The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.

Alice Miller

Related Quotes

It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

— Alice Miller

AllowedAnotherBelieve

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.

— Alice Miller

BetterChildEmpathy

I've spoken of the patient Peter who was obsessively forced to make conquests with women, to seduce and then to abandon them, until he was at last able to experience how he himself had repeatedly been abandoned by his mother.

— Alice Miller

abandonmentmotherseduce

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

— Alice Miller

AgainstContemptDefense

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

— Alice Miller

AlwaysBeenChildhood