A frustrated therapist...

who went to monasteries - and why?

Read Alice Miller's conversation with a frustrated therapist here and here, about a small boy the therapist has as client/patient, beaten by his parents; thrashed so there are big red welts on his buttocks:

"...when he goes to other people, men, women teachers, parents, therapists, to try and get some help, some information, something of the truth to help him clear his confusion, the message he gets is that its his fault if his beatings upset him, its his fault because of the way he took his beatings, his parents are not to be blamed, its no-ones' fault, it was not wrong of them to beat him because the law allowed it. So he doesn't go to therapists any more. They just abuse him.

AM: Why don't you tell him that nobody has the right to hit and mistreat him and that you will talk to his parents and tell them that what they are doing is a crime. It is your duty to protect this boy from the lies he has been taught and to tell him the truth. Otherwise a so-called therapy is a farce.

JR: Oh, I tried that, believe me. They have full support in their abusive behaviour from his headmaster, his headmistress, all his teachers, the police, the vicar, the priest, the imam, the counsellor, and the doctor. They all assure his parents that their son is evil, it is a kindness to correct him. And then, there are all my professionalist colleagues who will insist, to his parents and to everyone else that it is not their job to say what is right or wrong, that people are entitled to their opinions, it is an issue of difference and that it might well be the way he has taken his beatings that is causing his problems. His parents feel very strongly that I am a commie beatnik and they did in fact threaten to call the police if I didn't quit their premises immediately."