Miller on scapegoats and hatred…

the scapegoat * by William Holman Hunt, 1854. Hunt had this framed in a picture with the quotations "Surely he hath borne our Griefs and carried our Sorrows; Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of GOD and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:4) and "And the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited." (Leviticus 16:22).

[Updated May 12 in the end]. On my bike ride I came to think of anger, justified and unjustified, and scapegoats…

Wondered what Miller has written about this.

Yes, for instance she writes at page 146 in the paperback edition of “The Drama…” (the revised version) that human beings who have got help discovering their past, whom in their therapies have learned to unravel (reda ut) their feelings and find their true causes out, are no longer ruled by the compulsion to cast off their hatred on innocent people to spare (skona) these persons who really deserved their hatred. They have the capacity hating what’s worth hating and loving what’s worth loving.

As they dare to know who deserves their hatred they can accommodate to the reality without falling into the blindness the mistreated child fell into, the mistreated child who had to spare her parents and therefore needed scapegoats.

There is no point in appealing to love and reason so long as those steps for clearing the early emotions up are protected of fear for our parents (whether in client or therapist). And most often we need help with this.

One can’t fight the hatred with arguments; one has to realize their origins and use tools which make it possible dissolving the hatred.

Experiencing the justified hatred liberates, not only because the body gets relaxed (the inner tensions are released), but particularly because this experience open our eyes for realities, liberate us from illusions, gives us our repressed memories back…

When one at last has experienced the hatred and understood its justification it becomes dissolved, and is only shown when there are real, true reasons for it. If not, it comes back and comes back. It’s bottomless. And even creates wars, of different sizes. From personal vendettas between two persons or between two (or more) families to world wars.

It is the unfair, to innocent cast off or displaced hatred, that is endless, and can never calm down. Not the justified. The justified gets dissolved.

And about therapy: Miller thinks we need more than the pure intellectual insight. The pure intellectual insight isn’t enough for healing and recovery. But an important (first) step. Some therapists (Bosch and Jenson) mean that cognition, behaviour and emotion are equally important. But I am not sure regression or primal therapy is the only tool to recover and heal. But reading their books has meant a lot. They also talk about the False Power - Anger defense.

And Miller also writes (at page 145) that it isn’t the therapist's task to “socialize” his client or educate him. She thinks all education is guardianship (förmynderi?). Yes, how often isn’t it poisonous pedagogy (svart pedagogik)?

* In wikipedia it stands about the scapegoat:

“The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur/.../

The word is more widely used as a metaphor, referring to someone who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes.”

My amateur translation to Swedish:

“Syndabocken var en get som drevs ut i vildmarken som en del i ceremonierna runt Jom Kippur/…/

Ordet används bredare som en metafor, syftande på någon som är klandrad för olyckor, allmänt som ett sätt att distrahera (dra bort) uppmärksamheten från de verkliga orsakerna.”

PS. Also read ”See No Evil -- A political psychologist explains the roles denial, emotion and childhood punishment play in politics,” Michael Milburn interviewed by Brian Braiker in Newsweek, May 13, 2004.

Addition May 12: have blogged about the interview with Milburn om my other blog, see here.

Fatalism…

Michael Milburn and a water colour painting by him.

from this site (I got an e-postcard this morning from a friend).

Some morning reflections: I react a lot at our current government (a government I hope becomes short-lived and doesn't destroy too much in the society, but I fear they are going to destroy a lot more than they have already done). And this takes a lot of time and energy for me of some reason?

I wonder what is driving them (and what is driving me?). Probably a lot they aren’t aware of themselves? Or all their drives are probably not conscious (is this to exaggerate)? And why do people in general go on these politicians rhetoric? What is driving them? Do they know what is driving them?

With this not said I know myself so much better than people in general (with a tired smile).

And as the creatively working I am I think hardly any of all our politicians (neither here than anywhere else) show creative traits… And no interests in these things either!! At least hardly any genuine, deep, passionate interests. And I react too on a certain sort of snobbishness…

There are no access between the “right” and “left” brain? The Swedish physician Christina Doctare wrote in her book “Hjärnstress” (“Brain Stress”) that she thinks the future leaders need to have both IQ and EQ and jolly good/proper broad bands between those.

Alice Miller writes at page 188 in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free”:

“As a child I, too, had to learn to keep my mouth shut and stop asking ‘Why?’ of people whom I knew would give me an evasive [undvikande, kringgående] answer. Later I tried to answer those questions for myself and in so doing discovered the supreme commandments running through our upbringing and education: ‘Thou shalt not be mindful of the things done to you or the things you have done to others.’ I then realized that for thousand of years this commandment has prevented us from telling good from evil, identifying the wrongs done to us in childhood and sparing our own children the same fate./…/

If we deny the wounds inflicted on us, we will inflict those same wounds on the next generation. Unless, that is, we make a decision in favour of knowledge.”

But for doing this journey we probably need help? If we have to do it on our own it will take a lot of time, and we will probably inflict harm on others during it, but hopefully less big...

Our politicians are pretty authoritarian, and “knowing best”…

The American neurologist Jonathan Pincus writes about how abuse might lead you bigotry.

Miller also writes at page 189 -190 in “The Truth…”:

“Like Frank McCourt, many people today say, ‘My childhood was awful, but it had its moments, and the main thing is that I survived it all and can write about it. It’s the way of the world.’ I find such an attitude fatalistic and believe that we can rebel against this kind of childhood and do our bit to ensure that it will cease [upphöra, sluta upp med] to exist, or at least cease to be so common.

To a child, an unemployed father (like McCourt’s) spending his dole money [arbetslöshetsunderstöd?] on drink is an inescapable trick of fate: the child has no alternative but to come to terms with such realities. Children may in some vague way intuit that they are not really being perceived [sedda, varseblivna, uppfattade] by their parents for what they are, that the parents need them as scapegoats. But their minds cannot grasp the facts/…/

They take refuge in compassion for their parents, and the feeling of love will help them retain some modicum of dignity in spite of the mistreatment.

But children forced to overlook the cruelty born of irresponsibility and indifference on the part of their parents are in danger of blindly adopting this attitude themselves and staying bogged down [stående i ett träsk? Fatalismens träsk?] in the fatalistic ideology that declares evil to be the way of the world. As adults they will retain [hålla kvar] the perspective of the helpless child with no alternative but to come to terms with this fate. They will not know that, paradoxically, they can only grow out of this childlike attitude if they lose their fear of the wrath [vrede] of God (their parents) and are willing to inform themselves about the destructive consequences of repressed childhood traumas. But if they do become alive to this truth, they will regain [återfå, återvinna] their lost sensibility for the suffering of children and free themselves of their emotional blindness.”

Earlier postings under the label Christina Doctare and on empathy deficits here and here.

See Arthur Silber and his Alice Miller essays. Words that comes back in the titles to these essays are "obedience", "denial", "innocence" it feels... For instance Silber writes about the consequences of denial, see “THE ROOTS OF HORROR: The Consequences of Denial”:

“…the results of the mechanism of denial and obedience, a mechanism which requires that reality be obliterated [utplånad, förintad], so that the threat of unpleasant facts cannot come too close and so that authority will not be questioned -- even when those facts lead to the deaths of untold millions of people and a war that engulfs the entire world.

People ought to consider this warning from history -- before it becomes too late, once again. Unfortunately, if history itself is any guide, all such warnings will be disregarded [ignorerade, åsidosatta], and the nightmare [mardröm] may envelop [svepa in, inhölja] us still another time.”

Also read about "Pro-War Personality Disorder". There it stands for instance:

"Kurt Vonnegut, author of the anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, said in an online article that he believes many corporate executives and government leaders are afflicted with psychopathic personalities which match actual textbook definitions.

‘PPs [Psychopathic personalities?] are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care... Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich...’

Why are political views more deeply divided in America than anywhere else in the free world? According to Michael Milburn, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts [who seem to paint too!! Nice!], the difference is in the way individuals were raised, as he explained in a Newsweek magazine interview [another copy of the text]."