I began another Alice Miller book, "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware"...and I could highlight the whole thing so far!
She writes, "Our will for survival will never push us to invent painful stories, rather the contrary: to make up nice memories in order to obscure the painful reality of our childhood. This is something we must never lose sight of. The commandment that says "Thou shalt not be aware of what was done to thee, nor of what thou doest to others" ensures that cruelty suffered in childhood is played down or modified by memory until it becomes unrecognizable."
And, I believe that the sentiment shared by the population as a whole, is that you can't trust the words of a child. When they are brave enough to tell, we then are not brave enough to hear.
For we are more accustomed to the child who makes their childhood abuse appear kind...by the very memories they use to obscure it. However, she goes on to say...
"Unfortunately, the truth that comes out not only in art, in dreams, and in fairy tales, but also in political action, in crime, and - increasingly in the activities of sects exploiting the ingenuousness and gullibility of maltreated and misguided children for their own financial ends. But this can only happen as long as we let the old traditional programs run on undisturbed. There is nothing inevitable about this. Today we have access to all the information we need in order to put an end to manipulation from outside and to stop denying our own truths at the dictates of our wishful thinking. There is no need to think that we will lose the love of our parents if we assert our allegiance to our own personal truth. The love of a child for its parents is all but indestructible. As children we cannot reconcile this love with the truth, and so we deny this truth exists. But as adults we can learn to preserve both. In fact we have very little choice, if we want to uphold our verbal tributes to love. It is only in alliance with the truth and the refusal of hypocrisy that authentic love can survive and grow." Alice Miller
And, that is just from chapter one.
What I love about Alice is that she is she sees abuse from all sides and she also understands how abuse is passed on. In that IF you don't see the cruelty of your parents, you don't see you being cruel.
And that is the key to it all.
A child cannot stop a cruel parent.
But a cruel parent, who knows they are cruel now has the choice to change.
You have to totally give up the fantasy of the 'kind' childhood and nice parent in order for you to catch a glimpse of you being them in some regard.
I was not only horrified to see the lack of support my mother had towards me to only realize MY own lack of seeing my children.
But it starts in seeing your childhood without the rose colored glasses...like a domino affect each of us has to look upwards towards those who raised us or who had us modifying our childhood in order to survive...to stop US from passing on the same cruelty.
And, here is where the therapist or healers of our minds come into play.
"If I as an analyst direct my interest and attention to finding out what drive desires a person who enters my office for the first time is suppressing at the moment, and if I see it as my task to make this clear to him in the course of his analysis, I will listen sympathetically when he tells me about his parents and childhood, but I will be able to absorb only that portion of his early experiences which is made manifest in his drive conflicts. The reality of the patient's childhood, which has been inaccessible to him all these years, will be inaccessible to me as well. It remains part of the patient's "fantasy world," in which I can participate with my concepts and constructs without the trauma that really took place ever being revealed."
"If from the beginning however, I confront the person who enters my office with questions having to do with what befell him in childhood and if I consciously identify with the child within him, then from the very first hour events of early childhood will open up before us that would never have been able to surface had I based my approach on an unconscious identification with the parents and their devious methods of upbringing instead of consciously identifying with the former child. In order to enable these events to come to light, it is not enough to ask questions about the past; besides, some questions tend to conceal more than they reveal. But if the analyst directs his attention to early childhood trauma and is no longer compelled to defend the position of the parents (his own and those of his patient), he will have no trouble discovering the repetition of an earlier situation in the patient's present predicament. If, for instance, the patient should describe with complete apathy a current partner relationship that strikes the analyst as extremely painful, the analyst will ask himself and the patient what painful experiences the latter must have had to undergo in early childhood, without being permitted to recognize them as such, in order to be able to speak now so impressively about his powerlessness, hopelessness, loneliness, and constant humiliation in the present day relationship. It may also be, however, that the patient displays uncomfortable feelings directed toward other, neutral people and speaks about his parents without any show of feeling or in an idealizing manner. If the analyst focuses upon the early trauma, he will soon ascertain, by observing how the patient mistreats himself, how the parent once behaved toward the child. In addition, the manner in which the patient treats the analyst offers clues to the way his parents treated him as a child - contemptuously, derisively, disapprovingly, seductively, or by making him feel guilty, ashamed or frightened. All features of a patients early training can be detecte in the very first session if the analyst is free to listen for them. If he is a prisoner of his own upbringing, however, then he will tell his supervisor or colleagues how "Impossible" his patients behavior is, how much repressed agreesion is latently present, and which desires it emanates from; he will seek advice from his more experienced colleagues on how to interpet or "get at" this aggression. But should he be able to sense the suffering that the patient himself is not yet able to sense, then he will adhere strictly to his assumption that his patient's overt attitudes are a form of communication, a code language describing events that for the time can be and must be reported in exactly this way and no other. He will also be aware that the repressed or manifest aggression is a response and reaction to trauma that at the present remain obscure but will have to be confronted at the right moment."
"I have outlined here two differing, indeed diametrically opposed analytical approaches. Let us assume that a patient or training analyst in search of psychotherapy speaks with a representative of each of these approaches. Let us further assume that on the basis of the initial session a report has to be submitted, either for the clinic or for the supervisory committee. In itself this is of little importance, for such reports usually remain hidden away in a drawer. What is important is whether the people seen in these sessions are led to regard themselves as a subject or as an object. In the former case, they glimpse sometimes for the very first time, an opportunity to encounter themselves and their life and thereby come closer to their unconscious traumas, a prospect that can fill them with fear as well as hope. In the latter case, their customary intellectual self-alienation prepares them to see themselves as the object of further pedagogical efforts in the course of which, to use the words of Freud's patient, they must paint themselves as black as necessary but must spare other people."
"These differences in a patient's attitude toward himself strike me as having far-reaching significance not only for the individual, but for society. The way a person preceives himself has an affect on those around him as well, particularly those dependent upon him, e.g., his children or his patients. Someone who totally objectifies his inner life will also make other people into objects. it was primarily this consideration that led me to distinquish sharply between these two approaches, although I realize that the motives underlying the "cover-up" approach (defending the parents, denying trauma) have deep unconscious roots and are unlikely to be altered by books or arguments." Alice Miller
What I understand and agree with with her is that each different therapist or analyst as she calls them, bring to the session their own past.
I love this.
For I totally get that no matter what the college degree taught you about human behavior, if you yourself have not been able to see clearly yourself and your parents you will treat your patient as you would a child of yours...as a subject or an object.
I could copy her whole book here, for she totally gets that complex difference between being aware and how your subconscious "cover-up" will prevent others from revealing theirs.
So far a brilliant book on the literal ways in which dysfunctional patterns repeat themselves, because rarely does a child see their parent without the rose colored glass out of fear of losing their love for them.
What I found, is that I have complete empathy for my parents for they were blind to their abuse, so they had to be blind to mine. It wasn't/isn't personal. It is the lack of their own inner work and destruction of the cover-up...that was the overlay in their childhoods.
