For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.

It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

We produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.

The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child--well behaved and dutiful--of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me.

One of the best ways of keeping your temper in an argument, as most of us know only too well, is not to listen to anything the other person has to say.

That probably greatest of narcissistic wounds -- not to have been loved just as one truly was -- cannot heal without the work of mourning.

If we do not work on all three levels -- body, feeling, mind -- the symptoms of our distress will keep returning, as the body goes on repeating the story stored in its cells until it is finally listened to and understood.