Sanctuary for the Abused

Monday, January 17, 2022

The Power of the Original Trauma Bond

** Warning: This post may be very triggering to the adult survivors of psychopathic/narcissistic abuse. Please use caution in reading**

While many survivors discover that their partners are psychopathic/narcissistic, many who come from childhood backgrounds of pathology, fail to realize that their parent is the foundation of the original trauma bond. They can leave partners, but continue to engage with the parent. This leaves the stench of pathology in their lives, and makes them vulnerable in continuing the bond into the future with another partner or other people who are pathological.

Psychopathic parents are as toxic, if not more so, than the psychopathic partner.

Trauma bonds to the source of origin (parent) are incredibly powerful and equally as challenging to break. I have broken the bonds with my psychopathic father and biological siblings, and without realizing any of this stuff about trauma bonds, I went no contact with them about five years ago now. Without the break in this bond, I undoubtedly would not have been able to heal completely. This bond was broken just a couple of years prior to my break with the last psychopath in my life.

The psychopathic parent is a ‘special’ kind of ‘crazy’. It’s amazing to me our perspectives when we see other survivors just out of relationships with psychopaths and how horrified we are at the antics of the psychopath when it comes to he and the survivor’s children, particularly if there are custody issues. We are horrified at his contempt and lack of empathy when it comes to his children and his ability to manipulate and/or abuse them. We are appalled at the terrorist-like attempts of the psychopath to undermine his children’s relationship with the survivor through triangulation, by hateful discussion, smear campaigns, triangulations and projections about their mother or using a new victim to separate mother and child. The list is long in how he can implement his tactics. While the survivor who sees these games played out with another survivor’s ex psychopath and children, even with her own, she fails to see this has also played out in her childhood and continues to play out with her parent as an adult. She fails to be as horrified at the antics of her parent upon her, as she is in witnessing it in others situations.

Her lack of appropriate reaction of horror at the actions of her parent, is an indication of how strong the trauma bond is. It has reached a level of extremes in normalizing the highly pathological and abnormal. The lack of reaction that would mean salvation via no contact is not even a consideration for many of these survivors. In my work with survivors of the psychopathic/narcissistic parent, the idea of no contact when presented to them is often met with a vicious or contemptuous response, filled with excuse, fear, obligation, guilt and denial.

The survivor with the psychopathic parent will inevitably, in most cases continue with the bond. The bond is so powerful and so intense due to a lifetime of cyclical abuse. Some of the very same abuses upon the survivor of a psychopathic parent, that are visited upon the survivor as long as there is contact, are the very same visited upon her in a romantic relationship or what she finds appalling in others. The psychopathic parent is manipulative, guilt inducing, degrading, demanding. They triangulate the survivor with siblings and other family members, creating competitions for the parent’s attention and love. Each survivor from these families plays a specific role, which I’ll be discussing in another post, but some of the most familiar roles are scapegoat, golden child and lost child. The scapegoat is the child who is often most sensitive to the parent and equally the most abused. The sins of the psychopathic parent are liberally employed upon the scapegoat and the roles of other siblings are encouraged (especially the golden child) to abuse the scapegoat as well. The scapegoat is usually the most sensitive of the family members and the most intuitive to the abuse. The psychopathic parent knows this and fears this child most because this child is the child who understands exactly what is going on and is most likely to ‘report’ it to others. Ironically, the scapegoat can be healthiest of the family and the psychopathic parent is aware of this. This child will be tested most in weighing the possibilities as to how they can be used by the parent. If the scapegoat does not go along with the ‘plan’ set up by the psychopathic parent, this child’s abuse will be the most extreme.

Even when the scapegoat goes along with the plan, the psychopathic parent still fears this child as the child cannot ‘pretend’ to the psychopathic parents liking, that she doesn’t know what’s going on. She always sees behind the mask and her pretentiousness is caught by the parent. Unfortunately, if the scapegoat manages to survive her childhood, her abuse will be manifested with disorders of her own, from personality disorders to complex PTSD. For the survivor who is gifted with awareness into adulthood in that she does not develop a serious disorder of her own, she will wrestle with her own empathy in her feelings of compassion for the parent and is the child most likely to take on care giving responsibilities, as well as continuing to take the abuse. Her exposure to such intense pathology also makes her vulnerable to more painful relationships with psychopaths into the future, from romantic relationships to friendships, the cycles continue, the desire to ‘repair’ the damage in a repetition complex, compulsive in nature.

Survivors who manage to escape psychopathic partners, initially believe that they have escaped pathology altogether, separating the parent from the inevitable acting out behavior and relationship choices she has made. There is no connection for her in tying her partner selection to the original trauma bond with the parent. In a very odd way, this makes the separation from the psychopath EASIER comparatively because she still has access to the familiar, to pathology.

If she cannot act out with a partner, the parent will continue to provide ample opportunity to continue the trauma bond and addiction to pathology through continued abuse.

There are survivors who have gone no contact with their parent, such as myself but continued pathology with a romantic partner. Again, the intensity and addiction to pathology is played out with her inability to separate from the partner. In these cases, the ‘bond’ to the partner is even stronger with the loss of the original trauma bond and the relationship loss can feel very devastating as the last intense bond is broken.

She can hang on, even though she wants to let go, eventually because the parent is not there to replace it.

Survivors still tied to the parent are extremely creative individuals. The excuses to hang onto the parent are wide and varied. The almost apologetic statements by survivors on behalf of the insidious and leveling abuse of the parent stands as symbolic to the depth of their denial. Like any psychopath, the parent knows that they have control in this child’s life and no matter how awful the abuse, the child will defend the parent to the detriment of herself and others around her who continue to see her in pain with each engagement with the parent.

There are not different ‘rules’ with the psychopathic parent, anymore than there are with the psychopathic partner. The tactics are the same and just as damaging upon the adult child. The adult child of a psychopathic parent becomes almost child like in her response to the parent, the ultimate authority figure in her life. She overlooks the obvious degradation and the feeling of a knife to her chest with the painful abuse, is almost cathartic, as it underscores what the parent has created for her in that she is a failure, that she is worthless. It is utterly and tragically familiar. The involvement with the parent is the attempt by the survivor to right the wrongs of the abuse, the hopeless and yet prayerful power of wishful thinking for change that will never come.

The adult survivor works every angle, forgives and forgets, while the trauma continues to build over years, cementing her obligation to the parent. The survivor, desperate (although rarely acknowledged) to change the status quo, will often suggest therapy with the parent, or try to find a way to make contact ‘bearable’ while still taking the abuse. The excuses a survivor gives for continued contact are obvious in her inability to let go: “I can’t abandon her/him!”, “There is no one else who will take care of her/him”, “she/he raised me alone! No one else was there for me but her/him!”, “She/he would fall apart without me. I feel sorry for her/him because she/he has no one else but me.” . . .and on and on the merry go round goes. . .

The problem with this is that much of what the survivor wants to avoid is abandonment by the parent, or has an exaggerated fear of what will happen to the parent should they let go, or what will happen to themselves if they do. They fear the parents rage and anger. They feel so sorry for the parents disorder that they are compelled to put up with more abuse. In all of this, the failure to see that no one deserves abuse, not even from a parent, is a foregone conclusion in these situations.

None of what psychopaths are all about and what they do, apply to the parent as far as this child is concerned. Much of this is subconscious, a pattern weaved into the adult child over a lifetime of exposure to pathology and abuse. We automatically act out our roles and are compelled to engage in them by an unspoken, unacknowledged force of extreme evil that wages war upon our high levels of sensitivity, empathy and compassion.

The psychopathic parent is no different than a survivor’s psychopathic partner. With each engagement the parent knows they have control over the survivor. They play their adult children like chess pieces and lack empathy for them as much as they do anyone else, there are NO EXCEPTIONS.

To the adult child of the psychopath/narcissist: Do you want to know why you are so afraid to acknowledge the truth about your Mom or Dad or both? About maybe even your siblings if they are disordered too? Because you know they don’t love you. This truth is the most devastating of all. Acknowledging this truth is the most painful experience you will ever live through. It will call into question your own person hood, your existence. My psychopathic father never loved me. Ever. Not from the day I was born, and not up to no contact. I could not let go because if I acknowledged the truth in that he did not love me, it meant I was truly lost, it meant that no one else possibly could, if the person who was my sperm and egg donor did not and could not love me.

It meant I was anchorless, without purpose and direction, as what is suppose to be the childhood foundations built for us out of LOVE by our parents. It called into question everything I lived. My entire life was a lie. A lie that my psychopathic family told about me and to me. I didn’t exist as a human being to them, worthy of love and respect. My foundation was built on sands washed away by every abusive tide. What in God’s name do you do when your foundation was not built on love from your parent?

This is what I can share with you. YOU are not the lie. YOUR existence is meaningful and your soul and spirit full of energy and love. You were born into a psychopathic family, a tragedy yes, but YOUR life is NOT. This very knowledge can set your feet upon a path of no contact and true and genuine healing, through and through. You are of the most courageous, loving, caring group having survived in a situation where you were NOT LOVED. Your psychopathic parent removed your choices that would reflect in adulthood, a healthy human being, a product of humanity built in a loving home environment. The key to your healing is no contact. The realization that you have the power of CHOICE as an adult to stop the abuse. The realization that you are worth more than continued exploitation by a psychopath.

Human connection is important, isn’t it? We all need this as a life giving source when it is expressed in love and care for one another. The psychopathic parent teaches us that human connection is merely for the sake of feeding off of others, to take, not to give. To act in hate and contempt, not in love. This is not you. This is not who you are. You are no longer a CHILD. You are NOT obligated to a very sick, strategically abusive individual. You are the psychopathic parents favorite target. You are endlessly exploited for the sake of the false glorification of the parent. You are the number one poison container. The psychopathic parent REVELS in their ability to hurt you, to get a rise out of you, any reaction will do. They live to harm you. Your importance to them is not found in what you want so much to believe in that you are loved, but rather that you are not. They know exactly what they are doing.

It is my opinion that a survivor cannot truly heal without going completely no contact with the parent. It simply is not possible. The roles we play are automatic, as in flipping a switch. When we are with them, we are ‘on’. We are not shut off until we are out of range of their targeting. When we get out of range, we obsess about what they said and/or did with the last engagement. We sound like gossipy ole ladies chatting across the fence to anyone who will listen to our martyr status with our parent. We subject ourselves to enabling others as we do our parent. Addiction is a very powerful force and you cannot engage in it in any way and consider yourself completely healed. I would like you to think about something if you choose to ponder the realities of this post: When you see another survivor struggling with her ex psychopath and what he is doing to her children, put yourself in the child’s shoes.

View this survivors ex as your parent. It is the SAME. Ask yourself, why am I appalled by this but not by what my parent is doing to me? Why am I not horrified by the abuse I have taken and continue to take? When you see a survivor in pain about what the psychopath is doing to her child(ren), what makes what your psychopathic parent is doing to you, so different? What is the cost of your involvement in being engaged with someone who does not love you, but is merely using you for their own personal pleasure in causing you further harm? Can you see what the affects of the psychopathic parents abuse is having on you, and others around you while you react to them? If you have children who are exposed to your psychopathic parent, is this what you want for your children to see in how your parent treats you and in how you react to it? Obsess about it? What ties can you connect from a past or current partner to the antics of your parent or anyone else in your life where enabling is allowed, where you fight with your empathy, where you fight with those who are manipulative, exploitive and abusive? Can you feel yourself slipping into the costume of the child in response to any of this, as you would your parent? Do you suddenly feel that, while in the presence of those who are abusive or manipulative, no matter who they are, that you are powerless? Voiceless? Listen to yourself. . .

I know these are hard questions. I know they will provoke anger, but for others they will provoke thought, and yet for others, it will hurt your heart. You are NOT a child any longer. You are NOT beholden to an abuser who cannot love, no matter who it is.

You will never have validation from the parent who created your existence biologically. Ask yourself why you believe this person loves you when it’s clear every time you engage that they don’t? The SAME principles apply to the psychopathic parent that they do ALL psychopaths. Your continued involvement makes you more vulnerable to future psychopaths. Healing from extreme childhood abuse must commence before any changes can happen into our future. This IS the original trauma bond. It must be broken before you can truly heal. The ultimate in re-victimizing yourself is the continued contact and abuse you take out of this person. Ask yourself why your psychopathic, ABUSIVE parent is the exception to the rule.

Putting into practice our awareness will only go so far while we still have abuse in our lives, especially from our parent. The danger in acting out in further relationships is there when we cannot cut ties to the parent. Engaging with the psychopathic parent is to keep the ADDICTIVE quality of the abuse GOING. We are literally practicing our addictions with anyone who is pathological.

Healing from pathology means to remove yourself from it long enough to see what your own behaviors are and have been in response to it. It is incredibly difficult, if not possible to change while engagement is still in active status.

Your psychopathic parent is not ‘different’ than all the rest. This person is the one who set you up to be abused in other relationships and to continue to take it from them. They don’t have a miraculous and just a ‘little bit’ of empathy for you. Hanging onto this belief, and the refusal to deal with and grieve the reality that this person does not love you and never could, hurts you more. Their inability to do so says NOTHING about you as a human being and the gift you were born with: empathy. Compassion for others.

I’m suggesting that you think about this. You don’t deserve abuse. Your parent will continue to apply it liberally to you and your life if you allow it. The no contact rule applies to the psychopathic partner for obvious reasons, as well as any past friendships, bosses, coworkers, children. It also applies to the parent.

I understand how painful it feels to integrate the reality of this into your heart. It is a pain like no other.

Your value and worth is not found in abuse, but a future free of it. Even if the abuser is your parent.

Onward and upward.

Note: This article also applies to men who are survivors of psychopathic women.

SOURCE

Labels: abuse, abusive father, abusive mother, adult children of narcissists, c-ptsd, empathy, envy, narcissistic, narcissistic father, narcissistic mother, narcissistic parent, psychopathic

shared by Barbara at 12:19 AM 15 comments

Adult Children of Narcissists - Their Struggle for Self

Trapped in the Mirror

by Dr. Elan Golomb
(book available at Amazon.com)

excerpts:

"People who are relatively free of narcissistic traits (most of us have some) do not attempt to place themselves above others. They are unconcerned with such comparisons. They stay in touch with their feelings and try to do their personal best. Their standards are internal and realistic since they have a good idea of who they are and what they can accomplish (such objectivity is not insignificant). They are not free of idealistic wishes and dreams.

"Narcissists are wholly different. They unconsciously deny an unstated and intolerably poor self-image through inflation. They turn themselves into glittering figures of immense grandeur surrounded by psychologically impenetrable walls. The goal of this self-deception is to be impervious to greatly feared external criticism and to their own roiling sea of doubts.

"This figure of paradox needs to be regarded as perfect by all. To achieve this, he or she constructs an elaborate persona (a social mask which is presented to the world). The persona needs an appreciative audience to applaud it. If enough people do so, the narcissist is relieved that no one can see through his disguise. The persona is a defensive schema to hide behind, like the false-front stores on a Western movie set. When you peer behind the propped-up wall, you find . . . nothing. Similarly, behind the grandiose parading, the narcissist feels empty and devoid of value.

"Because his life is organized to deny negative feelings about himself and to maintain an illusion of superiority, the narcissist's family is forcibly conscripted into supporting roles. They have no other option if they wish to get along with him. His mate must be admiring and submissive to keep the marriage going and his children will automatically mold themselves into any image that is projected upon them.

"Here the tragedy begins. A narcissist cannot see his children as they are but only as his unconscious needs dictate. He does not question why his children are incredibly wonderful (better than anyone else's) or intolerably horrible (the worst in all respects) or why his view of them ricochets from one extreme to another with no middle ground. It is what they are.

"When he is idealizing them, he sees their talents as mythic, an inflation that indicates they are being used as an extension of his grandiose self. When he hates them and finds their characteristics unacceptable, he is projecting hated parts of himself onto them. Whether idealizing or denigrating, he is entirely unaware that what he sees is a projection and that his views are laying a horrible burden on his child."

_________________________________

"The offspring of narcissists grow up fulfilling their assigned roles. They may sense that they are in a state of falsehood, but do not know what to do about feelings of nonauthenticity. They try all the harder to become what they are supposed to be, as if their feelings of uneasiness come from an improper realization of their role. If their parents see them as miserably deficient, from the shape of their bodies to the power of their minds, that is what they become. If they were portrayed to themselves as great muckamucks, especially if they have innate ability to fulfill a powerful role, they become the movers and shakers of society.

"At heart, children of narcissists, raised up or cast down by the ever-evaluating parent, feel themselves to be less than nothing because they must 'be' something to earn their parents' love. Conditional love offers no support for the inner self. It creates people who have no personal sense of substance or worth. Nourished on conditional love, children of narcissists become conditional. They find themselves unreal."

_____________________________

"As a child, the narcissist-to-be found his essential self rejected by his narcissistic parent. The wounds of the parent are a template for the wounding of the child. Each narcissistic parent in each generation repeats the crime that was perpetrated against him. The crime is non-acceptance. The narcissist is more demanding and deforming of the child he identifies with more strongly, although all his children are pulled into his web of subjectivity. How can he accept offspring who are the product of his own unconsciously despised self?

"The narcissist-to-be turns away from a world he perceives as devoid of nurturance and love (since a mother’s care gives the child its first version of the world). He withdraws into grandiose fantasies to shield himself from profound feelings of unworthiness caused by the fact that his mother does not really love him. Grandiosity permits him to believe that he is complete and perfect unto himself, thus shielding him from his secret sense that he is a ravening beast, ready to murder others in order to eat and survive. The food of this beast is admiration.

"The narcissistic mother, caretaker of the child’s earliest years, is grandiose, chronically cold but overprotective. She invades her child’s autonomy and manipulates him to conform to her wishes. She rejects all about him that she finds objectionable, putting him in the anxiety-ridden position of losing her affection if he expresses dissatisfaction. She responds to his baby rages and fussing with anxiety, anger, or withdrawal. He becomes unable to cope with the ugly feelings that threaten to erupt and destroy the bond between him and his mother, the bond he depends on for survival.

"His mother’s grandiosity models a way out of his dilemma. She places him on a common throne, sharing the rarefied air of her greatness. By appropriating and embellishing the aura of specialness in which she has enveloped him he can create a grandiose fantasy about himself to escape to. This fantasy eventually crystallizes into a psychic structure we call the grandiose self. A new narcissist is born.

"For all his air of self-sufficiency, the narcissist is full of interpersonal needs. He is more needy than most people who feel they have something good inside of them. If he is to survive, he must find a way to get his needs met without acknowledging the independent existence of the person off whom he wants to feed. To admit that a person is necessary to him gets him in touch with feelings of deficiency, which plummet him into intolerable emptiness, jealousy, and rage. To avoid this experience, he inhabits a one-person world. Either he exists and other people are extinguished or vice versa. In his mind, he is center stage and other people are mere shadows beyond the proscenium. This solution creates a new conundrum: ‘How can I get fed without acknowledging the feeder?’ The solution is to dissect people and to turn them partially into objects, to make them inanimate. A person comes to represent a need-fulfilling function or an organ like a breast, vagina, or penis. There is no overall person to consider.

"Since he is not psychotic and totally out of touch with reality, he is occasionally forced to recognize the presence of a benefactor. The emotional incursion of such an idea is warded off by demeaning the gift or the person who has given it. If a gift is unworthy he doesn’t have to feel gratitude. Not to say that he does not at times proffer thanks. A narcissist can be quite charming when he wishes to impress, but his words are not deeply felt.

"He usually does not see the need to go to such lengths with his family. They belong to him and are supposed to cater to his needs. His children are particularly crushed by his lack of recognition for their attempts at pleasing him since he is the main figure in their world. Adding insult to injury, they can always count on his criticism when what is offered falls below his standards.

"Despite his bubble of grandiosity, the narcissist is remarkably thin-skinned, forever taking offense and feeling mistreated, especially when people appear to have eliminated the extras in their response to him. Less than special immediately implies that someone may be thinking the emperor is naked, precisely what he fears. He is enraged whenever the aching corns of his insecurities are stepped on.

"A narcissist tends to have transient social relationships since few wish to abide by her rules. She has quick enthusiasms, business associates but few friends. Her closest are other narcissists who keep a comfortable distance while exchanging gestures of mutual admiration. Neither makes emotional demands on the other.

"In a mate, if she does not choose a fellow narcissist, she will cohabit with a person who feels inadequate and who needs to hide in a relationship. This suits her well since she doesn't want to recognize the existence of another being. Often, her mate is the child of a narcissist, already indoctrinated to regard exploitation and disregard as love."

____________________________________

"The grandiose narcissist in her automat world may not feel the emptiness of her life, although her narcissistic traits cause suffering in all those with whom she has intimate contact. She only comes to recognize that something is wrong (not necessarily with herself) when the environment no longer supports her grand illusions and she fails to live up to expectations of greatness. At this time she may become depressed and seek psychotherapy to relieve the pain."

______________________________________

"The narcissist attacks separateness in everyone with whom he must have a relationship. Either they fit into his ego-supporting mold or they are extruded from his life. Narcissistic rage and aggression are based on fear. His entitlement to absolute control over others must go unchallenged.

"Although the overall picture of narcissism can be readily understood, small details of [narcissistic] behavior are inexplicable. There is no rational explanation for what a completely self-centered person will do. What they themselves say about it later bears no relation to the original motivation. They often surrender to overpowering impulses based on distorted, one-sided, and limited perceptions."

_______________________________________

"Often, an initial move for independence involves joining a group. Membership in a group represents opposition to the parent. A narcissistic parent wants to determine her child’s style and life objectives. Her child wants separation but, fearing to stand alone, joins an all-encompassing group as a halfway move to freedom. He thinks that membership expresses his individuality and cites group laws as buttressing independence from the parent. But such membership often limits his search for a self that needs separation to exist. In order not to be immersed in his parent’s narcissistic net he buries himself in a group that operates like a narcissistic family and requires identity with members’ goals and ethos. It is a style of life that reinforces personal nonbeing."

FACEBOOK GROUP FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS

Labels: abuse, acon, adult children of narcissists, complex ptsd, daughter of narcissistic mother, donm, narcissism, narcissistic father, narcissistic mother, narcissistic parent

shared by Barbara at 12:22 AM 14 comments

Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents (ACONS)

Is Love Enough?

When lay people and professionals alike talk about dysfunctional families, often the question arises: Did the mother love the children? Or, did the father love the children?

Parental love is a very complicated emotion. If a parent compulsively looks after their children's health, insisting they eat only organic food, and natural vitamins, is this a form of love? How about if a parent makes a child come home after school and forbids any socializing until the studies are completed to her satisfaction--because this way the child will get into Harvard. Is this love? If the parent is looking after the child's best interests, then arguably their actions reflect love. But where is the line drawn? Some parents say to their children:

"Everything I did, I did for you--fed you, clothed you, put a roof over your head--all of it for you."

While probably an exaggeration, there is still a bit of truth here. Was there love? Probably. One can usually find a kernel of love towards their children in even the most narcissistic of parents. "I love you because you reflect well on me" is still love, however sullied. (One might argue that love in the service of selfish needs is not really love--but the line between selfish and unselfish love is a fuzzy one indeed.) Furthermore, the tears a narcissistic parent sheds when their child dies are absolutely real.

Simply put, love is too complicated an emotion to be of much use in distinguishing narcissistic and healthy parents. In my experience, if you ask adult children of narcissistic parents whether they were loved, many if not most will say "yes, in a controlling, self-centered way" even after they've completed therapy. Another variable, however, is far more telling. The critical questions are: "Did my parent respect and value what I said, see myself as independent from them in a positive way, and feel that my thoughts and feelings were as important as theirs." In other words, did my parent allow me "voice?" No adult child of a narcissistic parent can answer these questions in the affirmative.

These questions define the critical injury to adult children with narcissistic parents. Interestingly, many such people have no problem finding "love." But deep affection does not satisfy them unless accompanied by the granting of "voice" by a powerful person. As a result, adult children of narcissistic parents often go from bad relationship to bad relationship in search of "voice."

For parents, the implications are clear. Love is not enough. Client after client has taught me this unequivocal lesson:

If you want to raise emotionally healthy children, you must give them the gift of "voice."

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A SITE BY THE DAUGHTER OF A NARCISSISTIC MOTHER

FACEBOOK SUPPORT GROUP FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS

Labels: abuse, adult children of narcissists, bloggersunite, emotionally unavailable, love, narcissistic father, narcissistic mother, parents, raised by narcissists, rbn, voicelessness

shared by Barbara at 12:20 AM 110 comments

Children Can be Damaged by Narcissistic Parents

Children of narcissistic parents pressured to meet adult's needs

by Neil Rosenthal

Did you have a parent who constantly criticized you? Did this parent expect you to admire them and give them constant attention? Or perhaps your parent insisted that everything be done their way, and your contributions were ignored or devalued. If these descriptions of one or both of your parents ring true, it is very likely that you have been shaped by a parent with destructive narcissism.

An adult with healthy narcissism has a good sense of self, has empathy for others, is able to delay gratification, assumes responsibility for him/herself and for others, has a capacity to develop and maintain meaningful and satisfying relationships and has clear and firm boundaries, says Nina Brown in her book Children of the Self-Absorbed (New Harbinger Publications).

An adult with destructive narcissism, on the other hand, cannot reliably respond to a child's needs, or nurture, or respond empathetically, or put a child's needs above his/her own — or tune into the emotional life of a child. Instead, the child is expected to meet the adult's needs.

The child constantly receives messages about what they are supposed to be or do for the parent. When the child becomes an adult, the expectations are so internalized that they now respond to other people in the same way they responded to their parents, says Brown.

As an adult, you will either cater to others (and then resent them) or you will ignore others — and they will be unhappy with you. [this is what makes children of narcissists targets for pathological relationships - Barbara]

Here's a description of various components of how parents with destructive narcissism act, courtesy of Brown:

Needs attention: Becomes uncomfortable when the spotlight is turned to someone else. Will brag, throw a tantrum, sulk, act loud and boisterous, complain, act seductive and engage in one-upmanship.

Needs admiration: Fishes for compliments or approval, flaunts possessions, is vain, gloats over wins, tries to impress others and does everything — so others think they are “superman” or “superwoman.”

Feels what they have to say is more important than what others have to say, so they frequently interrupt others; does not wait their turn; becomes angry when ignored or overlooked; tries to find a way around rules or laws; expects to be taken care of first and to receive more service than others.

Has a lack of empathy. Is more interested in their concerns than in yours; ignores your feelings and fails to listen to you; diminishes the importance of your concerns, issues or feelings and calls you “touchy” “oversensitive” or that “you brought it on yourself” if you say you feel devalued or upset.

Wants to control what you do and say. Expects you to drop what you're doing and attend to them; uses your possessions without first asking permission; gets angry when you don't act as they tell you to; forces you to accept unwanted touching or kisses, and makes you feel inept when you don't rely on them to tell you what to do.

Considers others as inferior. Is easily offended by any hint that you think they are wrong or mistaken; is wounded when you disagree with their opinions or suggestions; is arrogant and acts as if they are control of everything.

Has shallow emotions, except for anger and fear.

Acts entitled. Expects to receive more attention, special consideration and deference. Assumes that their wants and needs take priority over yours, and that things be done in their way.

Exploits others by making misleading statements, being manipulative, lying, not reciprocating a gift or favor or by using emotional blackmail.

Is emotionally abusive. Makes demeaning comments about your appearance or abilities, is critical, devalues you and your accomplishments, suggests that whatever you do or say is never quite right, attacks without provocation and keeps you on the defensive.

THIS INCLUDES GRANDCHILDREN!!!

Neil Rosenthal is a licensed therapist in Westminster and Boulder, Colorado

Source

Labels: adult children of narcissists, control, criticism, lack of empathy, narcissist, narcissistic father, narcissistic mother, narcissistic parent, rage

shared by Barbara at 12:08 AM 9 comments

The Roots of Violence

ALICE MILLER: The Roots of Violence
Interviewed March 1987 by Diane Connors for OMNI Publications International

"I describe pictures of people, use histories of them as mirrors. And then many come and say, `This is exactly what I felt all my life but couldn't say.' I don't want to be a guru. I don't want people to believe me. I only encourage them to take their own experience seriously."

Alice Miller's stories portray abused and silenced children who later become destructive to themselves and to others. Adolf Hitler, says Miller, was such a child. Constantly mistreated by his father, emotionally abandoned by his mother, he learned only cruelty; he learned to be obedient and to accept daily punishments with unquestioning compliance. After years, he took revenge. As an adult he once said, "It gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware people are of what is really happening to them."

Miller, famed throughout Europe, wrote of Hitler's childhood in For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. In the same work she lets Christiane F. tell her own story: "I had trouble telling the letters H and Kapart One evening my mother was taking great pains to explain the difference to me. I could scarcely pay attention to what she was saying because I noticed my father getting more and more furious. I always knew what was going to happen. He went out and got the hand broom and gave me a trouncing. Now I was supposed to tell the difference between H, and K. Of course by that time I didn't know anything anymore, so I got another licking and was sent to bed." Christiane went into the street and became a drug addict.

"We do not need books about psychology in order to learn to respect our children," Miller says. "What we need is a total revision of the methods of child rearing and our traditional view about it.

The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives: with cruelty or with tenderness and protection. We often impose our most agonizing suffering upon ourselves and, later, on our children."

In 1979 Miller's first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, was published in Germany. First titled Prisoners of Childhood, its three short essays described how parents project their feelings, ideas, and dreams upon their children. To survive and be loved, a child learns to obey. In repressing his or her feelings, the child stifles attempts to be herself or himself. The result, said Miller, is all too often depression, ebbing of vitality, the loss of self. The Drama drew wide audiences in Europe and then the United States. Two more books quickly followed: For Your Own Good and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware continued to focus on the child but moved into deeper studies of child abuse, attitudes of child rearing, psychological theory, and treatment.

Last summer Miller published Pictures of a Childhood. A collection of 66 water-color paintings, it represents a small fraction of her art. As she tells us in the book's introduction, Miller started to paint 14 years ago. "Five years after I began painting spontaneously, I started writing books. This never would have been possible without the inner liberation painting has given me. The more freedom I got playing with colors, the more I had to question what I had learned twenty years ago.

"It wasn't until I wrote my books that I found out just how hostile society was toward children," she says. "I have come to realize that hostility toward children is to be found in countless forms, not only in death camps but throughout all levels of society and in every intellectual discipline -- even in most schools of therapy."

Born in Poland in 1923, Miller was educated and lives in Switzerland. She studied philosophy, sociology, and psychology and took her doctorate in 1953. She completed her psychoanalytic training in Zurich, and as a practicing psychoanalyst she has been involved in teaching and training for more than 20 years.

As her writing progressed, Miller's view of the child became more and more opposed to that of traditional Freudian theory. Miller at first dedicated Thou Shalt Not Be Aware to Freud on the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth. "His discoveries of the survival of childhood experiences in the adult unconscious and the phenomena of repression have influenced my life and way of thinking," she says. "But I came to different conclusions than Freud when I could no longer deny what I learned from my patients about the repression of child abuse."

Today Miller has departed from the traditional analytic approach to treatment and from Freudian theory. Early in his work Freud believed that the root of neurosis was actual trauma, often violent and sexual in nature, that had been repressed in childhood. Later he altered his view, deciding that the child is by no means innocent but is born with drives that are sexual and destructive in nature. Why has Freud's Oedipus complex lasted so long? Miller asks. "Because in the Freudian view the parents, not the child, are innocent. The Freudian view fits society; it overlooks in Oedipus the abused child and sees him with incestuous wishes that lead to his killing his father, marrying his mother, and ultimately blinding himself."

Traditional analysis, says Miller, duplicates the parent-child relationship. with the conventional analyst in the position of power. But there is hope in therapy if the therapist is a true advocate of the patient. Respect for the child within the patient and his discovery of his real history must play a role in the treatment process. The child undergoes a long inner struggle "between the fear of losing the person he loves if he remains true to himself, and panic at the prospect of losing himself if he has to deny who he is. A child cannot resolve a conflict of this nature and is forced to conform because he cannot survive by himself. Therapy should not repeat this condition."

Miller uses the phrase poisonous pedagogy to describe what we inflict on children "for their own good" out of our hypocrisy and ignorance. She perceives that we instill humiliation, shame. fear, and guilt as we are "training" children. By encouraging conformity, suppressing curiosity and emotions, a parent reduces a child's ability to make crucial perceptions in later life. "Children are tolerant. They learn intolerance from us."

While Miller's work is ignored or attacked by the orthodoxy, farsighted therapists often hail it as monumental in its analysis of hidden cruelty and the roots of violence. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu stated that Thou Shalt Not Be Aware "will undoubtedly prove to be a watershed in the history of psychoanalysis."

"My antipedagogical position is not directed against a specific type of pedagogy," Miller notes, "but against pedagogical ideology in general, which can be found also in the permissive theories." She fears that as a consequence of adults' arrogant attitudes -- including "permissive" attitudes -- toward children's feelings, children are trained to be accommodating. But their own voices will be silenced, and their awareness killed. And more blind and arrogant adults will be the result.

Interviewer Diane Connors, also a psychotherapist, visited Miller in her apartment near Zurich. Small in stature, Miller radiates a sense of both caution and fragility, and a clear-eyed, unflinching commitment to what she is saying, and an awareness of society's resistance to her work.
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OMNI
When did you realize respect for the child would be your central focus?

Miller
I looked from the beginning, I think from my childhood, for the answer to why people behave in such an irrational way. I always needed to understand and make things clear. I didn't get much information from my mother, who would say, "It is this way; it is so and so and so." She never gave me an explanation if I asked. I was very alone as a child.

Maybe I was five years old when I saw a woman with a child. The girl was three or four. She fell down and was hurt. Her mother, who was talking to another mother, slapped the child just because she came crying with bloody knees. I remember my question then: "This child is punished twice: first by falling down and then by the mother. Why does she punish the child? She is not guilty -- she needs her mother's help, not punishment."

OMNI
Did you ask your mother?

Miller
I did not dare ask this question, but it was the "prequestion" of my life. Then I saw the war, and I asked why people hate so much and behave in this absurd way. They must have a hidden reason, I guessed. I found no answer in philosophy and none in psychoanalysis. I found it in the later years of my life when I faced the child within myself and when I began to listen to the child in my patients.

I had to forget the theories. Even Freud says that the child is guilty if he is hurt. The child is always guilty. The mother of my childhood memory was angry that the child was a problem when she wanted to talk to a friend. I could see that because I was five and didn't know any theories at that time. Grown-ups don't see. They learn theories that cover up the most obvious explanations, and they believe these theories.

You know Andersen's tale "The Emperor's New Clothes"? I think it is my role in society now, and in analytic society, to say the emperor is without clothes. And many now say, "Oh, I am so glad because I knew it too but didn't dare say it." Yet there are others who say he is wearing clothes, because they are afraid of losing power.

In The Drama I'd hoped to reach the professionals, my colleagues; so I spoke in psychoanalytical language. Meanwhile I went beyond this language, and I don't use it anymore: I no longer try to reach people trained as I was. Even as they deny what I wrote, their patients say, "She describes my own experiences. I know what she is talking about."

OMNI
Why do some professionals deny what you're saying?

Miller
Because they are not allowed to face reality. You know, it was interesting. The first time I talked on these ideas was when I spoke to about three hundred analysts on the narcissism of psychoanalysts. They were so surprised, because it was very unusual to hear a colleague side with the child. First they reacted naturally, were just grateful and did not show much resistance to their feelings. They thanked me and said, "But how did you know it was my life you described?" And I said, "It was my own life I described." Many men had tears in their eyes. Then I tried to publish this article in a German professional review, but the editors refused it. Resistance was already established. They sent it back because they had to see everything as Freud would have; otherwise it is frightening or dangerous. The International Analytic Society published it in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. But the German review, Psyche, did not. It was too provoking for the Germans.

OMNI
What were the provocative issues?

Miller
That neurosis and psychosis result from repressed feelings that are a reaction to trauma. The child's anger and all the other feelings we don't like are reactions to child abuse.

Today we know that we have a lot of child abuse. It was silenced before. The child must repress the memory of this abuse and deny the pain in order to survive; otherwise he would be killed by the pain.

OMNI
Might this happen so early in the child's development that he lacks words, understanding, or permission to express the pain?

Miller
The words have to be found. A good therapy should help the patient evolve from a "silent child" to a "talking child." The child couldn't have found the words if the trauma were too early, or the environment too hostile. But now, in therapy, if you have a therapist who is really your advocate, your conscious witness for when you experienced your trauma for the first time, then you become a talking child. Therapy exists to help you find the words to tell your mother or father how you felt at that time when they hurt you or how you felt when you could not talk -- even that.

OMNI
What do you mean by advocate?

Miller
One who sides with the child. Always. The therapist must not say the parents were disturbed but well-meaning, because he is then siding with the grown-ups. If the child thinks that the parents who behaved so strangely and humiliated him were well-meaning, he cannot feel his pain, and he sympathizes instead with his parents. It is a crime to beat a child because the beating is a damage, and you can never change this reality. A battered child feels humiliated, confused, isolated; and he is made to feel guilty because he is told he is bad. We are afraid to say that child abuse is a crime because we want to protect the parent from his guilt. But we really fail to help them when we support their blindness, because in this way we also betray the child in the parent.

OMNI
How do you deal with pain in the healing process?

Miller
Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis.

There are some treatments where the patients cry a lot -- they really suffer -- but do not talk. I saw a videocassette where for one hour the patient relived the pain of birth but didn't talk about it. Only later did he report on what he had felt. But in my opinion it is important to speak, to verbalize, during the experience of pain. Even if the patient felt as if he were in the womb, he should try to talk to the mother and tell her how he feels. The link between feelings and their verbal expression is crucial to the healing process. But he can't do it without assistance; he has to know someone is there who understands how he feels, who supports and confirms him. If a child has been molested and the therapist doesn't deny this fact, many things can open up in the patient. The therapist must not preach forgiveness, or the patient will repress the pain. He won't change, and the repressed rage will look for a scapegoat.

OMNI
Do you think the child has no history, that a child is born into the world like a tabula rasa on which experience inscribes his or her character?

Miller
No, I don't. The child comes from the womb with his or her history as experienced in the womb. But he doesn't come with projections. He is born innocent and ready to love. And the child can love -- much more than we grown-ups can. This idea of the child as a loving being meets so much resistance because we learned to defend our parents and to blame ourselves for everything they have done.

OMNI
In what ways does your style reflect these views?

Miller
I try to reach the child in the readers, allow them to feel. I see my style as ranking keys. Everybody can take one so that they can go open their own door to find something. Or they can say no, I don't want to go through this door; I will return the key. I try to evoke feelings, images. In this way I offer keys to your own experience. You can then go look at your children and learn from them, not from me. Because only from your own experience can you really learn.

In my first studies I was very abstract; I wanted to understand the most abstract ideas -- of Kant, Hegel, or Marx. My dissertation in philosophy was very abstract. Now I see that each philosopher had to build a big, big building in order not to feel his pain. Even Freud.

OMNI
Why did you decide to become an author and lecturer? Miller
I want to inform people that there is no one person in the whole world who abuses children without having been abused as a child. I think this finding is crucial and can help to understand a lot of things. As an analyst, I couldn't share my findings with anybody of this profession. It wasn't possible, and I had to understand why not. So I wrote my third book, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware Again I was in the position of the child who sees so many people admiring the emperor without clothes. I wanted to understand this too, their motive. Why are they not aware?

Then others began showing interest in my work. Ashley Montagu confirmed my view of the child, and I also found confirmation from other writers who wrote about child abuse. Montagu sent me his book Growing Young, in which he quoted the famous British psychoanalyst Edward Glover. Glover describes the perfectly normal infant as "egocentric, greedy, dirty, violent in temper, destructive in habit, profoundly sexual in purpose, aggrandizing in attitude, devoid of all but the most primitive reality sense, without conscience of a moral feeling, whose attitude to society as represented by the family is opportunist, inconsiderate, domineering, and sadistic." So when we compare the normal baby to the criminal type labeled psychopath, the baby for all practical purposes is a born criminal. This view is dangerous to humanity. We pretend to give the child the norms of society to make him into a "human being." This is the Freudian view of the infant. Melanie Klein also saw the infant as a destructive creature. I once talked to a Kleinian analyst, a nice young woman, and she said, "Haven't you seen destructive babies?" And I said. "What do you mean?" She said, "Small siblings that give you a slap." And I said, "Why are you so appalled by this play? The baby doesn't understand. But if you believe it is wrong and bad, he will feel wrong and bad, will not understand, and will finally become destructive out of this distress." I think our attitude toward infants will make them either good, loving, and trusting or hating and destructive.

OMNI
Do you have reactions from Kleinian analysts to your works?

Miller
A Dutch psychiatrist trained in the Kleinian school once wrote me: "What you have written seemed terrible at first and turned around everything I had learned, and it scared me. But now I am grateful. Every day at the hospital is fascinating. Each patient is a history, and I learn from each of them."

When I say I'd like to open my eyes and ears to the suffering of the child, it's close to what [Frederick] Leboyer did with the newborn. So many people have witnessed birth, yet nobody saw the child was suffering, crying out in psychic pain. Nobody could feel with the child. They were convinced it was necessary to cry after birth. Leboyer said that this pain was unnecessary. "I can show that the child will smile some minutes after birth," he said. Many mothers know he was right, but not the professionals, who still prevent mothers from making birth a good experience for their newborns. They learned thirty years ago that it is necessary for the baby to scream and be spanked, and they continue to believe what they learned.

It is the same for my work. To protect what they learned, the professionals ignore what I'm showing them. What Leboyer did for the newborn, I'm trying to do for the older child to explain his behavior, to bring adults closer to his suffering, which they deny; to explain how he feels and in this way prevent child abuse in the future. As long as we deny the child abuse, we can't stop it. We just call it upbringing. I am trying to listen to the child's voice. make people aware of the child's feelings, feelings that I first faced in myself when I started to paint.

OMNI
Do you think painting opened up a lot of feelings for you?

Miller
Because I could begin without theoretical knowledge, without luggage, really, as a child. And I had so much fun when I began. I knew something was going to be created, to come out. And it did. The first five years of painting enabled me to write The DramaA in this unconventional way. I was playing with thoughts. And as I experienced creativity in my painting, I became much more critical about what I had learned as theory.

OMNI
In The Drama you connect repressed feeling with loss of vitality. Was that your experience here?

Miller
Yes, experiencing the pain of my life gave me back my vitality. First pain, then vitality. The price of repressing feelings is depression. I also had to resist the usual way of learning. If you are forced to do something, you cannot have fun. But for me, having fun is the first condition of creativity. I learned when I played with color. But I resisted learning about color by reading theories from books. For me painting, dreaming, and writing have something in common. I paint as I dream. I have many impulses and associations. I never have a plan, a concept of what I want to do. I do have a concept sometimes, but I cannot realize it because while painting, I start to dream of something else and I forget my plan. In the beginning I had a sort of narrative style. I wanted to tell a story, or a story in myself wanted to be told. Now it's more like needing this color, this form, this line. It's improvisation. I'd say I am painting like a jazz musician.

I don't want to make a masterpiece, or even good pictures. Fortunately, I don't need to sell my paintings. I'm only compelled to work further and further into what is true. Sometimes I destroy my paintings. I change and change them, even though they may have been nicer before. In the end I'm happy because it's what I wanted to say. I don't care if someone says it's good or not. In painting I feel absolutely free. I have my palette, my white paper; and nobody can tell me what is right or wrong.

OMNI
You admire Goya and Turner?

Miller
They are not models for me but are examples of true and great artists. Both were successful and admired. Then suddenly they absolutely changed their styles. Goya, who had made wonderful portraits, began painting ghosts and his inner world. And Turner began painting light. And when people began to say, "This is not good -- you made really good paintings before," he didn't care; both he and Goya did what they needed to do. So for me they are examples of courage.

Picasso, too, did this so many times. To go out of what for most people is comforting -- to be good, skillful, admired, famous, and then to abandon all this to go your own way -- is so very frightening to most people. But I had to do this in order to get in touch with myself, to become free. Otherwise I feel like I am in a prison.

OMNI
Who are your heroes?

Miller
The older I become, the less I have heroes. Even Freud was not a hero but for a long time a father figure. But when I discovered his denial of the truth, he wasn't even that anymore. I cannot idealize anybody as I did twenty or forty years ago. In my school days Socrates was a big figure; and he's someone I've liked for my whole life because he questioned so many things. I also liked the honesty of Montaigne; I liked Kafka, and I adored Shakespeare. Now I can't read novels so easily anymore. I am bored if I see the lie. I like reports on childhood if they are written honestly, which is rare. The childhood offers the keys to the whole personality. I wrote essays on Nietzsche, Picasso, [German expressionist] Kathe Kollwitz after I discovered facts from their childhoods that cast new light on their works. It is amazing that the importance of these facts was overlooked. The essays are still unpublished because I haven't had the time to put them in a new book. And I'm tired of publishing books. I love to write but not to publish. It takes so much time and is not really creative.

OMNI
When did you ultimately decide to write The Drama?

Miller
Oh, it was funny. Actually, I didn't. I told you I did a paper for a conference; then I wrote another on depression. After the German professionals refused to print the first one, I wrote the third paper, and made it all into a book. Although I wrote it in three weeks, it was an expression of twenty years' experience. I sent it to a small publisher in Switzerland who said they were not interested, that they had four other books "on narcissism." Then I sent it to Suhrkamp, my present German publisher. The editor telephoned me the next day and said, "Wait, please, and you will have the contract in three days. It's extraordinary; it's so unusual." And then the publisher came to visit me and said, "Usually I take new manuscripts home with me at lunchtime. This time I couldn't take my nap; I had to finish it. I didn't return to work that day, either. You made a big discovery."

OMNI
Does response to your work differ from country to country?

Miller
Yes. The Scandinavian lands, Holland, and the United States are most liberal and open. Most of my books are sold in Germany, but many Germans are still very much formed by the poisonous pedagogy. Swiss people, too. So many are not allowed to criticize parents or see the poison of their upbringing. These people say my work describes the education of the nineteenth century. They don't realize that they still live according to nineteenth-century values.

This response is also a reaction to Hitler's time. The denial of Hitler is so deep that the German cannot learn from his history. As a child, Hitler had no witness. His father destroyed everything his son did. He could never tell anyone the pains he was suffering. In Sweden they made a play, "Hitler's Childhood," from a chapter in my book. The story shows how that child looked for contact, longed for a glance, but was constantly treated like a dog.

A reaction similar to Germany's also comes from Japan, but also from Japan come reactions from people who already have become aware. Their awareness is not damaged by theories like the Freudian drive theory, so these Japanese can face what I write, use it in their reality. They can realize the ever-present child abuse, and they can really help.

Behind every act of violence there is a history. A history of being molested, a history of denying. The denial is a law governing us, but it is ignored by society and still not investigated by the professionals. Yet it holds the keys to our understanding why pure nonsense can be still held in high esteem in our culture, such nonsense as Sigmund Freud's idea that a child would invent traumas.

OMNI
Are there cultures that have a different attitude toward parenting?

Miller
Despite variations in cultures, abuse is found in almost every one. But there are some that are different. For instance, there are people on an island of Malaysia called Senoi who have a nonviolent culture. They talk with their children about dreams each morning. They never have had war. Our culture is so violent because as children we learned not to feel.

OMNI
What, in general, are your thoughts about dreams?

Miller
Dreams tell me the story of childhood, but childhood transformed. The problems of the previous day are mixed in. Dreams sometimes reveal repressed traumas, but they also help the dreamer to master them. Dreams are a creative force everybody has each night when the control is lessened.

OMNI
Can therapy effect a change?

Miller
Yes, but only if the therapy will come to the pain, which is blocked in our feelings of guilt. The idea "I was guilty for what happened to me" is a blockage. Since I discovered that Freud's drive theory not accidentally but necessarily conceals the reality of child abuse, I have looked for a new form of psychotherapy, an effective therapy to be based on the whole knowledge of child abuse available to us today. I finally found it, and I will describe this concept in my next book. This therapy enables the patient and the therapist to systematically come in touch with their traumas and pain -- step by step without suddenly breaking the defenses, without moralistic and pedagogical attitudes, and without bringing people into dangerous states where they experience chaotic feelings and are stuck with them.

One can find plenty of irresponsible and harmful techniques and mixtures of techniques that don't provide a systematic confrontation with the past. Some leave people with different mystical offerings or with their unresolved pain. These patients are victims first of child abuse and finally of therapy abuse. And they try to "help" themselves by taking drugs, joining sects or gurus, or looking for other ways of denying reality and killing pain. Political activity can be one of these ways.

OMNI
What advice would you give today to a therapist in training?

Miller
First try to discover your own childhood, then take the experience seriously. Listen to the patient and not to any theory; with your theory you are not free to listen. Forget it. Do not analyze the patient like an object. Try to feel, and help the patient to feel instead of talking to the patient about the feelings of others.

The child needs fantasies to survive, to not suffer. Believe what the patient tells you, and don't forget that repressed reality is always worse than a fantasy. No one invents traumas, because we don't need traumas in order to survive. But neither do we need their denial. Some of us pay with severe symptoms for this denial. Study the history of childhood. Therapy has to open you as well as the patient for feeling in your whole life. It has to awaken you from a sleep.

It is tragic to go to therapy and find, instead of help, confusion. I have a letter from a seventy-nine-year-old woman saying that for "forty years of my life I went to psychoanalysis. I saw eight analysts. But for the first time, after reading your book, I didn't feel guilty for what happened to me. I always tried, and the analysts were nice people. They wanted to help me. But they never doubted that my parents were good to me. I am so grateful now that I don't feel guilty since I read your books. I now see how terribly they abused me. It was first my parents and then my analysts who made me feel wrong and guilty." This insight came from a seventy-nine-year-old woman! Then she quoted from the last line of For Your Own Good "For the human spirit is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath."

OMNI
Does TV violence affect children?

Miller
Children who have really been loved and protected will not be interested in these films and shows and will not be in danger. But the child who was hurt and humiliated -- maybe at school, not necessarily by his parents -- is looking for outcomes, for material; he is looking for an object to hate and on whom to take revenge. Of course there are people who make a business of the suffering of children. But the violence doesn't come from TV films. Its sources are deeper. Protected and loved children cannot become murderers. It is impossible to find one person who was not beaten who beats a child.

OMNI
Why does violence beget itself through the generations?

Miller
If you go back you can see that the abuser was always abused. But in most cases you will not hear it from him or her, because there is so much denial. If you go to a prison and ask a murderer, "How was your childhood?" he will say, "Oh, it was not so bad. My father was severe and he punished me because I was so bad. And my mother was a nice woman." This is the problem: You can't find the truth because the person, the murderer himself, will prevent you from seeing his cruel childhood as it actually was. Because he cannot bear that pain, he kills innocent people instead of feeling the pain of his childhood.

OMNI
Do you think a child can experience abuse in the womb?

Miller
Of course. Each child has its own experience; some experience real martyrdom. There was a child born with three ulcers. It died. The mother was fifteen years old. She was beaten during pregnancy as well, and she used drugs. Nobody knows what a child, even in the womb, has to go through. We are so ignorant, and we refuse to know.

You heard about the McMartin School in Los Angeles? At this day-care center of more than three hundred children it was charged that many of them were sexually molested. For seven months attorneys asked the children what happened to them there. This questioning was torture for the children. Some of them reported that they helped kill a baby. The grown-ups found this wasn't true, so they called the children liars. Eventually charges were dropped against five of the seven accused molesters. But obviously this was a symbolic way to say, "When I agreed to be sexually abused I killed the child in myself."

I want to show how society reacts to children's reports. Abuse means killing the soul of a child. We cannot understand the child's symbolic language, so we say the child is lying. Then abusing teachers go free, and we think that everything is legally correct. The problem is that children protect the abuser. Sometimes the abuser is exchanged for another person in their reports. They perhaps say, "I'm afraid of the mailman because he was bad to me." And the parents know that the mailman had no body contact with their child. But behind the "made-up" story lurks a father or uncle. The lie functions to protect the loved person but at the same time expresses anxieties. Grown-ups say that these are children who invent stories. But the story is not invented; a real event happened.

OMNI
Can society learn to understand the child's language?

Miller
I hope so. Otherwise we will commit a mass suicide with the help of technology. The child's language is often very clear, but we refuse to listen to it. Children can endure terrible abuse and cruelty from the first moment of their lives, thanks to the technology in hospitals. The abuse is stored up in the mind, and it can remain active the whole life. Therefore, a mother maltreating her small baby can repeat exactly what happened to her without having any knowledge, any conscious memories. But the stored-up memories in her body will compel her to repeat the same trauma.

Unless a child receives the warm arms of a person who will console him and tell him with his arms that the shock of birth is over, this child will wait his whole life expecting a repetition of this shock. One of the first lessons is that you are alone, in a dangerous place, and nobody sees your pain. But this situation can easily be changed when we acknowledge the newborn as a feeling and highly sensitive person. Very often the child comes into life after a struggle, and we don't realize that he needs consolation and the arms of a mother. We give him medication, hospitals, and high technology instead. And we think it is good for the child -- only because we had the same experience years ago and think it is usual. What really happens in the psyche of a newborn is absolutely not interesting to most people. That is why I am giving you this interview.

OMNI
What would you like to do now?

Miller
I would like to support people who are confronting child abuse. I received a letter from a child therapist in California. He was a consultant for a school. A girl told him stories of a "hot box," a tiny windowless closet in which the children were locked up as punishment. He believed her, investigated, and, when he wrote a report about it, was fired. But he kept on investigating and found these hot boxes used in other schools. Newspapers reported about the case, and his voice and experience were noticed. He thanked me because he felt supported by my books. This shows one person can make people aware that methods they never questioned before are, in fact, damaging. The single advocate of a child can save a life; advocates say a crime is a crime; they don't conceal the truth by calling it ambivalent parent's love. An advocate can help keep a child from becoming a criminal. The child learns from an enlightened witness to recognize cruelty, to reject it, to defend himself against it, so as not to perpetuate it. Experiments have conclusively proven that no one learns anything by punishment. What you learn is how to avoid punishment by lies and how to punish a child twenty to thirty years later. People continue to believe, however, that punishment can be effective.

OMNI
Can you change this belief?

Miller
I hope so, at least partly. My life and work concentrate on the problem of child abuse and on the question of how I can transmit what I have learned about it to professionals, parents, and people responsible for law. It's not easy, because most people learned from the beginning of their lives that the child has to be spanked in order to become as good, human, honest, tolerant as the teachers, parents, ministers, and others around them believe that they are.

In England, where I've given some radio shows, interviewers often say, "You talk about the serious forms of violence and brutality in families, but there are also other forms -- spankings, caning, shouting at a child." The interviewers claim these forms of exercising power are harmless and not serious, and they argue that although they were often spanked as children, they didn't become an Adolf Hitler. I see it as my task to repeat that each kind of beating, caning, and spanking of a child is a humiliation and is a serious damage for his whole life. A child can avoid becoming a criminal if he has the chance in childhood to meet at least one person who is not cruel to him, who maybe even likes him or understands him. The experience of love, compassion, or sympathy would help him to recognize cruelty for what it is. Children who lack this experience because there is no conscious witness will see cruelty as a normal way of treating children and will continue with this burden. They will become as Hitler, Eichmann, [Rudolf] Hoss, and all the millions of their followers who in their childhoods never found anything but cruelty.

OMNI
What about the milder forms of cruelty, such as spanking, shouting, and verbal humiliation?

Miller
The tragedy is that people treated this way -- even if they don't become like Hitler -- pretend that this kind of treatment was necessary. They reserve the right to do the same to their children and are reluctant to pass laws forbidding spanking. In Britain such a law was not passed until 1986, and I see this delay as one of the effects of child abuse there.

The ignorance of our society is the result of child abuse. We were spanked in order to become blind like Oedipus. We have to become seeing in order to give our children the chance to grow up with more responsibility and more awareness than was available for our generation now producing atomic bombs.

http://www.nospank.net/miller4.htm
http://www.nospank.net/milindex.htm#miller4
http://www.alice-miller.com

Labels: abuse, adult children of narcissists, alice miller, children, complex ptsd, daughter of narcissistic mother, denial, narcissistic father, narcissistic mother, narcissistic parent, neglect, pain, parents