Alice Miller

Empathy grows as we learn.

— Alice Miller

Nobody is born evil.

— Alice Miller

Disrespect is the weapon of the weak

— Alice Miller

You gotta keep that in check - you got to.

— Alice Miller

Courage can be just as infectious as fear.

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

“True emotional understanding has nothing to do with cheap sentimental pity.”

— Alice Miller

One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.

— Alice Miller

Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.

— Alice Miller

Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.

— Alice Miller

We can never do the right thing as long as we are out to please someone else.

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

“Accordingly, I believe that preaching forgiveness is not only hypocritical and futile but also actively dangerous. It masks the compulsion to repeat.”

— Alice Miller

One of the best ways of keeping your temper in an argument, as most of us know only too well, is not…

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.

— Alice Miller

The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.

— Alice Miller

It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion - something that has always been disputed by the most respected…

— Alice Miller

Good manners are the technique of expressing considerations for the feelings of others.

— Alice Miller

“The answer is that we can never do the right thing as long as we are out to please someone else. We…

— Alice Miller

The free expression of resentment against one's parents represents a great opportunity. It provides access to one's true self, reactivates numbed feelings,…

— Alice Miller

The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous.…

— Alice Miller

Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as…

— Alice Miller

Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and…

— Alice Miller

Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be…

— Alice Miller

Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The…

— Alice Miller

Every child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks…

— Alice Miller

“Relationships based on masklike communication of this kind cannot change. They remain what they have always been: instances of mis-communication. A genuine…

— Alice Miller

“Most people do exactly the opposite. Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about…

— Alice Miller

It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I fought most strongly:…

— Alice Miller

Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the…

— Alice Miller

The abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live…

— Alice Miller

Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually…

— Alice Miller

“Today, as adults, we know that our efforts were exploited, that this was not love in the true sense of the word.…

— Alice Miller

“Did I not risk incurring the severest of penalties if I insisted on breaking that taboo? But my fear also helped me…

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller

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

— Alice Miller