Quotes by Alice Miller

I no longer recommend Stettbacher's therapy, and today I hold that primary therapy is fundamentally obsolete... I besides argue that primal therapy, even more than other forms of therapy, can be used to manipulate patients, because it begins with a several-weeks-long intensive phase.

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

It depressed me very much that I have obviously contributed to this avalanche of nearly unfulfillable hopes of therapy. Fortunately today there are more effective and less risky therapy methods.

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

Regression to the stage of early infancy is not a suitable method in and of itself. Such a regression can only be effective if it happens in the natural course of therapy and if the client is able to maintain adult consciousness at the same time.

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

The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.

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

There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.

Today I should not be identified with any kind of regressive therapy.

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.