The only possible recourse a baby has when his screams are ignored is to repress his distress, which is tantamount to mutilating his soul, for the result is an interference with his ability to feel, to be aware, and to remember.
Alice MillerRead
The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Childhood experiences can be deeply troubling and difficult to confront.
Alice Miller's quote emphasizes the complex and often painful nature of childhood memories that many individuals struggle to acknowledge. It suggests that the truths of our formative years can be horrifying and are frequently repressed, making it nearly impossible to fully reconcile these experiences with our adult consciousness.
Themes
ChildhoodTruthMemoryPainRepression
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health workshop discussing the impacts of childhood trauma.
More from Alice Miller
All quotes →We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.
Alice MillerRead
I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.
Alice MillerRead
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 this production of evil.
Alice MillerRead
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Alice MillerRead
If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.
Alice MillerRead
Similar quotes
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
Mark StrandRead
Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight; Empty and be full; Wear out and be new; Have little and gain; Have much and be confused. ...The ancients say, "Yield and overcome." Is that an empty saying? Be really whole, And all things will come to you.
LaoziRead
We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
Drew Gilpin FaustRead
I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.
Sylvia PlathRead
Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?
John DrydenRead
There will never be any more perfection than there is now.
Walt WhitmanRead