When a woman like that whom I’ve seen so much, All of a sudden drops out of touch; Is always busy and never can, Spare you a moment, it means a man.
Love will not always linger longest with those who hold it in too clenched a fist.
Conversation is a partnership, not a relation of master and slave, as most people try to make it.
A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world.
The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.
In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual “wisdom,” we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.
We become free by transforming ourselves from unaware victims of the past into responsible individuals in the present, who are aware of our past and are thus able to live with it.
Only the never-ending work of mourning can help us from lapsing into the illusion that we have found the parent we once urgently needed – empathic and open, understanding and understandable, honest and available, helpful and loving, feeling, transparent, clear, without unintelligible contradictions. Such a parent was never ours, for a mother can react empathically only to the extent that she has become free of her own childhood; when she denies the vicissitudes of her early life, she wears invisible chains.
For one is free from it only when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of ones own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.
Depression as Denial of the Self Depression consists of a denial of one’s own emotional reactions. This denial begins in the service of an absolutely essential adaptation during childhood and indicates a very early injury. There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger – and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies.
A system of morality tells us what to do and what not to do, but it cannot tell us what we should feel. Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated.
To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.
Narcissistic cathexis of the child by the mother does not exclude emotional devotion. On the contrary, she loves the child as her self-object, excessively, though not in the manner that he needs, and always on the condition that he presents his “false self.” This is no obstacle to the development of intellectual abilities, but it is one to the unfolding of an authentic emotional life.
The automatic, natural contact with his own emotions and needs gives an individual strength and self-esteem. He may experience his feelings – sadness, despair, or the need for help – without fear of making the mother insecure. He can allow himself to be afraid when he is threatened, angry when his wishes are not fulfilled. He knows not only what he does not want but also what he wants and is able to express his wants, irrespective of whether he will be loved or hated for it.
Not to take one’s own suffering seriously, to make light of it or even to laugh at it, is considered good manners in our culture.
We discover that we are no longer compelled to follow the former pattern of disappointment, suppression of pain, and depression, since we now have another possibility of dealing with disappointment: namely, experiencing the pain. In this way we at last gain access to our earlier experiences – to the parts of ourselves and our fate that were previously hidden from us.
A human being born into a cold, indifferent world will regard his situation as the only possible one.
As soon as he is regarded as a possession for which one has a particular goal, as soon as one exerts control over him, his natural growth will be violently interrupted.
The grandiose person is never really free; first, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect.
Cruelty is the opposite of love, and its traumatic effect, far from being reduced, is actually reinforced if it is presented as a sign of love.