams' wikipedia page, more like the one I read:

Sylvie Imelda Shene: Steve, I think about you every day! I still need to answer your e-mail! I don’t need details of Robin Williams' childhood. The way he committed suicide shows me the terror and despair he must had to live with as a small child. People unconsciously and compulsively sooner or later show you the reality of their childhood in one form or another. And no medication, 12 steps, religion/cults, politics or whatever illusion people come up with to repress and avoid feeling the painful truths of their lives will be able to save them, all illusions eventually burst.

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