“In the foreword Käbi Laretei gives a brief afterward perspective (where she with touching empathy tells about a couple of visits 2007 to the dying Ingmar Bergman).
As to the rest this fragmentary but nevertheless suggestive book is based on chronologically lined up letters between the lovers, and some extracts from a diary Käbi Laretei seems to have written in secrecy (reminding about Ingmar Bergman's mother, who also wrote a diary in secrecy about her problems living together with the strict father).
Käbi Laretei stands out as a clear-sighted and reflecting human being, where the difficulties combining art (piano-playing) and married life in many respects resemble Ingmar Bergman's.
Even though those two artist natures immediately are drawn to each other and feel a deep attraction and kinship, one have a feeling already early – in both parts – more or less articulated trials to protect oneself from a too complete association (or fusion) with the other.
The marital troubles are there built-in from the first moment. More and more it stands out that Käbi and Ingmar are engulfed by each other – as if they paradoxically enough were suffocated by the love they both are longing for.
Time and again light is shed upon how Ingmar Bergman both is longing for and avoiding nearness.
Käbi Laretei writes motherly in one of her letters: 'My little son, have confidence, assurance (??), patience – you have it in your art, also have it in love.' Ingmar Bergman replies with describing his demons and his struggle to get rid of them.”
Käbi Laretei was my piano-teacher for four years in all... She stimulated my intellectual interests (whether you notice it or not). Käbi mentions Alice Miller in one of her books!!! I wonder if her son with Bergman, Daniel, introduced Miller to her??
Struck me about disturbed contact with signals about hunger, in both directions so to say... A person in the nearest family said she could go a whole day without thinking she ought to eat something.
My thoughts: Either you discover late in the day that you haven't eaten, or you don't feel the signals telling you that you have eaten enough and you overeat.
Meaning that you can be insensitive to signals in both directions so to say! You adopt either one of these “attitudes.”
I think this has to do with things that probably dates back to very early in childhood connected to eating. Traumas around eating the maybe VERY small baby was exposed to and maybe also connected to experiences adding up to these earliest experiences later in childhood and further when you grew up.
But people don't have to be doomed because of these things, so long as the surrounding later doesn't deny the roots to those problems (and moralize over it) and the person in question gets help processing and not deny the problem and its possible roots...
Anna-Luise Kirkengen has written about what sexual abuse can lead to in this respect, if I remember right (I haven't her books here now).
And I think forcing a spoon (or other "things") into a baby's mouth can cause troubles later for that child (things we don't/can't connect to early experiences like these, because we can't imagine such things could occur, and definitely not occur from people who ought to love the small baby most of all).Maybe such things occur more often than we believe???
So moralizing over peoples' troubles with eating and how they look is - what? Contempt for weakness! Unemphatic. Conditional love if it comes from a parent towards a child (honestly lack of love actually!!!!). Maybe even added abuse??
Some have so limitless and bottomless needs because of early bad treatment and disrespect from their early caregivers (when it comes to a child's rightful and legitimate needs of deep respect for its feelings, its body, its boundaries, its integrity and good will and wish to love and become loved). And these losses can in some result in that they can never get enough of money, power etc. ( not getting those early needs filled is so painful for a child so it has to suppress its natural reaction to those things, and the later adult try to fill these needs in ways that harm themselves and other people, more the more power they have or get, so long as the person in question is in no or little contact with these things).
And other people who were treated badly early in their lives think they aren't worth a penny, not even worth a decent living maybe (they have to earn their whole living and right to exist in this world they can come to believe. And they can continue striving and struggling for this their whole life. If they should come to live on the street they would maybe think they don't deserve anything better).
The results of bad treatment are different in different people, probably depending on many different factors; on what sort of defense/s you (authomatically) used as a child, what role you were allotted by your caregivers etc. etc.
A child reflects the respect she or he got as a child. In respect or disrespect for her/himself and in her/his respect or disrespect for other people. I think. In if she/he thinks she/he is good enough as she/he is.
But a child doesn't chose defenses. Was it forced to adopt a certain role and thus certain defenses, attitudes?
And some people are stuck in denial and will never admit to what they have been through, and those persons are the most dangerous for other people? Those are the really dangerous people in this world?
And other people live in such conditions and circumstances so they are forced to do something, to process, or to founder. They have no other choice.
How do we see this in the society, what are the visble effects of this?
For instance that some never doubt that they have the rights to for instance their huge wages and an enormous power... And other people don't believe they deserve hardly anything. Are maybe even keeping silent of shame and don't raise their voices at all or ever.
We will probably never succeed in trying to enlighten the ones that never would doubt their rights.
Can we convince the ones under-valuating themselves either really? With this not said we shouldn't try!?
Can we continue calling state of affairs in the world in question? Both on a societal and a familial level (and a global)?AND point to the underlying factors, not least those earliest in life!??
And try to process our own experiences both as a child and as a later adult?
Probably an enormous struggle for many of us, and probably extremely painful. Many of us will probably only slightly touch upon the pain that our early caregivers' treatment and behavior caused.
Professionals ought to point at what maltreatment cause, and what maltreatment actually is! So we rather prevent it. Because it is so difficult to come to terms with later. Difficult, but possible with a lot of struggles. And some will only slightly recover. Some not at all, because they became so badly treated so they can't face the truth.
But it is as Miller says; if professionals should start doing this it would be to blame parents. And they are “afraid” of doing this, even because of personal reasons (standing up against their own parents and questioning what THEY did)? They are not only protecting parents in general, but not least their own parents? Or they are afraid of their own parents so they don't dare talking publicly about this, in a plain talk about those things.
They are so afraid for (the) punishment from their parents if they should dare to raise their voices, afraid even if those parents should happen to be dead and not actually capable of punishing them. Yes, we are all so afraid of our parents, to some degree!!?? Some very afraid and some not so much. But so many of us are that those topics are still so taboo to talk about!!!!???
Professionals ought to know this, they who are working with those (most) damaged poeople!!! And stop talking about that "each generation has to reclaim their own" (what? Life?).
Quickly: struck me when I spoke with my boyfriend (who is a child advocate). Why aren't the champions against abortions fighting with the same spirit, time and energy against child abuse???
Why aren't they fighting for the children THAT ARE ACTUALLY BORN and thus living among us, and against how they are treated, for better treatment of them (even when it comes to subtle maltreatment)? Why aren't they fighting for children's rights in all???
In the society I am living in this isn't a big topic (why? But that's another posting maybe). I just started to wonder.
And, quietly, I think this with anti-abortion campaigns is quite hypocritical...
By the way: why do women become unintentionally pregnant? Why are they living promiscuously? Why do those women become pregnant who aren't promiscuous? Can it be because of earlier child abuse in their life-history?
390 people in occupational groups (???) working with the youngest of us got the brutal reality presented for them during an eight hour long day. For many it was a tough awakening. Many times the audience was exhorted to look at the horror awakening pictures that rolled over the big viewing screen (they had to avert their gazes from what they saw? Didn't manage to look at it?).
When two doctors for forensic medicine showed pictures of abused children's corpses with big head and fracture damages one person fainted. A physician were sent for and they had to make a break in the program (also read here about Forensic medicine).
Many occupational groups need a massive awakening according to the Norwegian Children's Ombudsman Reidar Hjermann (also see here about him, those links are in Norwegian though). Not least family doctors need this.
At the same time he eulogized the big awakening among Norwegian dentists. They can capture children who have problems with having things in their mouth.
A dentist, specialist on pedodontics, came with powerful descriptions of how children have been victims for oral sexual abuse.
She said that 2006 35,000 Norwegian children didn't meet up to their appointments with their dentists, and only 7,000 gave an explanation.
“It's so important that we care!”
was her clear message.
“Do we dare to see when we see?”
was the, or a, background motto to this day.
Sigrun writes:
“It is this method occupational people ought to become exposed to too I have thought for many years.
I said to a psychologist I visited [as a client], that the ones treating [my addition and interpretation: psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists etc.] ought to become tied up to the chair and forced to look at child abuse on film.
Then they would maybe stop offending patients with
'It's not about how you have it, but about how you take it',
'All parents make their best',
'It's never too late to get a good childhood',
'It's only the vulnerable children that don't stand violence'
And maybe they would start to listen to clients telling them about abuse that never was visible too (humiliation, neglect, emotional and psychological abuse etc.)!? Listen to clients when they maybe after a long time start to recall and/or dare to tell about things.
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
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Moving Interruptus, and Why Hospitals Suck
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In the event, June turned out to be the horrible month I had expected --
but June also proved unexpectedly resourceful. It was horrible for reasons
I hadn'...
Påskuppropet mot sjukförsäkringar
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Idag var det manifestation. Mycket bra. Jag var där. Mycket bra.
Men någonting gnagde mig på vägen hem. För stämningen var mer uppgiven än
arg, och det ä...
Arbeidet med ny side er i gang!
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Nå har arbeidet med domeneregistrering og nytt design startet og jeg gleder
meg til jeg kan vise dere resultatet! Det skal bli bra å få Psykiskbloggen
over...
Click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site.
Books I am referring to on this blog:
Bosch, Ingeborg: "Rediscovering the True Self"
Freyd, Jennifer J.: "Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse" ISBN 0-647-06806-8
Jenson, Jean: "Reclaiming Your Life" ISBN 91-46-17409-5
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Hvordan krenkede barn blir syke voksne" ISBN 82-15-00713-9 ("How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults")
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Inscribed bodies - Health Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse" ISBN 0-7923-7019-8
Lewis Herman, Judith: "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror" ISBN 086358430-6 (svensk översättning finns: ”Trauma och tillfrisknande” ISBN10: 9197263133, ISBN13: 9789197263139, Förlag: Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut)
Miller, Alice: "Den dolda nyckeln" ISBN 91-46-15747-6 (The Untouched Key)
Miller, Alice: "Det självutplånande barnet och sökandet efter en äkta identitet" ISBN 91-7643-559-8 (The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Miller, Alice: "Du skall icke märka - variationer över paradistemat" ISBN 91-46-14374-2 (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
Miller, Alice: "Riv tigandets mur - sanning byggd på fakta" ISBN 91-46-16022-1 (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence)
Miller, Alice: "The Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller, Alice: "The Truth Will Set You Free - Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" ISBN 0-465-04585-5
Miller, Alice: "Vägar i livet - sju berättelser" ISBN 91-46-17414-1 (Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios)
Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?" ISBN 0-393-32323-4
Children baking...
Look, the joy in the children?? Enjoying what they are doing? (illustration from one of the books by Astrid Lindgren, click on the picture to go to her site).
"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.” "Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -- "Common Sense", Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." (Albert Einstein)
"Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow men in the last fifty years... Given these and other conditions of contemporary civilization, how can one claim that the ‘normal’ man is sane?" (R.D. Laing, 1967)
"Organizations take on characteristics of the people running them./.../ There's always pressure within groups to conform, anyway. The top monkey exerts the most pressure." (Steve Thomas)
"Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself." (Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, 1955)
When a big kid hits a little kid, we call it bullying. When an adult hits another adult, we call it assault. When the adults in a family hit each other we call it battering or domestic violence. When an adult hits a child we call it discipline..
“Blindness and lack of connectedness whether truly needed or not, are ultimately tragic solutions to life. These adaptations keep us from knowing ourselves and others fully. We end up fragmented both internally and externally – impoverished spiritually and socially /…/ it seriously constrains our human potential /…/ Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and betrayal blindness have learned to cope by being disconnected internally so as to manage a minimal kind of external connection. But with adult freedom and responsibility come the potential to break silence, to use voice and language to promote internal integration, deeper external connection, and a social transformation, Through communication – integration within ourselves and connection between individuals – we can become whole; embodied, aware, vital, powerful”(Jennifer Freyd in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” in her book “Betrayal Trauma…”).
“If you are very strong you have to be very kind” (Pippi Longstocking)
“In psychiatry, too, what a person says and writes can’t be divorced from who he is and how he lives.” (Thomas Szasz).
“The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be[been??] severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms" (Alice Miller)
“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for" (Henry van Dyke)
“‘I have never met a man,’ said Grandma Georgina, ‘who talks so much absolute nonsense!’ ‘A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men,’ Mr Wonka said.” (Roald Dahl)
Look at his facial expression! Angrily carving… The stubborn, disobedient child... Or? How does he feel there in his joiner's workshop? (click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site).
About the ACE-study:
"It's not just water under the bridge."
ACEs are surprisingly common among people of all social strata, and have far-reaching consequences. For many people, it's not possible to "just get over it".
What's an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience i.e. "skadlig barndomserfarenhet")? Adverse Childhood Experience is growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
1. Recurrent physical abuse
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
3. Contact sexual abuse
4. An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the household
5. An incarcerated household member
6. Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
I don't like being photographed, and don't have many photos of myself but here are some, though fairly old! Click on the picture to see two more pictures.
I was born in Umeå in Västerbotten, Sweden, and moved during childhood stepwise to Skåne in the south, and at last back to just below the middle of Sweden where I still live.
I am educated both as piano-pedagogue and church-musician and have a full time employment as piano-pedagogue. Church-music is side work.
I am interested in a lot of things and will blog about things I read, psychology, society, history, nature, my work too hopefully, and my everyday life… And both in Swedish and English.
This is a blog, with my (sometimes very) personal - and loud reflections on what I read, see, hear, react on, feel for - and not feel for and want to explore. I don't work in this field at all, but I have my reflections and thoughts nevertheless and have read fairly a lot I think, and here I reflect upon all this. I am searching myself forward. I link sites for information, if one want to know more about what I am talking/writing about and what is mentioned in the texts I am citing and referring to. And I link sites not least for my own sake. So it isn’t sure I agree with all that is linked on this blog, that's not why I link sites. I can agree with parts of what is linked, bigger or smaller, from almost everything to almost nothing.
I hope those who perhaps find my blog are reading everything here critically - including what stands in what I link.
And when it comes to therapy and all (self)help-concepts I think one shall be very careful. Maybe as a friend said it:
“Meaningful critical thinking.
Psychotherapists have been claiming that they have invented better treatment methods since Sigmund Freud in 1897. The amount of psychological distress in the world hasn’t become less. There’s money to be made from attracting more clients, whether the therapy works or not.
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