Quotes by Alice Miller

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

“Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

“If its very painful for you to criticize your friends - youre safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, thats the time to hold your tongue.”

“Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against ones own despised and unwanted feelings.”

“When a woman like that whom Ive 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”

“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”

“,,,It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion - something that has always been disputed by the most respected schools of thought.”

“The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.”

“The capacity of the human organism to bear pain is, for our own protection, limited. All attempts to overstep this natural threshold by resolving repression in a violent manner will, as with every other form of violation, have negative and often dangerous consequences.”

“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.”

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.

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

If its very painful for you to criticize your friends - youre safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, thats the time to hold your tongue.

“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.”