Sylvie's place

This blog is about learning to understand all of our feelings and learning to consciously face, feel, and experience all of our feelings within the context of our own childhood. Everything we become and everything that happens to us is connected to childhood. Not every victim becomes an abuser, but every abuser was once a victim of abuse. These are facts. Violence is not genetic; it’s learned. https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-dance-to-freedom-book-reviews.html

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Monday, February 28, 2022

The Root Cause of War

Here is the root cause of all wars. We are all responsible for allowing dangerously repressed people to become leaders.

The powerful enablers in Putin's life who enabled him to come to power are just as guilty. Ask yourself who in your circle of people you know are sociopaths, psychopaths, malignant narcissists, assholes, bad players, or whatever you like to call these evil people, and you are enabling them to get ahead and into power positions over others for fear of speaking up. One day, these malignant people might become world leaders and put all of our lives in danger like Putin is doing today. Like it or not, we are all responsible.

Everyone wants to fight corruption from the top, but how we prevent sociopaths from getting into the highest office of the land is to expose them and their corruption at the local level. We fight corruption from the bottom up, not from the top. However, as we witnessed at my place of work, where I worked for nine and a half years, no one dared to expose the sociopaths and their corruption. And no one cares that my livelihood was almost destroyed by these evil players.

Once we give power to these very dangerously repressed malignant personalities, they will never give up power without destroying the livelihoods of many innocent beings and causing mass destruction. As we are witnessing with Putin, and as has been the case many times before with past dictators. When will the masses wake up and stop giving power to these dangerously repressed malignant personalities?

Let's make it clear that holding information that can be helpful to others is a form of lying and is abuse. Being a passive liar is just as destructive as speaking out loud lies. Lies are the fuel that fuels conflict and wars. https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/03/lies-is-fuel-that-creates-wars.html?m=1

"The unconscious compulsion to avenge repressed injuries is more powerful than reason. That is the lesson that all tyrants teach us. One should not expect judiciousness from a mad person motivated by compulsive panic. One should, however, protect oneself from such a person." Alice Miller -- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence page 82

“Humiliations, spankings, and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc., are all forms of mistreatment because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away.

However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders.

Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Every dictator torments his people in the same way he was tormented as a child. The humiliations inflicted on these dictators in adult life had nothing like the same influence on their actions as the emotional experiences they went through in their early years.

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period, the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears.

Friday, June 21, 2024

Spotting A Narcissist: Identifying the Telltale Signs and Red Flags Of Narcissism

https://youtube.com/shorts/cgLkNI7g1O8?si=QvHM_38Ex2gHz8Ml

Narcissism = dangerously repressed

Once we give power to these very dangerously repressed malignant personalities, they will never give up power without destroying the livelihoods of many innocent beings and mass destruction. As we are witnessing with Putin and many times before with past dictators. When will the masses wake up and stop giving power to these dangerously repressed malignant personalities?

Let's make it clear holding information that can be helpful to others is a form of lying and is abuse. Being a passive liar is just as destructive as the people speaking out loud lies. Lies are the fuel that fuels conflict and wars. We are all responsible for every conflict and war in this world. https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/03/lies-is-fuel-that-creates-wars.html?m=1

"The unconscious compulsion to revenge repressed injuries is more powerful than reason. That is the lesson that all tyrants teach us. One should not expect judiciousness from a mad person motivated by compulsive panic. One should, however, protect oneself from such a person." Alice Miller -- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence page 82

“Humiliations, spankings, and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away.

Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears.

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Narcissists are Dictators

Yes, they are.

"Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Every dictator torments his people in the same way he was tormented as a child. The humiliations inflicted on these dictators in adult life had nothing like the same influence on their actions as the emotional experiences they went through in their early years.

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period, the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality), there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears.

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Spanking, Power, and the Danger of Putting Repressed Rage in Charge

This morning, I read an article that made my blood run cold—not because it was surprising, but because it was so perfectly predictable.

Markwayne Mullin, the man to become the next Secretary of Homeland Security, once stood before an audience at a church-hosted event and boasted about spanking his children. His daughter Larra sat in the audience as he recounted how she would plead, “No, Daddy, no… I’m sorry, Daddy,” and how she would then get “madder and madder” for up to a day afterward. He described his son Andrew as “the hardest kid I ever had to spank” because Andrew would cry with “huge crocodile tears” and was “so hard on himself.”

The audience applauded.

Let that sink in. A room full of adults applauded a man for describing the terror of a child pleading with her father to stop, a child whose developing brain was recording—in that moment—that love and violence are the same thing, that Daddy hurts you and then you must crawl into his lap to be forgiven for your anger.

The Mechanism of a Dangerous Mind

Mullin’s confirmation hearing brought up additional concerns: he called a fellow senator a “freaking snake,” said he “completely” understood why someone assaulted that senator (breaking six of his ribs, damaging his lung, and causing two cases of pneumonia), and nearly got into a physical fight with the Teamsters president during a Senate hearing before Bernie Sanders had to intervene.

Senator Rand Paul, the victim of that assault, asked the critical question: “I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force.”

But the question is even deeper than that. It is not just about whether this man can restrain himself from violence. It is about what lives inside him.

What Alice Miller Taught Us About Men Like This

Alice Miller wrote extensively about the roots of violence, and her words could have been written with Mullin in mind:

“Humiliations, spankings, and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders.”

Mullin was raised “by the fear of a belt,” as he proudly stated. He learned that love is administered through pain. He learned that a child’s pleas mean nothing. He learned that the bigger, stronger person gets to decide what is “good” for the smaller, defenseless one. And now he is being put in charge of Homeland Security—the agency responsible for the safety and dignity of millions, including the most vulnerable.

The pattern could not be clearer.

Dictators and the Dynamics of Cruelty

Miller also wrote:

“Every dictator torments his people in the same way he was tormented as a child. The humiliations inflicted on these dictators in adult life had nothing like the same influence on their actions as the emotional experiences they went through in their early years. As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them. Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears.”

Mullin does not see himself as a victim. He says he “deserved” the beatings. This is the voice of a child who had to believe his parents were right in order to survive. But the body remembers. And the rage that was forbidden to be felt toward his parents now seeks outlets: political opponents, union leaders, and ultimately, the vulnerable populations that will fall under his authority.

This is not speculation. It is the documented psychology of how unexamined childhood cruelty reenacts itself in power.

The Roots of Violence Are Not Unknown

Alice Miller laid out the facts clearly:

*“1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.*

2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned.

3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves, or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.).”

This is not opinion. This is neurobiology. And we ignore it at our peril.

Why Do We Keep Giving Power to the Wounded Who Refuse to Heal?

Only very emotionally blind lawmakers will confirm a dangerously repressed person into a position of power. But here we are. Again.

We are witnessing the same dynamics with Putin, with past dictators, and now with leaders in our own country. Once we give power to these dangerously repressed malignant personalities, they will never give it up without destroying the livelihoods of many innocent beings and causing mass destruction.

“The unconscious compulsion to revenge repressed injuries is more powerful than reason. That is the lesson that all tyrants teach us. One should not expect judiciousness from a mad person motivated by compulsive panic. One should, however, protect oneself from such a person.” — Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, p. 82

When will the masses wake up? When will we stop idealizing parents and childhood and start seeing the direct line between the belt and the bomb?

The Only Path Forward

We cannot keep pretending that a man who boasts about terrifying his children, who calls political opponents names and threatens violence, who “applauds violence against his political opponents” as Rand Paul noted, is somehow fit to lead an agency that holds the power of life and death over millions.

We cannot keep pretending that what happens in the nursery stays in the nursery. It doesn’t. It becomes policy. It becomes foreign policy. It becomes the willingness to bomb women and children, as the Mr. K in my own past so eagerly advocated.

“It is not true that evil, destructiveness, and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to the production of evil.” — Alice Miller, Banished Knowledge, p. 143

We can end the production of evil. But it requires that we stop denying the truth. It requires that we stop applauding men who boast about making their children cry and plead “No, Daddy.” It requires that we feel—truly feel—the terror of that child, so that we never again place that child, now grown and still unconscious, in charge of the lives of others.

No More Denial

Markwayne Mullin is a symptom. So is Mr. K. So is every leader who uses power to avenge the helplessness they once felt.

The cure is not better policies or different politicians. The cure is waking up. The cure is feeling what we were never allowed to feel. The cure is breaking the chain of abuse by no longer passing it on—not to our children, and not to the world through the people we put in power.

Let us be the ones who finally see. Let us be the ones who refuse to applaud the terror in a child’s voice. Let us be the ones who protect the vulnerable—not put their abusers in charge.

— Sylvie Shene

This post is dedicated to Larra and Andrew Mullin, and to every child whose “No, Daddy” goes unheard. May you someday find the freedom to feel what you were never allowed to feel, and may we all learn to stop putting your father’s pain in charge of the world.

The Belt and the Badge: Why We Must Stop Entrusting Power to the "Repressed"

Alice Miller wrote that the need to "bring a child into line" stems from a parent's need to split off the disquieting parts of their own inner self and project them onto the child. When Mullin describes how his father doubled up a belt to hit him, and how he "deserved it," he is showing us his own unhealed wounds. He has idealized his abuser to survive. When we idolize our parents, we become just like them.

Now, as an adult in a position of power, he is the "avenging child." As Miller noted:
"The enemy within can, at last, be hunted down on the outside... Projections can easily become part of any Weltanschauung [worldview]."
When a leader has not felt the legitimate rage of their own childhood, they take that rage out on "scapegoats"—be it political opponents they call "snakes," neighbors they justify assaulting, or nations they wish to bomb.
The Dictator’s Blueprint
We have seen this "dynamics of cruelty" before. From Hitler to Ceaușescu to Putin, the pattern is identical:
The Childhood Injury: Extreme neglect, beatings, or humiliation.
The Repression: The child denies the pain to survive, often "forgiving" the parent.
The Reenactment: The adult gains power and torments a nation in the same way they were tormented, all while claiming to be "moral" or "noble."
Mullin’s admission that he expects his children to "crawl into his lap" two minutes after a spanking is perhaps the most tragic detail. It is the forced "forgiveness" that Alice Miller identified as actively harmful. It forces the child to deceive themselves, destroying their inborn empathy and wiring their brain to accept cruelty as a prerequisite for love.
Giving Nuclear Weapons to Children
As I’ve written before, humanity is not ready for the power of AI or high-level governance as long as we remain "unconscious." Entrusting Homeland Security—an agency defined by the "proper use of force"—to a man who applauds violence against opponents and practices it against his own children is like giving matches to a child in a room full of gasoline.
The development of the human brain is use-dependent. A brain wired by the "fear of a belt" will always see the world through the lens of threat and retaliation.
Breaking the Chain
The only way to stop producing "evil" and "oceans of suffering" is the unflinching realization of our own past reality. As long as we idealize our parents and deny our childhood suffering, that pain will appear symptomatically in our leaders as greed, deceit, and mass destruction.
We must resolve childhood repression to stop being "emotionally blind." We must recognize that the "great leader" is often just a small, beaten child acting out an unintegrated potential for hatred.
The truth is simple, though painful: Violence is not genetic. It is a lesson learned. And it is a lesson we must stop electing into office.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

It's an Opportunity for Healing

Couldn't agree more with the statement in this youtube short vedio in the link below.

We have to face and feel our painful truths head-on.

Many people would rather kill and be killed than face their own painful truths.

We understand a lot about human motivation once we realize one thing: ninety-nine percent of humanity spends ninety-nine percent of their time trying to avoid facing and feeling painful truths.

https://youtube.com/shorts/H_CqnGKTyZQ?si=EZFa3DTED4-305JZ

With my book I show people how to get through the pain and be free to live our authentic lives and develop two healthy legs to stand on our own two feet.

Just like I wrote in my book on pages 129, 163, and 164:

“The key to effective therapy is learning how to use your present triggers productively. They can help us clarify, understand, and consciously feel our intense emotions within the context of our own childhoods without losing our adult consciousness. A good therapist can help us regain our adult consciousness if we lose it and encourage our autonomy, so we can deal with present issues from an adult perspective.

… Just remember this: If particular people or circumstances trigger excruciatingly intense feelings inside you, just keep telling yourself that these are the repressed feelings of the child you once were. Feelings don’t kill anyone no matter how intense they are. Only actions kill. So if you ride your intense feelings into shore, direct them at the real culprits who hurt you when you were a defenseless child and avoid taking any actions you may regret later, you’ll be free and no one will get hurt. As an autonomous adult, you do have some control over the people you let into your inner circle, and you may have to make some relationship adjustments as you do your emotional work. I took a lot of extra time to be with myself in solitude because most of the people in my life just didn’t understand what I was going through. When you’re trying to resolve your repression, being around unconscious people who are doing everything they can to avoid their own truths puts you at risk of relapsing into playing your old roles.”

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/01/putting-our-feelings-in-right-context.html?m=1

"...there is a difference between the powerless, legitimate rage of a desparate child that reacts to the cruelty of their parents and the rage of the adult who is attacking others out of denial of their history by immitating the behavior of own parents from the position of “power” (even grandiosity). The first rage (of the child) should be felt and expressed in therapy, it can be then RESOLVED. The second one (of the adult), directed toward scapegoats, can NEVER be resolved (see dictators). If therapists see it as an end point of their therapies and don't enable the patients to confront the early parents and the feelings of that time they do much HARM to them. Staying trapped in the hatred toward scapegoats can’t be the successful end of a therapy. I hope that you can continue your work if you have this difference in mind and can also explain it in your forum." Alice Miller

"Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears."

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-root-cause-of-war.html?m=1

"Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse. If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness. I no longer need to reenact what happened to me with the help of innocent people because now I KNOW what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.

..Am I saying that forgiveness for crimes done to a child is not only ineffective but actively harmful? Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. The body does not understand moral precepts. It fights against the denial of genuine emotions and for the admission of the truth to our conscious minds. This is something the child cannot afford to do, it has to deceive itself and turn a blind eye to the parents’ crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to do this, but if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or they make others pay the price – their children, their patients, the people who work for them, etc." -- Alice Miller

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2013/11/dependency-breeds-hatred.html?m=1

"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.

I try to reach the child in the readers, allow them to feel. I see my style as ranking keys. Everybody can take one so that they can go open their own door to find something. Or they can say no, I don't want to go through this door; I will return the key. I try to evoke feelings, images. In this way, I offer keys to your own experience. You can then go look at your children and learn from them, not from me. Because only from your own experience can you really learn.

In my first studies, I was very abstract; I wanted to understand the most abstract ideas -- of Kant, Hegel, or Marx. My dissertation in philosophy was very abstract. Now I see that each philosopher had to build a big, big building in order not to feel his pain. Even Freud.

If a child has been molested and the therapist doesn't deny this fact, many things can open up in the patient. The therapist must not preach forgiveness, or the patient will repress the pain. He won't change, and the repressed rage will look for a scapegoat."

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/04/alice-miller-most-significant-thinker.html

Sunday, April 3, 2022

These Crimes Committed by Russia Cannot Ever be Forgiven

These crimes committed by Russia against humanity cannot ever be forgiven.

Putin is showing the world how he was terrorised as a defenseless little child -- by unconsciously and compulsively reenacting in the stage of the world his unresolved childhood repression -- and is terrorizing a whole nation -- making others feel what he cannot feel, coward.

Unfortunately humanity everywhere is full of dangerously repressed people that have grown into full blown sociopaths psychopaths and are a bunch of cowards monsters like Putin.

But before he dies he will be forced to feel the hell he has been transferring into others all of his life!

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-narcissist-punishment-is-living-all.html?m=1

" . . . 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"

“If we hate hypocrisy, insincerity, and mendacity, then we grant ourselves the right to fight them wherever we can, or to withdraw from people who only trust in lies. But if we pretend that we are impervious to these things, then we are betraying ourselves.” Alice Miller Free from Lies: Discovering Your True Needs page 55

“It is not true that evil, destructiveness,
and perversion inevitably form part of
human existence, no matter how often this
is maintained. But it is true that we are
daily producing more evil and, with it, an
ocean of suffering for millions that is
absolutely avoidable. When one day the
ignorance arising from childhood
repression is eliminated and humanity
has awakened, an end can be put to the
production of evil.”
— Alice Miller, Banished Knowledge, p. 143

The conversation about the effects of childhood repression in our society needs to start happening in the stage of the world, sooner rather than later, if we want to save ourselves and humanity from falling off the cliff and committing mass suicide.

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-conversation-about-effects-of.html?m=1

"The unconscious compulsion to revenge repressed injuries is more powerful than reason. That is the lesson that all tyrants teach us. One should not expect judiciousness from a mad person motivated by compulsive panic. One should, however, protect oneself from such a person." Alice Miller -- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence page 82

Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears."

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-root-cause-of-war.html?m=1

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved.” ― Leo Rosten

I have to agree, at least in my case is true.

Friday, September 22, 2023

Adolf Hitler

Having formal education or not has nothing to do with being a conscious person.

Adolf Hitler was emotionally blinded by the repressed emotions of the child he once was; just like the masses that followed him.

Society has not changed since then, and people still are emotionally blinded by the repressed emotions of the child they once were to follow dangerously repressed leaders into an abyss. Humanity is doomed.

As long people's childhood repression goes unresolved -- they will be shackled into the chains of compulsion repetition -- and it doesn't matter how well anyone articulates very nice ideas... The problem is not lack of knowledge and educated people, there are plenty of educated people with intellectual knowledge, the problem is an emotional blockage with the so-called “professionals” or “educated people” hiding behind their rationalizations and seductive theories to protect themselves from having to face and feel their own emotional pain. It takes courage to see, face and feel our painful truths, intelligence alone is not enough; but it rather helps create seductive, rationalizations, theories, illusions, and lies.

Alice Miller explains beautifully in her book For Your Own Good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence page 42 and 43: "Just as in the symbiosis of the "diaper stage," there is no separation here of subject and object. If the child learns to view corporal punishment as "a necessary measure" against "wrongdoers," then as an adult he will attempt to protect himself from punishment by being obedient and will not hesitate to cooperate with the penal system. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His "will" is completely identical with that of the government.

Now that 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. Educators have always known this and have exploited it for their own purposes, as the following proverb suggests: "The clever person gives in, the stupid one balks." For example, we read in a work on child raising by Grünwald (1899): "I have never yet found willfulness in an intellectually advanced or exceptionally gifted child" (quoted in Rutschky). Such a child can, in later life, exhibit extraordinary acuity in criticizing the ideologies of his opponents--and in puberty even the views by his own parents-- because in these cases his intellectual powers can function without impairment. Only within a group--such as one consisting of adherents of an ideology or a theoretical school--that represents the early family situation will this person on occasion still display a naïve submissiveness and uncritical attitude that completely believe his brilliance in other situations. Here, tragically, his early dependence upon tyrannical parents is preserved, a dependence that--in keeping with the program of "poisonous pedagogy"--goes undetected. This explains why Martin Heidegger, for example, who had no trouble in breaking with traditional philosophy and leaving behind the teachers of his adolescence, was not able to see the contradictions in Hitler's ideology that should have been obvious to someone of his intelligence. He responded to this ideology with an infantile fascination and devotion that brooked no criticism.”

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-conversation-about-effects-of.html?m=1

Dictators and the dynamics of cruelty

Those years are “formative” in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or “encodes” emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will.

As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them.

Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears."

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-root-cause-of-war.html?m=1