Gurus and Cult Leaders How They Function

Gurus and Cult Leaders

How They Function

MANY PROBLEMS APPEAR in a new light when we look to childhood as a source of possible explanations. We are living in an age in which democracies are gaining the upper hand over dictatorships. At the same time, the cult-group phenomenon is an indication that there is a growth in the number of totalitarian systems to which people voluntarily submit themselves. People growing up in a spirit of liberty and tolerance, accepted in childhood for what they are, rather than being throttled and stunted by their upbringing, would hardly place themselves at the mercy of a cult group of their own accord. And if by chance or skillful manipulation, they did fall afoul of such an organization, they certainly would not stay there very long.

But many people joining such groups seem completely indifferent to the fact that their new surroundings are powered by mechanisms expressly designed to subjugate them, to rob them of the freedom to think, to act, and feel as they see fit. They seem completely impervious to the fact that such groups set out to impose an Orwellian form of surveillance and demand for mindless obedience from which the prospects of escaping are more or less nil. Years of brainwashing and indoctrination ensure that the victims are kept unaware of the insidious harm being done to their personalities. They have no notion of the price they have paid for their malleability because they have no notion that there is an alternative.

The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care, without anyone involved actually realizing it. At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cults and cult-like therapy groups takes place on a different level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance, we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals.

In my view, however, this allegedly conscious exploitation can also be traced back to unconscious motives. Terrible as the consequences were, I do not believe, for example, that the two initiators of “feeling therapy,” discussed earlier, actually set out to establish a totalitarian regime. It was the power they gained over their adherents that made them into gurus. And this is what I have in mind when I refer to the unconscious aspects of manipulation. In the end, they themselves become the victims of a process with an inexorable logic of its own, a process they were unaware of because they had never given it any thought.

Thus, they sparked off a conflagration they were unable to control, much less extinguish. First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims.  From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the child-rearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.

Mithers’s report on the misleading blandishments that arouse false hopes and illusions also helps us to understand how political leaders operate. For the last fifty years, a debate has been raging on whether Hitler actually believed what he was saying or whether he consciously manipulated others. Was he a man obsessed with his self-appointed mission or a consummate actor, a Pied Piper luring millions to their doom? Some biographers have changed their minds on this point, tending more and more to the view that Hitler was indeed a fanatic believer in his own crazed doctrines. The question is a complex one, but one eminently worth following up because, as we see from the cult groups, it has lost none of its burning relevance for today.

If people stand up and proclaim they are prophets or agents of God, does that mean they are calculating charlatans, or are they lunatics genuinely believing they are in direct contact with Jesus? It is by no means easy to draw the line. In the case of “Feeling therapy,” it was clearly discernible how the craving for power engulfed any kind of realistic self-assessment on the part of the founders. They ended up believing they were as marvelous as their supporters thought them to be. They were asked to take part in 134 radio shows and 104 television programs. That was enough to convince them that they were epoch-making geniuses far superior to run-of-the-mill psychologists.

With cult leaders, it is very difficult to say where the conscious ends and the unconscious begins. Many gurus are driven by forces they are not aware of. If this were not the case, they would not feel constrained only by destructive means. With normal, conscious, systematic planning, it would not be necessary to proceed so elaborately. The gurus end up enmeshed in the webs they have woven. The examples are legion. A case in point, an extreme instance of pathological grandiosity, was the mass murder in Jonestown, Guyana, in the late seventies. Others followed suit. Common to all was the way in which mostly well-meaning but misguided and confused people sacrificed their own lives to salvage their belief in the sincerity of one obsessed individual---death as a means of preserving an illusion to the bitter end.

Many of the people who establish cult groups are paranoid, megalomaniac psychotics seeking protection from their own anxieties in the mass of their adherents by passing themselves off as helpers and healers. They proclaim that the end of the world is nigh and build subterranean bunkers in an attempt to escape their childhood feelings of helplessness and wage war on those feelings at the symbolic level. At the same time, they offer their services as saviors because that ensures them the adoration of their disciples and enables them, at last, to feel powerful instead of powerless. But as soon as they have grounds to fear exposure, they revert to threats and coercion to force their followers to keep silent. Suicide is an extreme form of self-imposed silence. It is also the course elected by those thirty-nine young people who took their own lives in a luxury villa in San Diego in 1997.

I do not believe that material greed alone is an adequate explanation for the system of fraud so elaborate as to inevitably involve unnecessary expenditure. The point is that it is not only the victims that lapse back into an infantile state, but it is also the people behind the system as well---be they little Hitlers or gurus. They bask in the admiration of their adherents, which they take to be proof of their exceptional status and thus completely lose touch with reality. If this were not the case, Hitler would never have prolonged the Russian campaign in defiance of the advice of his experienced generals. But he was completely besotted with himself, a helpless victim of his own delusions of grandeur. His unconscious regression made him lose all contact with reality and any level-headed assessment of the situation.

Hitler, too, believed that the adulation of the masses was irrefutable evidence of his own greatness. The fact that this adulation was born of his own lies was something he could easily forget. Thus he came to regard himself as a genius. Like Hitler, gurus use paternal or maternal promises of healing and salvation to achieve complete and utter devotion. Regression without awareness, the total relapse into earliest infancy, is the instrument they use to blind the masses and keep them in the state of boundless adulation. This kind of regression makes the criticism of parent figures like gurus and “charismatic” political leaders totally impossible. Equally inconceivable is self-criticism on the part of such leaders. It has no chance against the lust for power and the lure of self-aggrandizement.

Today, anyone who really wants to know how Hitler functioned needs to do no more than procuring any tape of documentary footage on Hitler and watch it attentively. Observe the gestures and the facial expression of the Führer, listen to the sound of his ranting, euphoric voice, and read the quotations from his speeches. Then the Hitler mystique will stop being such a mystique. It is an example that can sharpen our perceptions and help us identify other, similar phenomena quickly and accurately.

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. When Hitler painted his glowing vision of a thousand-year Reich free of revolutions, his listeners had no inkling whatever that their beloved---and allegedly loving---father was getting ready to send them off to their deaths in the war because his own personal biography willed it so.

Some people are convinced that so-called deprogramming is the best---indeed, the only---prospect of freeing cult group members from their dependency and their psychological blindness. I, for my part, am an incorrigible believer in the enlightening power of information. If it reaches people at the right moment, it can set off a process of reflection. Depending on the individual’s personal situation, that process of reflection will either be an ongoing process or it will peter out. The effects may also be delayed, deferred until later. The human mind is not a machine, an apparatus that can be repaired via an outside agency. It has its own individual history, and that history is the sole basis from which it can operate, the only source for thought and action. Sometimes an emotional shock will enable a person to wake up out of his regression and perceive reality as it is, even if that realization is a painful one.

Can therapy help in this respect? There is no general answer to that question. There is such a market for psychological aid today and so many different salvation-mongers peddling their wares alongside the serious representatives of the therapeutic community that there is little point in making vague, general recommendations. But one thing that can be said is that extreme caution is called for in the face of promises of “complete cure” via regression. Frequently, impressive-sounding theories are paraded, which, despite their scientific façade, have absolutely nothing to do with science. The ride roughshod over existing facts and make pronouncements that either is a pure fabrication or are derived from theories they are supposed to be substantiating.

Both Sigmund Freud, in his early years, and Arthur Janov were inspired by the hope that remembering and consciously re-experiencing a traumatic situation could bring about lasting relief from its consequences. This hope has not been entirely fulfilled. I know of cases where improvement has been achieved without recourse to the reactivation of memories, and others where the reenactment of the past and years of therapy has done nothing to alleviate the patient’s condition. Particularly if the therapeutic work restricts itself to a confrontation with the past. Energies briefly released by the suspension of repression are frequently drawn on by the patient to fuel new attempts at regaining the initial euphoria by means of activating more memories. This often leads to an addictive craving for pain and a reemergence of physical symptoms because the old patterns have not been properly worked through in a reliable, trustworthy relationship.

It is by no means unlikely that the attempts to use primal therapy to delve down into the earliest stages of life are bound to fail in those cases where very early traumatic experiences have caused severe, irreversible damage to the brain. Constant unavailing attempts to dissolve such long-standing distress will then overtax the organism to such an extent that no positive results can be obtained. At all events, the primal therapists who have been trained more recently have increasingly moved away from the initial absolutism. Many of them combine primal therapy techniques with other methods. The techniques developed over twenty years ago are used less often today; many therapists have jettisoned both the “intensive phase” and the darkened room. Most of them have discovered that they have no need for such things in order to enable their patients to get in touch with their feelings.

Karl Kraus once said that psychoanalysis is the illness it claims to be curing. This criticism was accurate as long as psychoanalysis barricaded itself behind rigid theories. Today, however, there appears to be a greater readiness to turn new research findings from other fields to account, notably the results from infant research and the study of the fetus. There also appears to be an increasing tendency to confront the actual facts of child abuse in all its forms.

Perhaps we may look forward to a time when primal therapy will also become more receptive than it has been in the past. The positive aspect of this approach might be salvaged once its advocates are prepared to acknowledge the negative effects it can have, its limitations, and the serious dangers it may involve when used as a means of manipulation. Then old concepts could be revised in the light of new insights. But adhering uncritically to the alleged infallibility of the once established methods and blaming the patients when things go wrong will relegate the whole approach into the same category as cult leaders’ empty promises of salvation. As Helga’s story shows, such promises only produce self-destructive dependencies militating against any genuine liberation of individual patients from their suffering.

Occasionally, it takes years of therapy to free people from their inner compulsions, constraints, and obsessions. But fortunately not always. Sometimes, a brief therapy will suffice to open up new perspectives and help patients to extricate themselves from the impasses they find themselves in. Here, additional group therapy has an important ancillary role to play. At regular intervals, news reaches me of such combined programs in various parts of the world, and some of them can indeed point to a very gratifying degree of success.      

From the book “Paths of Life: Seven Scenarios” by Alice Miller   

The Betrayal You Carry: On Parents, Scapegoats, and Unearned Anger

Here's a polished version with a stronger title and tightened prose, preserving your raw honesty and emotional intensity:

Dear D,

You’ve lingered in my thoughts since your last letter. Writing back felt heavy—not just from my own busyness, but from carrying your repressed anger. I know facing truth is agony. But as Alice Miller writes:

"Pain is the way to truth. Deny you were unloved as a child, and you spare yourself pain—but lose your truth. You’ll spend life begging for love. Therapy stalls when we avoid pain. Yet confronting neglect or hatred brings guilt: ‘My mother’s cruelty is my fault. What must I do to earn her love?’ This guilt shields you from a devastating truth: you were fated to have a mother who couldn’t love. Believing ‘I’m the problem’ lets you keep trying. But love isn’t earned. Guilt for what was done to you? It feeds your blindness. Your neurosis."

You feel I betrayed you. But the real betrayal came decades ago—from your parents. I tried to make your mother see. To protect you. She lacked the courage to shield you from a father who exploited you to feed his emotional hunger. On those Portugal summers, I watched it: you, a child, forced to be your father’s partner—not his daughter.

Your rage at me? Justified—but misdirected. It belongs to them. Scapegoating me lets that wound fester. Truth is the only scalpel: feel your repressed fury in its rightful context—childhood—and it dissolves. You free yourself.

I bought these books for you. They name what was done to you:

1. "Silently Seduced" (Kenneth Adams) — On covert incest.

2. "The Emotional Incest Syndrome" (Patricia Love) — When a parent’s love suffocates.

3. "Toxic Parents" (Susan Forward) — Reclaiming your life.

I left them with your mother. She refused to see. No excuses—she speaks English fluently. What good is language if not to seek self-knowledge? What good are degrees if they license emotional blindness? Miller was right:

"Universities churn out experts blind to child abuse. Why? Because cruelty masquerades as ‘parenting.’"

Your last email? Déjà vu. Growing up in Portugal, I was blamed whenever I refused to perform expected roles. My crime? Not soothing others’ unresolved pain. Now I know: their anger wasn’t about me. Yours isn’t either. I’m just the trigger. The scapegoat. Read more on transference here.

Sponsoring your move from Portugal was an illusion. I don’t feed those anymore. Geography doesn’t heal trauma. You can’t outrun yourself. I learned this in America: liberation came through facing my truth—not crossing an ocean. Now I offer that knowledge on a silver platter. Take it.

I can’t feel your pain for you. If I could, I would—you’re my niece, my goddaughter. Your freedom would be my joy. But this battle is yours alone. When you’re ready to fight it, I’ll stand with you. Until then? I won’t polish illusions.

Courage, D. Feel your truth. It’s the only path out.

Sylvie
(For context, see my earlier post: I Will Not Be Your Scapegoat)

Original letter below

Dear D,

Since your last letter, you have been on my mind constantly, and I have wanted to write to you, but because I am so busy these days, and plus writing to someone who is directing their repressed anger at me, it makes it even harder to sit down and write. 

I know the truths I talk about are very hard to face and feel, but for you to free yourself, you need your truth, like Alice Miller says: "Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life, you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis."

http://www.alice-miller.com/interviews_en.php?page=6

You feel betrayed by me, but the person who has really betrayed you was your father and mother when you were a defenseless little girl. I tried to make your mother see and take action to protect you, but I was not able to, and now you are suffering because your mother lacked the courage to protect you from your father, who was using and exploiting you to fulfill his emotional needs. 

You were betrayed by your parents, not me, but now because I did not say what you wanted to hear. I did not behave the way you like to; it triggers your justified anger, but that anger was caused by the betrayal of your parents, and as long as you direct your anger at scapegoats, you will stay trapped, and it never gets resolved. 

Only when we feel our repressed feelings in the right context do they start to diminish and get resolved, and we free ourselves. 

On my summer vacations to Portugal, I would witness that instead of you relying on your father for emotional support, it was your father relying on you to get his emotional needs met, and this is very damaging to a child; you were more to your father a partner than his daughter. 

I bought the books below, thinking of you. They describe what happened to you as a small child to a T. I tried to share these books with your mother. Still, she too did not have the courage to open her eyes and see, she can’t use the excuse that she did not know English, because she like you had no problems learning the English language in school, me in the other hand, because of my learning disability I was not able to learn in school. If I had not left Portugal, I would never have learned the English language, and I would not have been exposed to this essential knowledge to help me liberate myself. I felt that she learning English was a total waste, because if what we learned is not used to help ourselves, why go through the trouble of learning it? What a waste, I left the books in Portugal. If you gather the courage to read them, you will see yourself in them:

“Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners Understanding Covert Incest” By Kenneth M. Adams

“The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent’s Love Rules Your Life” by Patricia Love

“Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy: and Reclaiming Your Life,” Susan Forward and Craig Buck ---

It’s amazing how a person goes to University and gets so much abstract knowledge. Still, they don’t get any self-knowledge the most important knowledge of all, because without self-knowledge we just deceive ourselves and others and with a degree from a University it’s just like getting a ticket to go into the world to spread their psychological virus to the masses and this is why we live in a world with emotionally blind people with degrees in power positions making decisions that put all of us in danger and this is why the world is in the position is in. Again, these words by Alice Miller come to mind: “…society we live in continues to turn a blind eye to the facts of child abuse in all its forms. Among thousands of professors at hundreds of universities, there is not one single university chair for teaching about child abuse and cruelty to children. Why? Because that cruelty successfully masquerades as parenting and education,” Alice Miller, taken from the book “The Truth Will Set You Free,” page 101
http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=682&grp=0506

Reading your last e-mail is like a déjà vu. When I was growing up in Portugal, just because I did not say or do what people expected of me, it would trigger their anger. They would blame me for it, but I was not the cause of their anger, just like, NOW, I am not the cause of your anger, I am just the trigger. Back then, I did not understand these psychological mechanisms. I thought it was my fault for not being able to be and do what they expected of me. Today, I know very well what is happening, even though it’s never pleasant to have people trying to make me their poisonous container or scapegoat, I am getting better at handling people’s transference every day. In the link below, you can read a great article about transference:

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=116&grp=11

I see clearly that me sponsoring you so you could leave Portugal is an illusion, and I don’t feed people’s illusions anymore. Leaving Portugal will not solve your problems if you move to a new place without facing and feeling your painful truth first. The only thing that changes is the scenery, but your unresolved personal issues will follow you everywhere you go, everywhere you go, there you are! We can’t run from ourselves. Me leaving Portugal and coming to America did not solve my problems; the knowledge I acquired here helped me break free from the emotional prison I was born in, and now I am bringing this knowledge, in a tray, to anyone in Portugal that have the courage to face and feel their personal painful truths. I can’t face and feel other people’s painful truths, if I could do it for you, I would do it, because you are my niece and god-daughter and nothing would make me happier than see you free, but I can’t do it for you, just like no one could do it for me, only you can do it, NOW, and if you ever gather the courage to do it and need someone to talk to, I am here to listen to you and give you support in your liberation, but I don’t have time to feed people’s illusions.

I wish you much courage and strength to face and feel your painful truths, and I hope one day you can liberate yourself.

Sylvie

Also, read the conversation with D in the post before this one

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/06/i-will-not-be-scapegoat-or-poisonous.html 

I will not be a scapegoat or a poisonous container to anyone, family or not family

This Friday, after work, I went to do my side jobs as usual. While I was checking on a resident’s house, one of my nieces, now 25 years old, who lives in complete denial of what happened to her as a small child, called me on the phone. I was surprised, because she had never called me. Still, all she wanted to talk about was theories and rationalizations.

After a long day at work, I had no patience for it. Later, when I got home, I wrote an email to her to apologize for my lack of patience. It’s so sad, but my niece is suffering and there's nothing I can do for her. I think she was calling me because she would like to come to the States. She does not understand that I would not ever let anyone live with me who idealizes their abusive parents and lives in denial of what happened to them as a small child, because that is putting myself on the line of fire of someone’s repression. No one will come to my house again and make me their scapegoat or poisonous container, family or not family.

Dear D,

I am sorry I was too tired and did not have much patience to listen to you. Plus, our call got dropped. Anyway, it would be best if you wrote your thoughts down and sent them to me by email. I will be more than happy to answer you, because talking on the phone, I have a hard time following you and understanding what you are saying, and after a long day of work, I am too tired to try to figure out what you are saying. And plus it's expensive to talk on the phone.

I wish you courage and strength to face and feel your painful truth, and I hope one day you are able to free yourself from the emotional prison you were born into.

Sylvie

P.S. Please read Alice Miller’s books that I left in Portugal, and visit her website to help you understand yourself, because if you don’t understand yourself, you will never find anyone who will. When we understand ourselves, it does not matter if others do or don’t.

Sylvie,

On the 14th of April, I was to send you the following e-mail:

"At some point, we must examine ourselves. We are not all alike or have similar backgrounds; assuming that our responses serve others is a pure tyranny. It would be easier to say it is the fault of others, it is based on the premise that fetches childhood each and every problem. But if it did not know why, it no longer applies to things that are not bad.

Honestly, being a victim at one point or another is a choice; it is to transfer our problems to others. Not agreeing with the choices of others does not mean they are sick. The result of this statement is to convey the idea that should never have been born, for allegedly, you feel that people should not have kids. The option to not follow this path was yours, but you can not covet what you think is right to become the tyranny of saying such a thing.

Do not know if somewhere then we say that you should not have been born if someone told you you'd be likely to hurt. After using this rule blindly, one could say that.

I'm not in denial of anything; I was building a mechanism to have the ability to put up with everyone's theories. The vision is that you will always be conditioned. The difference is that I'm not saying you're sick, and I will not use this argument blindly, but by the way, I will not hurt you.

It also confuses me when speaking in truth, the dogmatic truth, the truly universal. Because when we defend the truth, whatever it is, so close, we could run the risk of not seeing anything beyond that. There is a subtle difference between not agreeing but respecting and defending our truth to others blindly. This is called intolerance.

I do not define people by who may have had problems, but by how they reacted to them. The issues and obstacles that we face are often that we see the true character and strength. Sincerely walking around, blaming childhood for everything, is a phenomenon of transfer. Because somewhere the question arises, what then? Who do you hear someone still thinks that was the victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse, do not know. These were clearly injured; they must be protected, but you do not know if you will ever question the goodness of the limits you make. But all other parents, the majority, do what they can and know and want their children to be happy. There are no perfect parents and families, much less perfect, but there are no perfect children.

I do not know if you ever asked what the true effects could have been if my mother had sent me to the USA at 4 or 5 years old. You chose to be childless. Imagine it was you, the mother, how would you react? Imagine it was you who sent you away. It is substantially different for you to go away, rather than sending you away. But it is always easier to educate the children of others.

It's easy to say who the others are who are sick; it is easy to blame childhood, but this is not what defines me. I do not want to sell any theory, nor do I have to instill some interest. I know that the limit is when we cause harm to others, and honestly, it does not matter the good intentions of anyone.

I hope you are happy with that vision. I can not stand those long theories, see the examples that people are or are not, and try to be one. I hear what they say. See what critics and their concerns are. I see how they react to adversity. I will not blame others or circumstances for my decisions or actions if I make a mistake. Calls to this responsibility, for freedom without responsibility, only to the indictment.

Finally, I only reply now, for consideration, because in normal cases, they even gave me the job, but I close this issue here because it's like arguing with a Communist or a cleric. They like to instill truth, but do not like to talk about the gulags or the inquisition. The basis of the latter two has always been a universal truth: that any dogma was for the good of mankind. "

 Maybe I would rather have sent the e-mail because today it is the same,

If you want people to respect your opinion, you have to be able to accept others. It is a basic principle.

It is not a matter of right or wrong, truth or lie, reality or illusion.

It is easy to judge miles away. It is easy to say what people should do when it isn’t you that has to face the consequences of their options.

You aren’t really listening; somehow, you are trying to use your perception of things in other people's lives. Your perception may be wrong, just as mine could be wrong. But I don’t impose my perception on others. I don’t have that need.

You may be in a cognitive prison that stops you from thinking outside the box you built.

At the end of the day, I respected you more because I respect your way of thinking without imposing mine. I don’t have the need to convince others.

You just didn’t get that people may love you and yet cannot be in accordance with your ideas. It’s easy to love the ones who are in agreement with you.

Love, D

D,

Thanks for writing. It’s obvious you are in pain, and you are not ready to see the roots of your pain and live with your own reality that your parents were not capable of real love.

I never said you should not have been born, but the truth is: most of us are here because our parents were unconscious and, despite my parents not being conscious, they had me without thinking about what kind of life they were giving me. I am living with the reality that my family is not capable of real love, and I let go of their illusion of the family and their illusion of love. After facing and feeling my sad reality, I no longer feel pain, I feel free, and I am enjoying my life. I will not let any members of my family come into my life and take away the joy I feel today.

Maybe, one day you will gather the courage and strength to stop idealizing your father and see him as he really was, UNCONSCIOUS, and live with your own reality, because the truth is we are all alone. Each of us has to find our own way to ourselves and save ourselves, because no one else can. I can’t walk your path with you, just like no one could have walked my path with me.

I wish courage, 

Sylvie

 I am going to be honest and straight:

You don’t really get it. You haven’t learn yet that different approaches can be both right.

The true pain is trying to talk to you, and besides really listening, you show more interest in projecting your ideas.

I didn’t judge your choices, but you, at some level, are trying to judge everyone else. Who is the one who always settles the presence with absence? You have to do better than that.

It is easy to speak, as always. Even, I never found a shelter in you, always a storm that was not related directly to me, but a derivative one from your unfinished matters.

You don’t really know me because you never listen. You speak with your image of me, not me as an individual.

Finally, I will not attack you because I respect and love you. Unfortunately, you are not able to do the same, because you are so closed in your little box that you can’t see further.

Love,

D

D,

You are talking with your head and not with your heart. I tried to help you when you were little, when I really could have made a difference, but your mother did not allow it and I was powerless to take you away from the nightmare you were born into, now, not me or anyone else in this world can give you what you needed as a small child. Now you are an adult and only you can help yourself, and for that, you have to stop idealizing your parents and see them as they really were, mourn the loss of your childhood, and have compassion for the child you once were, who lived in so much terror from her parents. I wish you the courage to face the nightmare of the child you once were, and I hope one day you can liberate yourself. Courage, sylvie

Can you do better than that?

When are you going to respect me as a human being? If I were using my head, I suggest you check your arguments, because they are weak. You have too many weaknesses in your reasoning... Perhaps because you only read what was in accordance with what you wanted. It´s a typical Heisenberg effect...

My parents love me more than you ever loved your cats, and imagine... even they taught me to love you like you are (with all odds...)...

But as I said, could you switch down the doctrine button? 

It is you who is in pain because it is you who is trying to prove something...

Love, D

D,

I don’t know what to tell you, but you are unconsciously reenacting your childhood drama with me, talking with me, exactly the same way your father talked with you. If you respect yourself is all that matters, if others do or don’t it does not matter, when I don’t feel respected by someone, I just walk away, as a child we could not walk away from abusive people, but the beauty of being an independent adult, I can walk away from anyone that I consider abusive to me. I can’t make you open your eyes and see, just like I was not able to open your mother's eyes and make her see. I have learned to walk away from people, family or not, who refuse to open their eyes to see.  If you ever find the courage to open your eyes to see, we can talk; until then, we don’t have anything else to discuss. I live my life my way, and you live your life your way. Live and let live.  

Sylvie

D. B.:  Wow, a tough situation, Sylvie. I commend you on your integrity & you handled this very well.

J. C.: Ditto

Sylvie: Thank you, DB and J, it’s very sad to see people, family or not family, say they had a wonderful childhood and loving parents, and they don’t realize that they tell their true story by unconsciously and compulsively reenacting their childhood drama everywhere they go and whoever they interact with. I hope she does not have children, but I could tell in her emails that she desires to have children. The words below by Alice Miller to one of her readers are sooooo true “AM: Thank you so much for your brave and insightful statement. You are right, unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist as a rule also a huge amount of people who were "wanted" indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention, and so many other things. Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently "want?”

The never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged. They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.
You are not being "sickeningly sarcastic," you only dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.’
http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=1838&grp=0308

J. R.:  

Until I opened my eyes, I treated men the way my father treated me -- you know nothing, you're naive, you're worthless, do as I say don't ask why, etc., and I treated women the way my mother treated me -- by avoiding them, never getting close to them, not caring about them, etc. When I opened my eyes, I was able to separate other men from my father's abuse and other women from my mother's abuse. Until I was able to see what was done to me, I could not change.

Sylvie:  My niece keeps wanting to make me her scapegoat. Her last e-mail is below.

“You have a lot of issues to work out. You have an obscene need to prove something, with an alarming lack of knowledge or even experience, and little wisdom in the end, by not questioning your own assumptions.

Honestly, your lack of logic, reasoning, and grounds is a huge handicap if you aim to be taken seriously. You should start to read the classics, and only after, try to understand others. Your ideas are like a house with no foundations. You built ideas that can’t be sustained.

Start by reading and understanding Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, and Stuart Mill… Try to read Dostoevsky, Zola, Balzac, Shakespeare, Goethe…. Maybe, in the end, your mind can be opened, because you just see what you want (“No worse blind than the one who does not want to see”), you don’t have abstract reasoning yet. If you aim to be in disagreement, you have, at first, to study and understand the basics. Disagreement is not synonymous with the absence of the capability to understand.

Any definitions that you may have to exist, thankfully to those men who settled ideas as freedom, metaphysical being, and love as you understand them today. You are just unable to understand men and individuals without knowing where they come from, which means knowing history, philosophy, and art.

I am not directing anything; I am just amazed at your lack of respect towards others. If you want to be better than others, you must learn to be humble and open to the idea that you may not know everything.

“I only know that I know nothing”. You just don´t let yourself be in this position. But without it, you will never be able to expand your intellect. Tolerance of others' ideas and perspectives is actually a great accomplishment that only great people can achieve. Little people tend to shape the world as it is more comfortable for them.

You can always walk away and waste the opportunity to improve yourself. The courage it is all about being aware of our own ignorance; it is a form of nihilism, a spirit’s renewal.

One of the best law professors said at some point, “We don’t accept advice from the ones that didn’t do better”. And that’s the point, you didn’t, you just judge and haven’t yet learned to listen before speaking.

Even the small task you failed. You can’t listen.

Learn to listen first… You speak too much with little wisdom, which only shows your insecurities and lack of reasoning.

If you were honest with yourself, you would assume your incapacity to be anyone’s godmother. Unfortunately, you are mine, and the only thing you have is the idea that I shouldn’t be born. Well done!
Love,

D

Sylvie:   Dear D, Like I said in my last e-mail, I don’t know what to tell you. Your e-mails are pure projections of yourself onto me. You are the one calling me and writing to me with the need to argue, so who has the need to convince?

I am not calling or writing to you to force you to see what I see. You are angry, and your anger is justified because you were hurt, but I was not the person who hurt you. Directing your justified anger at scapegoats does not get resolved and keeps you trapped; your anger will only start to diminish and get resolved when it’s felt in the right context. You keep saying that I told you: you should not have been born, but you are twisting my words, but like I said before, most of us are here, because our parents were unconscious and now it’s in our hands to choose to wake up, stop idealizing our parents and childhood, face and feel our sad reality or continue the insanity of our parents. 

You are using your intellect to avoid looking at the facts and seeing these fundamental psychological mechanisms. It takes courage to see these psychological mechanisms; intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create seductive illusions and lies. You are in your last year of law school. Now, because you think you have “higher education,” you have the illusion that the States are hiring people with higher education. The United States has a lot of unemployed lawyers, and the United States does not need more emotionally blind lawyers; we've got enough of those here already, now, because I am not willing to do what you want me to do, which triggered your anger. Like I said, I am not the cause of your anger; I am only the trigger, because I am not willing to let you use me the way you want to use me. In all these years of school, you come out with a lot of abstract knowledge and what I call empty knowledge that only serves to impress others and deceive yourself and other emotionally blind people. Education alone does not save people; it did not save your mother, and it is not going to save you either. Education alone is nothing but an illusion.

I did not choose to be you your godmother, your mother chose it for me, because she was smelling money in me, otherwise she would never have picked me to be your godmother, but the best godmother I can be is, to tell the truth as I see it even at the risk at triggering your justified repressed anger caused by the hurt of your parents when you were a defenseless little girl. I have read about the classics you talk about, and I suggest you read the book below if you really want to understand the writings of these authors. Wishing you courage, Sylvie

The Untouched Key
Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness

As in her former books, Alice Miller again focuses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. And when she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, as is amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz, Keaton, and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long - childhood - she opens rusty locks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives. What did Picasso express in "Guernica"? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion, and lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers? Alice Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries the conclusion that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.
It is Dr. Miller's goal to encourage these sympathetic witnesses, to lend them support, and to inform them about the worldwide and ignored plight of children, for she thinks that only by confronting the truth that has been avoided from time immemorial can human beings be saved from blind destruction and self-destruction. This discovery is eloquently illustrated in the last section of "The Untouched Key", wherein the story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" are retold to reveal their profound meaning.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N989PM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Also, read The Betrayal You Carry: On Parents, Scapegoats, and Unearned Anger

Blood Does not Flow in Artificial Limbs

All my life I could not help myself, but be true to myself

"Once feelings have been eliminated, the submissive person functions perfectly and reliably even if he knows no one is going to check up on him: …..

This perfect adaptation to society’s norms---in other words, to what is called “healthy normality”---carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. 

He never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Fuhrer or an ideology. 

Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or wrong. And how is this to be judged? 

Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? 

If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem too threatening to him.

Witness of sudden political upheavals report again and again with what astonishing facility many people are able to adapt to a new situation. Overnight they can advocate views totally different from those they held the day before---without noticing the contradiction. With the change in power structure, yesterday has completely disappeared for them.

And yet, even if this observation should apply to many---perhaps even the most---people, it is not true for everyone. 

There have always been individuals who refused to be reprogrammed quickly, if ever. We could use our psychoanalytic knowledge to address the question of what causes this important, even crucial, difference; with its aid, we could attempt to discover why some people are so extraordinarily susceptible to the dictates of leaders and groups and why others remain immune to these influences.

We admire people who oppose the regime in a totalitarian country and think they have courage or a “strong moral sense” or have remained “true to their principles” or the like.  We may also smile at their naiveté, thinking, “Don’t they realize that their words are of no use at all against this oppressive power?  That they will have to pay dearly for their protest?”

 

Yet it is possible that both those who admire and those who scorn these protesters are missing the real point:  individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out a sense of duty or because of naiveté but because they cannot help but be true to themselves.  The longer I wrestle with these questions, the more I am inclined to see courage, integrity, and a capacity for love not as “virtues,” not as moral categories, but as the consequences of a benign fate.

 

Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking.  The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection.  Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters.  What was considered good yesterday can---depending on the decree of government or party---be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa.  

But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves.  They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves.  Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name-calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it.  And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it.  They simply cannot.

This is the case with people who had the good fortune of being sure of their parent’s love even if they had to disappoint certain parental expectations.  Or with people who, although they did not have this good fortune to begin with, learned later---for example, in analysis---to risk the loss of love in order to regain their lost self.  They will not be willing to relinquish it again for any price in the world.

 

The artificial nature of moral laws and rules of behavior is most clearly discernible in a situation in which lies and deception are powerless, i,e., in the mother-child relationship.  A sense of duty may not be fruitful soil for love but it undoubtedly is for mutual guilt feelings, and the child will forever be bound to the mother by crippling feelings of guilt and gratitude.  The Swiss author Robert Walser once said:  “There are mothers who choose a favorite from among their children, and it may be that they will stone this child with their kisses and threaten... its very existence.”  If he had known, had known on an emotional level, that he was describing his own fate, his life might not have ended in a mental institution.

 

It is unlikely that strictly intellectual attempts to seek explanations and gain understanding during adulthood can be sufficient to undo early childhood conditioning.  Someone who has learned at his or her peril to obey unwritten laws and renounce feelings at a tender age will obey the written laws all the more readily, lacking any inner resistance.  But since no one can live entirely without feelings, such a person will join groups that sanction or even encourage the forbidden feelings, which he or she will finally be allowed to live out within a collective framework.

 

Every ideology offers its adherents the opportunity to discharge their pent-up effect collectively while retaining the idealized primary object, which is transferred to new leader figures or to the group in order to make up for the lack of a satisfying symbiosis with the mother.  Idealization of a narcissistically cathected group guarantees collective grandiosity.  Since every ideology provides a scapegoat outside the confines of its own splendid group, the weak and scorned child who is part of the total self but has been split off and never acknowledge can now be openly scorned and assailed in this scapegoat.  The reference in Himmler’s speech to the “bacillus” of weakness which is to be exterminated and cauterized demonstrates very clearly the role assigned to the Jews by someone suffering from grandiosity who attempts to split off the unwelcome elements of his own psyche.

 

In the same way that analytic familiarity with the mechanisms of splitting off and projection can help us to understand the phenomenon of the Holocaust, a knowledge of the history of the Third Reich helps us to see the consequences of “poisonous pedagogy” more clearly.  Against the backdrop of the rejection of childishness instilled by our training, it becomes easier to understand why men and women had little difficulty leading a million children, whom they regarded as the bearers of the feared portions of their own psyche, into the gas chambers.  One can even imagine that by shouting at them, beating them, or photographing them, they were finally able to release the hatred going back to early childhood.  From the start, it had been the aim of their upbringing to stifle childish, playful, and life-affirming side.  The cruelty inflicted on them, the psychic murder of the child they once were, had to be passed on in the same way:  each time they sent another Jewish child to the gas ovens, they were in essence murdering the child within themselves."

 

From the book: “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence” By Alice Miller