Breaking Down the Wall of Silence Quotes

“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“It was my experience that it was precisely the opposite of forgiveness—namely, rebellion against mistreatment suffered, the recognition and condemnation of my parents' misleading opinions and actions, and the articulation of my own needs—that ultimately freed me from the past. In my childhood, these things had been ignored in the name of "a good upbringing," and I myself learned to ignore them for decades in order to be the "good" and "tolerant" child my parents wished me to be. But today I know: I always needed to expose and fight against opinions and attitudes that I considered destructive of life wherever I encountered them, and not to tolerate them. But I could only do this effectively if I had felt and experienced what was inflicted on me earlier. By preventing me from feeling the pain, the moral-religious injunction to forgive did nothing but hinder this process.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The possibility of change depends on whether there is a sufficient number of enlightened witnesses to create a safety net for the growing consciousness of those who have been mistreated as children, so that they do not fall into the darkness of forgetfulness, from which they will later emerge as criminals or the mentally ill. Cradled in the "net" provided by such enlightened witnesses, these children can grow to be conscious adults, adults who live with and not against their past and who will therefore be able to do everything they can to create a more humane future for us all.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Today, we are at a turning point in our history. We can no longer continue to accept tradition for tradition's sake. We can no longer go on playing the same old war games without eventually becoming conscious of the dimensions of the destruction involved. We must realize that child murder was also part of our "traditions" and that our blindness in respect of this tradition is itself a consequence of this practice. We have no other choice but to become fully conscious of the darker aspects of our own cultural heritage. Only then will we cease to pass them blindly on to future generations.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Because they lacked the experience of their own childhoods, they allowed rejection by their peers to divert them from their goal. Had they found their way back to their own childhoods, they would not have needed this confirmation from outside. To live with one's own truth is to be at home with one self. That is the opposite of isolation. We only need confirmation when we are alienated from ourselves in the flight from the truth. All the friends and devoted admirers in the world cannot make up for that loss.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The more familiar you become with your biography, the better you will have learned to perceive your internal signals and take them seriously, and the easier you can judge whether your therapists follow along with you and help you or whether they only serve to confuse you more. If you don't want to pay the bill for someone else's confusion, you must have the strength and the wisdom to give up a therapist or a confusing group as you would give up a mechanic who politely but blindly tried to fix your car while ignoring and wanting to ignore what was really wrong in the first place.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The danger does not lie with individuals, however criminal they may be. Far more, it lies in the ignorance of our entire society, which confirms these people in the lies that they were obliged to believe in their childhood. Teachers, attorneys, doctors, social workers, priests, and other respected representatives of society protect parents from the mistreat child's every accusation and see to it that the truth about child abuse remains concealed. Even the child protection agencies insist that this crime, and this crime alone, should go unpunished.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“To sign away our democratic rights to future tyrants and dictators, because they cast themselves in the role of "strong fathers," thus reminding us of our own, is tantamount to committing collective suicide. Even if we have, since childhood, been waiting for the great, redeeming figure who will solve all our problems, as adults we can be aware that such a redeemer will, in reality, turn out to be something quite different. For it is more than likely that people who completely repress and falsify the mistreatment they once received will be a danger to others, a danger that increases the greater power they hold. This can be clearly illustrated by the lives of Hitler, Stalin, and countless of their followers. Among them will not be found a single person who became a tormentor of others who did not approve of the abuse he himself once received.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“My own liberation only became possible once I had grasped the fact that fear of the truth and ignorance are not our inescapable fate. We choose them. In contrast to children, adults have the chance of dispensing with repression without being killed by the pain. We can decide to dispel our blindness and the intellectual defenses ingrained in us by our upbringing. Only when I knew with certainty, because I had experienced it in myself, that destructiveness and self-destructiveness can be resolved, did I stop using up valuable energy trying to understand those who had caused unnecessary pain. Only then did I have the courage to take a dispassionate look at their deeds and condemn them.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The mistreatment of children is the basest, meanest crime human beings can commit against their fellow human beings and against humanity in general, because it insidiously deforms the personalities of the generations to come. As soon as someone mentions it, it will be denied. "You don't mean to blame your parents, do you?" will be asked in threatening tones. "Of course I do, if they commit crimes," I would reply. Why should parents have carte blanche to commit whatever crimes they see fit? No one is forbidding them to get angry or have feelings. Of course, they can have those. But they are not allowed to take their feelings out on their children. Destructive actions, unlike feelings, should be explicitly and publicly forbidden.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Though I would subsequently come up against a wall of silence, I was never a victim of it in the way I was a victim of abuse. Later, I could sense it, judge it, condemn it. I could stop myself being confused about it. I could defend myself against unjustified accusations and find the help I needed. I was not condemned to blindness. I did often come up against people who had more or less barricaded themselves from inner life, people who were incapable of a dialogue of thought and feeling. And I learned that such people often sought to compensate for their insecurity by seeking power. Their one protection was to evade the facts and seek refuge in silence.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“It is above all the children already born that have a right to life—a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of "the right to life" remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Denial is the ladder out of this hell, enabling them to emerge with the burning desire to finally revenge themselves for it. Can one have a dialogue with such people? I believe we must keep trying because this may, indeed it very likely will, be their first opportunity of encountering an enlightened witness. How they make use of this encounter is something over which we have no influence. But we should at least make use of the occasion. Life failed them—something that is, I suspect, true of all prison inmates. One should try to show them that they had the right to respect, love, and encouragement in their childhood and that this right was denied them, but that this does not give them the right to destroy the lives of others.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“It is our access to the truth that can enable us to prevent such people, who yearn for the "order' spawned by violence, from realizing their destructive plans. Fascism will have had its day once society ceases to deny the knowledge we already possess about the production of brutality, violence, and dehumanization in childhood and minimize its dangers. Once this has happened, it won't have a chance in this society.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Adolescents who have been beaten regard what they have experienced in their own upbringing as normal and as a matter of course. They think that what they have been taught—namely, that children need to be beaten—is right. And they don't question these views, because as children who have been physically intimidated, they are afraid to call their parents into question. As a result, they adopt the destructive and ignorant views of their elders. They don't know that there are people who love their children and would never use violence against them, and that such children do not grow up to be criminals or tyrants but happier, more conscious human beings who help others and would never wish to harm them. That is also true of people who, though they were damaged in childhood, have been able to resolve the blinding results of these injuries and can, therefore, categorically condemn such destructive behavior toward children.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Parents who can feel, who are conscious of their feelings and realize that uncontrolled anger, though it may be triggered by the child, usually has little to do with it, are less in danger of acting out their rage in the guise of pedagogy. I use the words "guilt" and "victim," rather than "causes" and "effects," as I am often politely urged to do, advisedly. Children are turned into victims by people, by their parents, not by some kind of automaton. These people have no right to behave as though they were merely destructive automatons and adhere to their ignorance, even though conventional wisdom and even moral and religious teachings confirm them in their actions by preaching forgiveness to their victims. One day the effects of such opinions will be seen in all their destructiveness.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“No longer to be compelled to betray one's own feelings and senses, no longer to allow oneself to be deflected from the truth of facts by ideologies of any kind, is already to lend a hand in the demolition of the inhuman, destructive wall of silence—the wall that we were forced to respect as children and which has again and again resulted in fascist behavior.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“What is valid for the individual is also valid for the development of a wider social consciousness. Here, too, the monstrous truth regarding the causes and consequences of child abuse and the way that violence can be bred into human beings cannot be admitted to the consciousness all at once, but must proceed slowly, step by step.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Some sense that to repress feelings of their childhood is to poison the very well-springs of life; they know that though repression may have been necessary for the child's survival—otherwise she might literally have died from the pain—maintaining repression in adult life inevitably has destructive consequences. But in the absence of any other alternative, they regard such consequences as a necessary evil. They don't know that it is indeed possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without danger, and learn to live with the truth. Not all at once. Not by recourse to violent interventions. But slowly, step by step, and with respect for their own system's defense mechanisms, recovery is possible.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Fasismi ei ollut Hitlerin keskintöä. Monien aikalaistensa tavoin hänkin tutustui totalitaariseen valtamalliin kotonaan. Fasismin kansallissosialistisessa muodossa on epäilemättä selviä jälkiä Hitlerin lapsuudesta. Hänen lapsuutensa ei kuitenkaan ollut poikkeuksellinen. Siksi Gerhart Hauptmann ja Martin Heidegger ja monet muutkin kuuluisat intellektuellit eivät kyenneet näkemään Hitlerin hulluuden läpi. Siihen he olisivat kyenneet vain jos olisivat nähneet itse saamansa kasvatuksen läpi. Adolf Hitler pääsi tekemään Euroopasta ja maailmasta lapsuutensa taistelutantereen, koska miljoonat silloisen Saksan asukkaat olivat lapsuudessaan kokeneet vastaavaa. He pitivät seuraavia periaatteita itsestäänselvyytenä, vaikkeivät tietoisesti: #1 Arvoista ylin ei ole elämä vaan järjestys ja kuuliaisuus. #2 Järjestyksen voi luoda ja säilyttää vain väkivallalla. #3 Luovuus (jota lapsi edustaa) on aikuiselle vaara ja täytyy hävittää. #4 Korkein laki on ehdoton tottelevaisuus isälle. #5 Tottelemattomuus ja arvostelu eivät tule kysymykseen, koska niiden rangaistuksena on kuritus tai kuoleman uhka. #6 Elävästä, vitaalista lapsesta on mahdollisimman varhain koulittava kuuliainen robotti, orja. #7 Ei-toivotut tuneet ja todelliset tarpeet on siitä syystä määrätietoisesti tukahdutettava. #8 Äiti ei koskaan suojele lasta isän rangaistustoimilta vaan pitää hänelle kidutuksen jälkeen saarnan vanhempien kunnioittamisesta ja rakastamisesta.”
― Alice Miller, Murra vaikenemisen muuri

“Me rakennamme ympärillemme korkeita muureja, joilla suojelemme itseämme tuskallisilta tosiasioilta, koska emme ole oppineet elämään niistä tietoisina. >>Miksi meidän muka pitäisi?>> Joku ehkä kysyy. >>Menneet ovat menneitä. Miksi niitä pitäisi pohtia?>> Vastaus on monitahoinen.
Meitä lapsuuden historialta suojelevan muurin takana seisoo nimittäin edelleen se hyljeksitty lapsi, joka me olimme ja joka kauan sitten hylättiin ja petettiin. Hän toivoo meiltä suojaa, ymmärtämystä ja vapautusta eristyneisyydestään, yksinäisyydestään ja sanattomuudestaan. Tuo lapsi on jo kauan kaivannut meiltä ymmärrystä, kunnioitusta ja kiintymystä. Hänellä ei kuitenkaan ole pelkästään tarpeita, jotka meidän tulisi tyydyttää. Hän tarjoaa meille myös lahjaa, jota ilman me emme voi elää täydesti, jota emme voi ostaa emmekä hankkia mistään muualta kuin häneltä, tältä itsessämme olevalta lapselta. Se lahja on totuus, joka vapauttaa tuhoisien käsitysten ja vakiintuneiden valheiden vankilasta, ja lopulta myös turvallisuus, jonka uudestaan saavutettu eheys suo. Lapsi odottaa vain, että me suostuisimme lähestymään häntä ja purkamaan muurit hänen avullaan.
Sitä eivät monet ihmiset tiedä.”
― Alice Miller, Murra vaikenemisen muuri

“What you are going to find has always been within you. It has given you considerable anguish but only because it was denied, avoided, and feared. Once you can face it, it will help you, it will guide you. You will recognize your fear as what it really is. Perhaps it is simply the fear of the child who is afraid of punishment if he acknowledges and speaks the truth. But you will not be punished now. Now, as an adult, you can insist on your right to feel your reality. You no longer need to cling to the empty word spirituality, a word that soon becomes meaningless because it is used for everything and says nothing that can't be said without using it. Your real, felt feelings will never kill you; they will help you find direction. Only the unfelt yet powerful emotions and needs, the feared and banished ones, can kill us. Researchers are now beginning to grasp the truth that cancer can often be the last available, the ultimate, language of these repressed feelings. Therapists were surprised to see that once patients could feel, could express themselves, could take their unwanted emotions seriously and develop them into a direct and healthy language, full recovery is possible.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Then it will finally be visible to the great majority of people that a human being comes into the world as a highly sensitive creature, and that, from the first day of its life, it learns the nature of good and evil—learning faster, and more effectively, than it ever will again. Only then will we realize with horror, what these tiny, immensely sensitive creatures did learn, and learn indelibly, as they were treated like so much inert matter that their parents—or forefathers—sought to mold into malleable objects. Hammering at this creature as they would at a piece of metal, they finally got the obedient robot they wanted. In the process, they fashioned tyrants and criminals.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms. Many seek refuge in religious beliefs. In their weakness, they place their trust in "relics," awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves. Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people, and to be acting on their behalf, has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts. If they aren't, if they ignore or neglect that duty, claiming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of "life" are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and truth of the faithful and dangerously confusing them.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Today, we know that AIDS and cancer involve a drastic collapse of the body's immune system, and that this physical "resignation" precedes the sick person's loss of hope. Incredibly, hardly anyone has taken the step that these discoveries suggests: that we can regain our hope, if our distress signals are finally heard. If our repressed, hidden story is at last perceived with full consciousness, even our immune system can regenerate itself.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The fact that the majority of such crimes are committed unconsciously does not, unfortunately, allay the calamitous consequences. The abused child's body will register the truth, while her consciousness refuses to acknowledge it. By repressing the pain and the accompanying situations, the infantile organism averts death—her fate, were it to consciously experience such traumatization. What remains is the vicious circle of repression: the true story, which has been suppressed in the body, produces symptoms so that it could at last be recognized and taken seriously. But our consciousness refuses to comply, just as it did in childhood—because it was then that it learned the life-saving function of repression, and because no one has subsequently explained that as grown-ups we are not condemned to die of our knowledge, that, on the contrary, such knowledge would help us in our quest for health.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“It has now been proved that though repression may be crucial for a child, it should not necessarily be the fate of adults. A small child's dependency on her parents, her trust in them, her longing to love and be loved, are limitless. To exploit this dependency, to deceive a child in her longing, confuse her, and then proceed to sell this as "child rearing" is a criminal act—a criminal act committed hourly and daily out of ignorance, indifference, and the refusal to give up such behavior.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“Then, however, comes 'the work of forgiveness," which is apparently necessary if one is to heal. Many young people who have AIDS or are drug-addicted die in the wake of their effort to forgive so much. What they do not realize is that they are trying to keep the repression of their childhood intact.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear. Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of her rights and her speech, deceived in her love and her trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in her pain, such a child is blind, lost, and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults. She is without orientation and completely defenseless. Her whole being would like to shout out her anger, give voice to her feeling of outrage, call for help. But that is exactly what she may not do. All her normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed her to help her survive, remain blocked. If no witness comes to her aid, these natural reactions would enlarge and prolong the child's sufferings. Ultimately, the child could die from them.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

“The redemption we hope for will evade us so long as we cause self-damnation in our children and do not learn to avoid this. Unfortunately, children today are still punished and made to feel guilty about their natural, healthy impulses and reactions—sometimes with the rejoinder that this is God's will. Any child who has, in his early years, been overloaded with fears and pains that have not been physiologically caused, has been driven into the damnation of guilt-fear. His feelings reflect what he has been taught: "If such things are inflicted on me, it must be my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I am the cause of my sufferings.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth