I make no claim that the reasons given are exhaustive. I should have written that. However, I wanted to satisfy the curiosity of some readers by explaining some causal relationships. Without a stable, internal structure, we orient ourselves according to what is demanded of us from the outside. This is certainly only a small part of the solution to the puzzle. If a person is forced to "cooperate" with their parents under the threat of withdrawal of love and has to adapt against their own will (instead of going their own way and also instead of being allowed to make typical childish mistakes), then I see this as a basis for the ease of further conditioning and manipulation. The topic of "guilt" is not the focus of this article, but only the roots, or the early amplifiers, of the problem.
PS.
Oh, just now, a second after I replied, you deleted your comment... Still, it was good that you gave me the incentive to respond. Best wishes,
Thanks Suavek, I think it's an excellent article! My answer didn't do it justice so I deleted it. But I'm glad you managed to read it first! The article certainly has given me food for thought x
What a thoughtful deep dive into the reality and formation of children (and compliance and covid). Thank you.
As a side note, Miller herself was an abuser of children, at least according to her son. I was floored when I learned this.
The True “Drama of the Gifted Child”: The Phantom Alice Miller — The Real Person
By Martin Miller
The "true" Drama of the Gifted Child is a biography of the famous childhood researcher Alice Miller. As her son and as an experienced psychotherapist I discovered the secret who Alice Miller really was. My mother always cared that nothing of her private life got public. She created a fictional character in her books and in mine she gets a real person, a man of flesh and blood.
It's also my history because I describe, how it is when you are faced, as a child and in second generation, with the not coped post-war trauma of your parents.
Alice Miller created a mother image in her books she never complied. My book shows what happens when you do not overcome your traumas and you pass them on the next generation.
The book is also a concrete application of Alice Miller’s theory. It shows how you can overcome the terrible legacy of your parents in a therapeutical way.
I can release myself of the filial involvement with my parents by having elaborated my own biography.
Sometimes people lack emotional intelligence, but they can still be capable of great intellectual achievements. We can learn something valuable from everyone. Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910) was a terrible mother. She became famous through the most beautiful children's fairy tales.
I am one of twelve and yes I didn't get the huggy love from mum who was sent to a boarding school where she went through puberty etc without her mother present, so yes I learned to become more loving through my marriage into an Italian family, even though the matriarch was deeply troubled and inflicted her troubles onto her husband and children even though she loved them.
But my healing came from Bishop Fulton Sheen, when he spoke of how no one can loves us as we want to be loved but only Jesus, that for Mr made the light bulb go off.
I had been wanting love from my husband who had no love for others and has been seeking love etc all his life, but doesn't know Jesus so still struggles.
Physiology has been the cancer of the twentieth century with a niece a psychologist who has been in bed for eleven years with chronic fatigue
I am happy to hear that the tenderness in a relationship was able to heal your old wounds and your previously unfulfilled needs. I am sorry to hear that this paradise did not last. I hope I understood your words correctly. Love heals everything, doesn't it?
The compensation of parental weaknesses/inadequacies with the help of the child (as abuse) is very much in touch with Adlerian psychology. As far as mass psychosis is concerned, I had already anticipated this question and was waiting for it. This theory has its justification. However, I am more interested in depth and individual psychology. However, mass psychosis also has points of contact with the statements of Alice Miller, Karen Horney, and my English favorite psychologist, Rollo May ("Love and Will", 1969 ). There have already been enough articles about mass psychosis. I have brought up something that I think was missing.
From the Wikipedia :
Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967)
May uses this book to reflect on a lot of both his ideas so far and those of other thinkers and also mentions some contemporary ideas despite the book's publication date. May also expands on some of his previous perspectives such as anxiety and people's feelings of insignificance (May, 1967).
Alice Miller addresses exactly what people want to suppress from their consciousness, to split off and to keep under lock and key with a lot of inner strength. No wonder she encountered so much resistance during her lifetime, and I am not surprised that my article is also encountering resistance. Have you ever tried to hold up a mirror to someone? The truth makes people angry. Saintly parents and perfect personalities only exist in Hollywood movies. We all suppress something. Rollo May would perhaps say (I know this from his book "Love and Will") that you should integrate the "devil" / the "dark side". If you split him off, he will come back at you with five times the force and in a neurotic form.
I hope you don’t believe my comment was resistance to your article. Much of what you say is convincing but misses out the Adlerian theory that it’s how you think/believe today about any childhood trauma that shapes your psychology / personality today.
Adler's theory refers to feelings of inadequacy that are compensated for in a neurotic way. Alice Miller has obviously understood the topic well and developed it further: parents try to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy through their children. This is where the abuse of children lies. Later, as an adult, such a child cannot stop selling drugs against "Covid" because he cannot and does not want to lose his status. The deceased mother would not like that. This is roughly the connection to Adler, expressed in a simplified way. Adler's school does not seem to be missing at all in Miller's statements. However, if this were indeed missing, then I don’t know why this absence of Adler’s concept should necessarily be a “sin”? The same concerns "the absence" of the mass psychosis theory. Here are the views of Alice Miller and not of Gustave Le Bon or others. This is not an article about mass formation theory or about mass psychosis. The article addresses the individual, whose responsibility must be considered individually. Here, the responsibility cannot be shifted onto "the masses".
Dear Monica,
I make no claim that the reasons given are exhaustive. I should have written that. However, I wanted to satisfy the curiosity of some readers by explaining some causal relationships. Without a stable, internal structure, we orient ourselves according to what is demanded of us from the outside. This is certainly only a small part of the solution to the puzzle. If a person is forced to "cooperate" with their parents under the threat of withdrawal of love and has to adapt against their own will (instead of going their own way and also instead of being allowed to make typical childish mistakes), then I see this as a basis for the ease of further conditioning and manipulation. The topic of "guilt" is not the focus of this article, but only the roots, or the early amplifiers, of the problem.
PS.
Oh, just now, a second after I replied, you deleted your comment... Still, it was good that you gave me the incentive to respond. Best wishes,
Suavek
Thanks Suavek, I think it's an excellent article! My answer didn't do it justice so I deleted it. But I'm glad you managed to read it first! The article certainly has given me food for thought x
What a thoughtful deep dive into the reality and formation of children (and compliance and covid). Thank you.
As a side note, Miller herself was an abuser of children, at least according to her son. I was floored when I learned this.
The True “Drama of the Gifted Child”: The Phantom Alice Miller — The Real Person
By Martin Miller
The "true" Drama of the Gifted Child is a biography of the famous childhood researcher Alice Miller. As her son and as an experienced psychotherapist I discovered the secret who Alice Miller really was. My mother always cared that nothing of her private life got public. She created a fictional character in her books and in mine she gets a real person, a man of flesh and blood.
It's also my history because I describe, how it is when you are faced, as a child and in second generation, with the not coped post-war trauma of your parents.
Alice Miller created a mother image in her books she never complied. My book shows what happens when you do not overcome your traumas and you pass them on the next generation.
The book is also a concrete application of Alice Miller’s theory. It shows how you can overcome the terrible legacy of your parents in a therapeutical way.
I can release myself of the filial involvement with my parents by having elaborated my own biography.
Dear Katherine,
Sometimes people lack emotional intelligence, but they can still be capable of great intellectual achievements. We can learn something valuable from everyone. Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910) was a terrible mother. She became famous through the most beautiful children's fairy tales.
All the best,
Suavek
I am one of twelve and yes I didn't get the huggy love from mum who was sent to a boarding school where she went through puberty etc without her mother present, so yes I learned to become more loving through my marriage into an Italian family, even though the matriarch was deeply troubled and inflicted her troubles onto her husband and children even though she loved them.
But my healing came from Bishop Fulton Sheen, when he spoke of how no one can loves us as we want to be loved but only Jesus, that for Mr made the light bulb go off.
I had been wanting love from my husband who had no love for others and has been seeking love etc all his life, but doesn't know Jesus so still struggles.
Physiology has been the cancer of the twentieth century with a niece a psychologist who has been in bed for eleven years with chronic fatigue
Dear Marianne,
I am happy to hear that the tenderness in a relationship was able to heal your old wounds and your previously unfulfilled needs. I am sorry to hear that this paradise did not last. I hope I understood your words correctly. Love heals everything, doesn't it?
Psychology
And what about Adlerian psychology?
Or the mass formation theory?
I find these when combined explain what happened much more convincing
The compensation of parental weaknesses/inadequacies with the help of the child (as abuse) is very much in touch with Adlerian psychology. As far as mass psychosis is concerned, I had already anticipated this question and was waiting for it. This theory has its justification. However, I am more interested in depth and individual psychology. However, mass psychosis also has points of contact with the statements of Alice Miller, Karen Horney, and my English favorite psychologist, Rollo May ("Love and Will", 1969 ). There have already been enough articles about mass psychosis. I have brought up something that I think was missing.
From the Wikipedia :
Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967)
May uses this book to reflect on a lot of both his ideas so far and those of other thinkers and also mentions some contemporary ideas despite the book's publication date. May also expands on some of his previous perspectives such as anxiety and people's feelings of insignificance (May, 1967).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollo_May
PS.
Alice Miller addresses exactly what people want to suppress from their consciousness, to split off and to keep under lock and key with a lot of inner strength. No wonder she encountered so much resistance during her lifetime, and I am not surprised that my article is also encountering resistance. Have you ever tried to hold up a mirror to someone? The truth makes people angry. Saintly parents and perfect personalities only exist in Hollywood movies. We all suppress something. Rollo May would perhaps say (I know this from his book "Love and Will") that you should integrate the "devil" / the "dark side". If you split him off, he will come back at you with five times the force and in a neurotic form.
I hope you don’t believe my comment was resistance to your article. Much of what you say is convincing but misses out the Adlerian theory that it’s how you think/believe today about any childhood trauma that shapes your psychology / personality today.
Adler's theory refers to feelings of inadequacy that are compensated for in a neurotic way. Alice Miller has obviously understood the topic well and developed it further: parents try to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy through their children. This is where the abuse of children lies. Later, as an adult, such a child cannot stop selling drugs against "Covid" because he cannot and does not want to lose his status. The deceased mother would not like that. This is roughly the connection to Adler, expressed in a simplified way. Adler's school does not seem to be missing at all in Miller's statements. However, if this were indeed missing, then I don’t know why this absence of Adler’s concept should necessarily be a “sin”? The same concerns "the absence" of the mass psychosis theory. Here are the views of Alice Miller and not of Gustave Le Bon or others. This is not an article about mass formation theory or about mass psychosis. The article addresses the individual, whose responsibility must be considered individually. Here, the responsibility cannot be shifted onto "the masses".
Thank you for taking the time to tell me more of what you believe in this matter