Bad Genes

 AM: Feeble-mindedness seems to become more and more fashionable at the NYT: You can write to Barbara Oakley, the journalist of the prestigious NYT, and ASK her why "nasty people", people with "bad genes" were so frequently born in Germany 30 years before the Holocaust to become Hitler's willing executors and why this kind of sadistic people is not to be found in Germany of today. You will probably not get any answer because she will not understand you and she doesn't care about the answer.

The right answer is: The Germans' brutal upbringing 30 years before the nazi regime, and not the "bad genes", produced the millions of adults who adored Hitler and helped him to create a hell on earth. Their bodies knew the hell from their childhood on but this knowledge was deeply repressed by their minds. They have only learned submission to cruel orders and as adults took revenge using entire nations. This has nothing to do with the fairy tales of NYT's "scientific" genes but much to do with the laws of life. We could see recently in Virginia how easily pent-up rage can destroy life. Unfortunately, nobody seems to ask the most important questions: Where does the hatred come from and WHY?

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/bad-genes/

The theory that we are born with good or bad genes may be a modern version of the old belief that the devil put his child in our cradle and that we must make it sociable and noble with our vice or birch. We are born with different talents, inclinations, and temperaments but our urge to punish others has not a genetic imprint. It is the result of being punished very early and looking for scapegoats for the repressed rage. If it were not so we would need an answer to the question of why so many children were born with bad genes 30 - 40 years before Hitler's Reich to make his plans possible. This question shows the limits of a genetic explanation of Evil. Nobody is born evil, we produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/the-ignorance-or-how-we-produce-the-evil/

AM: Thank you for your letter and your solidarity. Does it mean that you no longer believe in the fairy tale of bad genes? Dropping this "theory" may lessen the number of your fans but give you a solid basis for serious research and open your eyes to the REAL sources of violence that are ALWAYS hidden in cruel child upbringing and child mistreatment. These were the causes of Hitler’s rise. If we believe that people are born with bad genes we would have to explain why so many millions of bad babies were born in Germany around 30 years before the Third Reich so that they became willing executors of Hitler’s perverse orders.

Have you also read my latest book The Body Never Lies?

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/your-wonderful-book/

Dear Alice

After reading a reader's mail from August 16, I will like to make a comment on the assumed link between behavior and genes. I will refer to the works of Jay Joseph, who have analyzed the claims of the geneticists about links to psychiatric disorders and behavior in general and their "research" that are supposed to back it up, from the foundation of the eugenics movement in the 19th century up until today.

Recent genetic molecular research has not identified genes for any psychiatric conditions nor for any wicked or antisocial behavior (which by the way often are categorized as psychiatric conditions). As the honest German psychiatric geneticist, Peter Propping admits (2005): "Whereas genetically complex traits are being successfully pinned down to the molecular level in other fields of medicine, psychiatric genetics still awaits a major breakthrough" (Joseph 2006, p.221).

The claims of the connection between psychiatric conditions, (all sorts of) behavior, and genetics is therefore based in most part on family, twin, and adoption studies. As Joseph points out, they do not bring any evidence for genetic connections, since they all are plausibly explained on environmental grounds plus error.

As Joseph puts it in a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, criticizing an article by Kenneth Kendler (2005):

"Dr. Kendler noted that the "low" replication level for linkage findings "contrasts strikingly with the high level of consistency seen in the results of genetic epidemiologic studies—for example, the results of family and twin studies of schizophrenia" (p. 7). In fact, there is no "striking contrast" between these results if they are viewed as evidence supporting a purely environmental etiology for psychiatric disorders. Environmental theories predict 1) familial clustering, 2) a higher concordance of identical versus fraternal twins, and 3) a failure to find genes, and this is what we find". http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/10/1985

I will recommend the books of Jay Joseph, The Gene Illusion (2003) and The Missing Gene (2006). The books are described here: http://www.jayjoseph.net/GeneIllusion.html http://www.jayjoseph.net/MissingGene.html

Warmly, V. J.

AM: Thank you for your letter. We publish it for people who have not yet fully understood how the dynamic of child abuse works and how the myth of the bad child serves to take out the endured abuse on one’s own children. People who have understood this dynamic don't need any "scientific” proof of this kind. They know that neither mental illness nor extreme cruelty comes from bad genes. And they know WHY.

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/no-evil-genes/

AM: Thank you for your letter and your interest in my writing. I don't speak about "unresolved childhood traumas" but about the whole atmosphere of families where many children have to grow up without being allowed to feel and to express their needs. Without a helping witness, these children often learn not to feel at all in order to please their parents and to survive, as I explained it in my book "The Drama of the Gifted Child". Later, they may develop different illnesses like obsessive neurosis, anorexia, etc., because their bodies need to make them aware of the fact that emotions are very important to a human being; they make it alive. The grown-up may then realize (in the fortunate cases) that the reasons, which made him or her to fear their strong emotions, no longer exist, that as adults they are free to feel them and to enjoy themselves.

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/genes/

AM: Thank you very much for your letter and the links. These texts explain very clearly why the discoveries of brain researchers made over the last years have not been used for a better understanding of the plight of the human being caused by experiencing FEAR early in life. To understand these connections we need to be in touch with our own emotions. If we are disconnected from them we are lacking empathy, for ourselves and for others, and our "discoveries" made only with the help of computers may remain fruitless ALTHOUGH THEY ARE SPECTACULAR AND COULD SAVE MILLIONS OF LIVES by reducing the global ignorance of spankers. Your much-telling links explain why MOST people TO THIS DAY (INCLUDING SCIENTISTS) still DON'T REALIZE that child abuse and the denial of its danger are nothing else than the effect of endured child abuse that left behind damage in the brain of the once-spanked abusers.

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/bio-medical-scientists-score-higher-in-autism-spectrum-traits/

" . . . the anger felt by every individual person stems from the primary justified anger of the small child at the blows inflicted on it by the parents. The immediate expression of that anger is suppressed, but at a later stage this suppressed fury will be directed at innocent victims with uninhibited savagery." -- Alice Miller, "Free From Lies"