Alice Miller on therapists...

Alice Miller in an answer to a reader about how to find the right therapist in the letter "Questions" (observe: I have "edited" the answer):

“Certainly, if I knew of some therapists who would be

– respectful enough to answer your questions;

– free enough to show indignation about what your parents have done to you;

– empathic enough when you need to release your rage pent up for decades in your body;

– wise enough to not preach to you forgetting, forgiveness, meditation, positive thinking;

– honest enough to not offer you empty words like spirituality, when they feel scared by your history,

– and that are not increasing your life-long feelings of guilt

I would be happy to give you their names, addresses and phone-numbers.
Unfortunately, I don't know them, but I still like to hope that they exist. However, when I am looking for them on the Internet I find

– plenty of esoteric and religious offers,

– plenty of denial, commercial interests, traditional traps,

– but not at all what I am looking for.

For that reason I gave you with my FAQ list [FAQ=frequently asked questions] tools for your own research.

If a therapist refuses to answer your questions right from the start, you can be sure that by leaving him you can save yourself your time and your money.

If you don't dare to ask your questions out of your fear of your parents, your fear may be highly understandable.

However, trying to do it anyway may be useful because your questions are important and

by daring to ask them you can only win.”

Addition: in Miller's ”For Your Own Good - Hidden cruelty in childrearing and the roots of violence” I found the following:

"I have used Hitler as an example to show that:

1. Even the worst criminal of all time was not born a criminal.
2. Empathizing with a child's unhappy beginnings does not imply exoneration of the cruel acts he later commits. (This is as true for Alois Hitler as it is for Adolf.)
3. Those who persecute others are warding off knowledge of their own fate as victims.
4. Consciously experiencing one's own victimization instead of trying to ward it off provides a protection against sadism; i.e., the compulsion to torment and humiliate others.
5. The admonition to spare one's parents inherent in the Fourth Commandment and in ‘poisonous pedagogy’ encourages us to overlook crucial factors in a person's early childhood and later development.
6. We as adults don't get anywhere with accusations, indignation, or guilt feelings, but only by understanding the situations in question.
7. True emotional understanding has nothing to do with cheap sentimental pity.
8. The fact that a situation is ubiquitous does not absolve us from examining it. On the contrary, we must examine it for the very reason that it is or can be the fate of each and every one of us.
9. Living out hatred is the opposite of experiencing it. To experience something is an intrapsychic reality; to live it out, on the other hand, is an action that can cost other people their lives. If the path to experiencing one's feelings is blocked by the prohibitions of ‘poisonous pedagogy’ or by the needs of the parents, then these feelings will have to be lived out. This can occur either in a destructive form, as in Hitler's case, or in a self-destructive one, as in Christiane F.'s. Or, as in the case of most criminals who end up in prison, this living out can lead to the destruction both of the self and of others. The history of Jürgen Bartsch, which I shall treat in the next chapter, is a dramatic example of this."