Questioning the family

Me too, like Alice Miller I am doing all I can to make it visible and enlightening parents, so the family institution becomes a safe place for children, because children need a mother and a father. No, we don’t need more nice words and books written by well intentional authors that write feel good books that are just like medications or drugs that makes us feel good temporarily, but disguise the psychological facts of childhood trauma. Like for example just came to mind the book Chicken Soup for the Soul that is a number one best seller! I could use so many other examples, they are endless! People are suckers for feel good words and a lot of people are more than willing to take advantage of this people’s weakness to get rich and make a name for themselves by recycling the same old seductive feel good traditional traps. We need books that helps us deal with the facts and reality.

Questioning the family

“You write: “In the traditional family the children belong to their parents, who have legal power over them. The children are isolated from the rest of society; they have to respect their parents, regardless of what the parents actually do, they have to obey their parents and to be loyal towards them. And the parents, often with the help of the state, can do almost everything to subdue their children; they can use the whole range of physical and mental tortures against their children.”

You certainly are right but why shouldn't we be able to change the patterns of the family instead of rejecting family altogether? And what do you suggest instead of the institution family? A child needs a mother and a father, but of course they don't need the hypocrisy, the abuse, the exploitation and the terror. We must work on enlightening parents so that families become the place of safety, truth, love and honest communication. We can't do this by writing nice words but by informing parents that they disguise the brutality they endured as children by denying it and repeating it carelessly on their children. In this way they protect their parents and produce violent people, again and again. I agree with you that families based on this system are the source of violence in our society and I do what I can to make this visible.” Alice Miller ~ From Rage to Courage, page, 75 and 76

Read more HERE

Dependency Breeds Hatred

Thank you for writing and sharing your story with me. I am sorry the child you once were lived with so much terror and has caused a painful witness in your body that is affecting your health and causing you to lose your autonomy.  I am so sorry.  I can understand your fantasy that primal therapy would liberate you from your repressed emotions and therefore heal your body and start on the road to autonomy, but I don’t think primal or any other therapy will help at the moment. Having someone who understands your situation and you can talk freely about all of your feelings with will be much more helpful. If you really like to find an enlightened witness follow the guidance of Alice Miller how to find the right therapist on her website. Your situation is very complicated and painful, because as long we remain dependent on those who were the cause of our painful plight, the latent rage of the child will not start to diminish, but actually accumulate. The words below by Alice Miller from her article “What’s Hatred?” are very true: “a person we are at the mercy of and either cannot free ourselves of, or at least believe that we cannot. As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome. It is hardly conceivable that a person being tortured will not feel hatred for the torturer. If we deny ourselves this feeling, we will suffer from physical symptoms.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/what-is-hatred/
   
This is why MM is still stuck in his hatred for his mother because he is still emotionally dependent on his mother and also dependent on her money and using her to make money for himself. He is trying to make a name for himself by unconsciously in a symbolic way killing his mother with his book to free himself, but these are fantasies of a small child and we never achieve true freedom by allowing the wounded child’s fantasies dictate our present actions, but actually will keep us stuck and strengthening the walls of our emotional prison leaving very little chance of ever escaping our childhood emotional prison.
So my suggestion to you is to find someone you can talk with freely about all of your authentic feelings and help you clarify and consciously feel all of your feelings within the context of your childhood and focus on improving your physical health. Also, look for resources you might have to help you gain autonomy how slow or little might be, baby steps is better than not taking any steps at all. I wish you much luck, courage, and strength on your journey.

Sylvie

P.S. fell free to write back and let me know what kind of feelings my words above triggered in you.

Also here is one of my blogs about the risks of primal therapy.
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-risks-of-primal-therapy.html
Here is another blog about primal therapy.
Read Alice's article at the bottom.
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2013/10/neve-put-your-life-in-someone-elses.html  

The Assassination of President Kennedy

This month is the 50 years anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy and Steven Beschloss shows in his book: “The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald, and the Making of an Assassin” how dangerous can be when we bring children into the world before we are ready to really love and protect. When women have children before are ready psychologically, emotionally and physically to have children is like playing Russian roulette, just like Alice Miller says: “We never know how a child will and must react to the injustice he or she has suffered,” some become great manipulators, rapists, assassins, sadists and some psychopaths, etc. And because of this, we should do all we can to prevent bringing more traumatized children into the world in the first place, because trauma is so hard to heal, especially once a person has become a teenager or an adult and the powerful enablers in our society don’t help. Every child born needs to be planned, wanted and truly loved.
http://amzn.to/1aw5lk7

The System of Lies

I have left the system of lies! And yes as long as people continue to believe in lies, the body will continue to scream louder and louder for the truth with the help of symptoms.

 “It is rather surprising that a woman of your profession has the courage to leave, at least partially, the system of denial and open the eyes for the truth of her childhood after having read a book. There are millions of people in your position who never find the courage to do so and to question the lies they have been told early in their lives.

 You ask me how you can connect with your father. Why should you? Everybody tells you that you must forgive. But you must not - if you want to heal. You can't fool the body; it doesn't let itself be fooled. And it remembers everything, the butcher’s knife, the soup cans from the garbage, the beatings and so many other cruelties suffered by a small girl from a highly perverse man. Why do you jeopardize your health by thinking of your father's childhood? If a man raped you on the street would you speculate about his childhood or would you become furious? The last would be a healthy reaction. Why is your father an exception? Because God is on his side? Who told you this? The body didn't read the bible, it insists on the truth and the small girl would have done it also if she had been allowed to see the truth. But nobody was there to tell her: you were treated cruelly and have the right to hate him. Unfortunately, you seem to continue to betray your body, yourself, by killing your authentic feelings. In fact, it is exactly the rage that can help you now to heal.

 The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms.” Alice Miller ~ From Rage to Courage, page, 53

http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=720&grp=0606

 

Never put your life in someone else's hands

Never put your life in someone else’s hands; it can be very dangerous. As children, we had no choice; our lives were in our parents' and caregivers' hands, but now we are adults. We must be in charge of our own lives. If we still have an inner wounded child inside of us, the adult in us has to be the one paying attention and listening to our wounded child. If we need help understanding our feelings, we should seek an enlightened and sympathetic witness to help us comprehend and experience them within the context of our own childhood.

NEVER, allow people symbolizing your parents take charge of your life and make decisions for you or make another adult your substitute parent and let her/him regress you to the wounded child you once were because that is putting you in a position of being controlled and manipulated by another person, just like when you were a little child and can be very dangerous to your mental and physical health and well-being. 

An example is the followers of the Secret by James Arthur Ray, who symbolized their parents/caretakers. The followers, “the good children,” followed his directions without question, and two of them paid the price with their lives for this mistake. Read more about this sad, tragic story here

Another example is Tony Robbins with his TV program “Breakthrough.” he, like many gurus out there, is taking advantage of and exploiting emotionally blind people and putting people’s well-being in danger. A few years ago, I was going through the TV channels, and Tony Robbins’s show “Breakthrough” was on. He had this emotionally blind woman sleeping outside with the homeless, so she would have the experience of having nothing. In this way, she was supposed to get over her depression and be grateful for the things she has. How sad that this grown person puts her life in this guru’s hands and allows him to regress her to the helpless, lost child she once was and exploit her just like her parents did when she was a little defenseless child. 

I am amazed at the number of smart and intelligent people who fall for the seductive words of charismatic individuals like Tony Robbins. Just like Alice Miller says in her book “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence.” “… We have seen how easy it is for intellectuals in a dictatorship to be corrupted; it would be a vestige of aristocratic snobbery to think that only “the uneducated masses” are susceptible to propaganda. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation.” 

One more example is religion; religion/god symbolizes the all-powerful parent, and the followers are permanently trapped in the role of the child.  Our goal is to free ourselves from all illusions, become autonomous adults, and stand on our own two feet without crutches.

Also in her book Paths of Life, Alice Miller says: "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. 

...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."

Read more here

Also in the article below, Alice Miller articulates very well the dangers of rebirth therapy.

CONCERNING PRIMAL SELF-THERAPY

 

I am frequently asked what I consider to be the decisive factor in psychotherapy today.  Is it the recognition of the truth, liberation from the enforced vow of silence and from idealization of one's parents, or is it the presence of an Enlightened Witness?  My view is that it is not a question of either-or but of both-and.  Without the Enlightened Witness, it is impossible to bear the truth of what happened to us in early infancy.  But by the term Enlightened Witness I do not mean anyone who has studied psychology or has been through primal experiences with a guru and has remained in his thrall.  For me, Enlightened Witnesses are therapists with the courage to face up to their own histories and to gain their autonomy in doing so, rather than seeking to offset their own repressed feelings of ineffectuality by exerting power over their patients.

 

The adult needs assistance in coping with the present situations as an adult, while at the same time maintaining contact with the suffering and knowing child he once was, the child he could not muster the courage to listen to for so long, but now, with help, can finally pay heed to.  The body knows everything that has happened to it, but it has no language to express that knowledge.  It is like the child we once were, the child that sees all but without the aid of the adults, remains helpless and alone.  Accordingly, whenever the emotions from the past rise to the surface, they are invariably accompanied by the fears of the helpless child, dependent on the understanding or at least the reassurances of the caregivers.

 

Unlike the body, our cognitive system knows little of the events far back in the past; conscious memories are fragmentary, brittle, unreliable.  But the cognitive system has a huge fund of knowledge at its disposal, a fully developed mind, and the life experience that a child cannot yet have.  As adults are no longer powerless, they can offer the child within them (the body) protection and an attentive ear so that it can express itself in its own way and tell its own story.  It is in the light of these stories that the looming, incomprehensible fears and emotions of the adult take on meaning.  Finally, they stand in a recognizable context and are no longer so obscurely menacing.

 

In a society with a receptive attitude to the distress of children, no one will be alone with his/her history.  The same is true of therapists.  Because then everyone will know that it is not the children who are responsible for their sufferings, but the adults.

 

I recently wrote a letter in French to the forum that I am quoting in English below:

 

Dear Franck, I understand well your fascination with the manual of Stettbacher.  When I read this manuscript in 1989, I thought that it contained the solution for a lot of readers who, after having read my books, were looking, like you, for the sources of their sufferings and fears in the history of their childhood.  As I had never had the luck to be understood and helped in my childhood nor in my therapies (it was always me who had to help others), I found the idea of a primal self-therapy at first quite normal and acceptable.  It was after some years that I grasped the great importance and even necessity of an enlightened and empathic therapist in the process of recovery.  Especially thanks to letters of people that failed to help themselves and who blamed themselves for their plight ( trying to do more and more therapy and turning around alone with their fears and pains) that I understood that the primal self - therapy can indeed trigger easily the old pent-up emotions but can reactivate the situation of the child that was always alone with his/her pains and fears.  This repetition of the old trauma is the opposite of a therapy.

 

Today, I share the opinion of Arthur Janov, who always affirmed that primal therapy without the assistance of a well-informed and compassionate therapist can be very dangerous.  (cf. his homepage.  In addition, I think that it contains (1) a contradiction in itself by reactivating a situation of which one wants to get rid of and (2) a perpetuation of the violence directed toward oneself.

 

I haven't had any contact with Mister Stettbacher since 1994, when I stopped recommending his method, but I suppose that the information on its negative effects reached him too and that it already motivated him to stop recommending it.  Since the release of his book, there is a lot of new information on this topic available that is easily accessible thanks to the internet.  Maybe the next book by Stettbacher will bring the necessary corrections to his present work, published 12 years ago.

 

Alice Miller

The Tragedy Begins With the Mother

Totally! The tragedy begins with the mother and until the feminists can see this painful truth, they will never be able to stop the vicious cycle of some men taking revenge on other women for the wrongs their mothers did to them when they were defenseless little children.

"Thank you for your letter, I am so glad for you that you have widely open eyes and have the courage to check the courage of the therapists you are talking to so that you will not become a victim of illusions. You can check 20 of them, probably you will get the same answers, full of avoidance but maybe you will find eventually somebody who will answer your questions honestly. If not you learned a lot, and you can benefit from this experience. Concerning the feminist therapists I agree with you completely. I wrote already 30 yours ago that females can abuse their babies, infants and small children with a total impunity, nobody controls them. They can take on their children all the humiliations they suffered from men in our society. Later, their sons who "love" their mothers can transfer their rage onto their daughters or other women or make war and rape women but still adore, defend, and respect their mothers because what they suffered as small children stays unconscious, totally repressed. And many of us seem to need for a long time the illusion of having had a wonderful mother. You are right, the tragedy begins with the mother that is protected by all societies and honored in most religions as the innocent sainte. In German exist already some books that broke with this taboo but for the English publications you must look at Google. The book by Bass and Davis is very helpful for victims of sexual child abuse but unfortunately the authors who are feminists write that only very few women abuse children. That is absolutely not true. There are apparently also women pedophile who live with boys of 10 to 12 year old and say that this is (for them!!!) a beautiful " relationship". Not to be aware of using children to revenge the own trama and ruining their lives is not only the atitude of men but of both genders as long as child abuse remains an issue avoided by the whole ignorant society." Alice Miller
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Real Love Faces and Feels the Truth no Matter How Much it Hurts

If we can’t face and feel our own truth we can’t genuinely love and this is why I am alone, because I will not get involved intimately with anyone that is not living with his own truth, most people can't face and feel their own painful truths and I don't settle, I never have and never will. I want people on my side that can face up to their own personal truth and can genuinely love and no longer looking unconscious and compulsively for scapegoats to alleviate their disassociated repressed feelings.   

 

“Turning away from the truth will never help us preserve love, and the love we have for our parents is no exception. The fact of forgiveness will not help as long as it serves to disguise the facts. For love and self-delusion are mutually exclusive. The disavowal of truth, the denial of the suffering we have been through, is the breeding ground for the kind of hatred that gets deflected onto innocent victims. It is an act of self-deception and an impasse from which there is no way out. Genuine love can face up to the truth.” Alice Miller ~Paths of Life, Page, 186

 “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