Alice Miller (psychologist) quotes

Alice Miller was a Swiss psychologist and author known for her work on childhood trauma and its lasting effects. Her writings shed light on the psychological consequences of child abuse and the importance of acknowledging repressed memories. She became a leading advocate for understanding the emotional lives of children. Here are 38 of her quotes:

Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

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.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

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 Miller (psychologist)

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Learning 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 Miller (psychologist)

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

Alice Miller (psychologist)

One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fan­tasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Regression to the stage of early infancy is not a suitable method in and of itself. Such a regression can only be effective if it happens in the natural course of therapy and if the client is able to maintain adult consciousness at the same time.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.

Alice Miller (psychologist)

Today I should not be identified with any kind of regressive therapy.

Alice Miller (psychologist)