Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
Alice MillerLearning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.
Alice MillerThe free expression of resentment against one's parents represents a great opportunity. It provides access to one's true self, reactivates numbed feelings, opens the way for mourning and - with luck - reconciliation.
Alice MillerThe victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.
Alice MillerThe abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression, and threats. When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.
Alice Miller