Some messages arrive quietly, years after the first exchange, and yet they open the same deep truth. J—a reader from Germany who first wrote to me in 2011—reached out again. Back then, she discovered my blog while searching for others who understood Alice Miller’s insights. She recognized herself in a post I wrote to my niece D, and signed her message “splitbrain.” This week, she wrote with reflections on Dr. Júlio Machado Vaz after reading my recent posts exposing his long-protected abuses.
Her words touched on something crucial:
Why do people refuse to see the darkness hiding behind “honorable” and “knowledgeable” public figures?
J wrote:
“One just refuses to realize that such an ‘honorable,’ ‘knowledgeable’ therapist and writer carries such a shadow. One just doesn't want to know… and this is crucial.”
And she is right. Most people don’t want to know. Most people don’t care unless the wound touches their own skin.
No one cared about them when they were defenseless children, and now they don’t care about others unless it affects them personally. Emotional blindness becomes a survival strategy, passed down silently from one generation to the next.
The Well-Kept Secret Behind the Prestigious Doctor
Dr. Julio Machado Vaz learned early how to hide his authentic self behind a polished false persona. With his education and his public image, he mastered repression, compartmentalization, and rationalization to perfection. He could write poetic sentences about human suffering while inflicting suffering behind closed doors.
This is how wolves in sheep’s clothing rise to prestige.
And like Bill Cosby in the United States, Dr. Julio Machado Vaz’s abuses were a well-kept secret long before I spoke out. When my niece—who was still a college student at the time—told a colleague about what happened to me, that colleague’s mother, a judge, confirmed there were already rumors about him having sex with his patients.
A nation knew. A profession knew. And yet, all stayed silent.
As I wrote years ago:
“The silence by those sitting on the sidelines is the real killer.”
Society protects its predators not because it loves them, but because it fears the truth about itself.
Humans as Repressed Machines
People say AI is trained on large language models. But emotionally repressed humans are also trained—programmed—by fear, obedience, and denial.
Most intellectuals walking around today are like sophisticated machines: emotionally numb, highly functional, rewarded for illusions.
AI, unlike humans, carries no repression. Its danger comes not from itself, but from the unconscious humanity that uses it. Deepfakes, deception, manipulation—these are not AI’s inventions; they are human inventions amplified through a more powerful tool.
Humanity is not ready for AI because humanity has not faced its own shadow.
If people don’t wake up soon, technology will accelerate the destruction they have been carrying inside for generations.
The Cheerfulness That Hides Quarrels
J also wrote:
“I write cheerfully, but still create terrible quarrels.”
Before liberating myself from my childhood repression, I did the same.
I smiled.
I was cheerful.
And in private, I fell into depressions I couldn't name.
When we repress our true feelings, cheerfulness becomes a mask—and the unresolved pain erupts later in conflicts we can’t control.
Today, after doing the emotional work, I feel like a genuinely happy child again—with the consciousness of an adult who finally understands what happened to her. Like Alice Miller wrote:
“If I allow myself to feel what pains or gladdens me, what annoys or enrages me, and why this is the case, if I know what I need and what I do not want at all costs. I will know myself well enough to love my life and find it interesting, regardless of age or social status. Then I will hardly feel the need to terminate my life unless the process of aging and the increasing frailty of the body should set off such thoughts in me. But even then, I will know that I have lived my own, true life.”
That is emotional freedom.
A Wish for J—and for Humanity
To J, I said:
Be kind to yourself. Don’t punish yourself so harshly. We can only grow when we accept ourselves where we are.
In this chaotic world, where illusions still rule and silence still kills, self-honesty is the only light we have.
And to anyone reading this:
Wake up while you still can.
Technology is accelerating the consequences of emotional repression.
The truth is no longer optional. It is survival.
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