Violations, punishments, trials to make the child obedient and what that has caused and causes in the adult life, in the society and the world…

Have come to think about violations again. Searched for old postings on this here. Found one in which you can read about the American therapist Jean Jenson on what she thinks violations are, inspired by Pia Mellody’s ideas. I use the "Summary" I made in English in this posting and have made small changes and additions in it.

Yes, different treatments were and are used as punishments and to make the child obedient. Used to silence it etc. And we take this with into adult life if we don’t get help to process them and these early experiences cause us a lot of problems depending on the degree we have gotten help to process them. Sometimes we have huge problems.

And some play this out on other people close to them who are in lower positions. Women usually on their kids because they haven’t gotten other power positions in this world. Men play them out on wife and kids if they have any, and/or at work depending on the power position he has there.

Miller speculates on what had happened if Hitler had had kids, i.e. if he had had objects to abreact on at home. Had he become that world tyrant as he became?

And what happen with those whose voices were entirely silenced? Who maybe never got a voice and didn’t get the opportunity to express themselves. And with those who had a voice and got the opportunity to express themselves, but in a, from the truth, disguised way.

About this Miller speculates in one of her last books, “The Body Never Lies – the Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting.” About authors and other artists who expressed themselves, sometimes very bravely, but never really called early experiences in question. They became sick. Also see what the Norwegian physician Anna-Luise Kirkengen and her findings in this respect.

To come back to Jenson and Mellody; they mean it isn’t only a question of physical or sexual violations but also of emotional violations. Of disrespect even emotionally. Verbal violence, demands on perfectionism, neglect, abandonment and “exaggerated control of reality” (the child is told what to wear, what friends to have, how to think [and not think], what it shall believe in), they see all these things as violations.

And they also write about the phenomenon emotional incest, to use the child instead of the partner or another grown up as the intimate or confidant, something the child couldn’t escape or say no to, and something Mellody thinks is very common in our cultures, and what is a violation too according to them, an infringement on the child's integrity.

Jenson writes about an emotionally not accessible father, what that means to the child; giving it a feeling of not being good enough.

A mother “sick” because she was drunk and the children were hindered to disturb her or "give her troubles" [this mother wasn’t there for her kids either, absent, if not physically so emotionally/psychologically]. Threatened by their father if they did “disturb” her, with being spanked, and how THAT felt. Maybe so painful so they had to suppress that feeling. Probably because of their whole history and other experiences with their caregivers.

They write about growing up with many siblings, where each child didn’t get enough attention or time. That was an emotional violation. Neglect. Giving the child a feeling of being forgotten, and being unimportant.

And about a family in which all seemed to be kind and friendly (and maybe even caring, at least on the surface), but when the child tried to communicate something that worried it its mom used to change subject (not listening or not wanting to listen) and dad sat hidden behind the newspaper (not wanting to listen either, also avoiding the problem). An emotional violation. Being abandoned. Giving the child a feeling of being ignored and not being good enough (to be listened to, being taken seriously, being seen and cared for) etc.

The right to have ones feelings, emotions, thoughts, and to express them loudly just as anybody else, so long as you don’t harm anybody. Not become silenced. Again.

Men have had the power and money (material wealth), that is things that have made it and still makes it easier for them to raise their voices (and see the Norwegian Berit Ås with her Master Suppression techniques).

Child abuse...

How can one leave this child on its own?? This is child abuse! And nothing to laugh at! Why do people laugh at this? Leaving a child crying and screaming like this is cruel, seen from the child's point of view.

Why is discipline even, or ever, needed, positive or negative, in the first place?? Why does a child react in this way?

See this reader's mail on Alice Miller's website, I just have to quote:

“Dear Alice Miller. Yesterday I watched a Swedish documentary about immigrant children who are a huge problem at school because of their aggressive behaviour and I thought about what you've claimed so many times. The title of the documentary was called ‘The scapegoats’. They were rebels at their school, and teachers were truly afraid of them. Some of the boys even set the school on fire at some point and they were making the place a living hell for the teachers and pupils. This was loudly debated in Sweden some time ago, ‘what to do’...and of course people and politicians would make these worst 20 boys or so the scapegoats. It became so very obvious to me what you've been saying all the time, and the documentary was also angling the problem from a ‘good place’, taking the boys side. They wanted to explore the reasons for the rebellions and destructive behaviour and they found it all right! The boys were all abused at home by their parents, and hit for every mistake or ‘wrong-doing’. The vicious circle was this: They were abused at home and then they took the rage out on teachers and other pupils because in Sweden it is forbidden to use any kind of violence towards a child, and then they knew it was ‘safe’ to act out their rage just as it presented itself to them. The school often ‘had to’ contact their parents and then they would be hit again of course and be more enraged. And this completed the vicious circle. A psychologist/scientist explained very well what he believed himself was the problem. He said that we're not taking it seriously, we're surrendering to that these immigrants have their own culture and that somehow their children are not like the ethnical Swedish ones and we hesitate to interfere because there would be so MANY complaints/so many files...etc.. This was exactly what he himself had been thinking at some point when he was confronted with the social workers' problems of coping. But he said that EVERY child has the right to be protected from their abusive parents not matter ‘culture’. This was also the answer a Muslim family therapist gave. He said that the parents had to learn something new and to understand what they are really doing to their children when they use violence. We always tend to find quick solutions, the laziest ones, so we can protect ourselves from taking responsibility. The children (aged 15-18) were interviewed and asked what they had experienced and their thoughts about it. Almost everybody was totally sure that they would smack their own children because they were convinced that violence is the answer to cope. Only one of the boys was emotional when he spoke of the violence he'd experienced, tears came to his eyes as he spoke and this boy was one of the very few who when asked the question if he would hit his own children said. ‘NEVER’. These boys were used as scapegoats at their homes and then again by the school and society. It was heart-breaking to me, also because I understood my own blindness, my OWN lack of empathy with myself only if it was only in a glimpse. How I've unconsciently done the same thing to myself, never let myself speak up against the violence I experienced. I saw myself in these boys who'd accepted the fact that they had to carry their parents' burden. I could not only see it but feel it, and that is something new to me. Anyway I wanted to share this experience, and also thank you for your great books and your hard work to reveal the truth. I'm too totally convinced that it is possible to change the world if every country would follow Sweden in their striving to never become complacent about children's rights even if some politicians from time to time want to create scapegoats and segregation. It also became clear to me emotionally that fear and suppressed rage is the reason for creating scapegoats. ALWAYS. And how easy it is to fall into delusions over and over again if I do not dare to question my own attitudes. And then I'm left with the question when did that fear enter my own family? It is clear that at some point somebody chose to lie in stead of being compassionate. Then it all comes down to a choice.”

I blogged about the TV-programme mentioned above in the end of November last year, see "The Scapegoats..."

Child abuse...

from this photo-album.

[Slightly edited during the day, really needed as the spontaneous, impulsive I am]. Some more loud thinking, quite spontaneously:

A person wrote that

“Small children are beaten because they are too young to tell anyone else.”

I thought further on this, and think that you can do a lot of other things too to small children because they are too young to tell anyone else; not only beat them, but ignore, abandon, meet them with the Wall of Silence etc. to make them compliant, and of course abuse them emotionally in different ways (humiliate them for instance), and not least sexually. And sexual abuse in different forms are much more usual than we imagine? And many of us deny what sexual abuse actually is? As we deny other forms of abuse and what abuse actually is too...

And what you have learned at an early age sits steadier in the spine (or backbone)…

Frightened for being abandoned; I came to think how it was when I and my siblings were born; the newborn baby was taken from the mom immediately to become bathed! What has this caused? Was this the first occasion the child was abandoned? And as a baby the child had no words to express its feelings with...

Both my parents were born at home. But was this birth less traumatic? Or traumatic in other ways?

Ingmar Bergman and his father and mother…

In an article about Ingmar Bergman and his self-biographical book ”Laterna magica” or "The Magic Lantern" it stands about

“…the father’s capricious temper [lynniga temperament]. Sometimes his temper was good the whole day, sometimes the demons caught him up and he became taciturn [fåordig], turned away and irritable./…/

…the enclosed, dogmatic father.”

About Bergman:

“…on the one side overprotected, on the other defenceless, on the border to abandoned.”

“Ingmar Bergman spent his childhood summers in a big, beautiful house, built 1909, on a hill along the Dala river, between Gagnef and Borlänge. /…/

Karin Bergman [Ingmar Bergman’s mum] sold the summer-house Våroms [“Ours” in English] 1956. The son Ingmar seemed to have wanted to buy it, but the mother said no. It’s possible this is a loss he never came over.”

A person in the neighbourhood said that Ingmar as child was looked for by a nursemaid and seemed to have been very hard held at home.

Våroms lies on a hill called Gims klack in Duvnäs.

Read ”The Demon-lover” by John Lahr in The New Yorker.

Articles in Swedish here. And about what Magic Lantern is here.