The 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.
We don’t yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.
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.
The only possible recourse a baby has when his screams are ignored is to repress his distress, which is tantamount to mutilating his soul, for the result is an interference with his ability to feel, to be aware, and to remember.
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.
Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.
We produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.
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.
Courage can be just as infectious as fear.
If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.
Disrespect is the weapon of the weak.
Empathy grows as we learn.
Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.
Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.
It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion – something that has always been disputed by the most respected schools of thought.
It is precisely because a child’s feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.
We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.
There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.
Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.
The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center – the central actor – in his own activity.