The contracting parties were described as “the self-absorbed Johan and the self-effacing Marianne”.. Illustrated with a scene where Johan and Marianne met a therapist for the first time, and the therapist asked them to describe themselves. Johan started and expatiated himself about how fantastic he was, as a father, husband, employed, citizen etc, though with a a mix of slight self irony and seriousness. Marianne tried to intervene, lame and feeble:
“But...No... But listen...”
When it was Marianne's turn she had almost nothing to say about herself:
"Well... I am mariied to Johan... And we have two children... And... Well... I don't know what to say more..."
It was also established that the children don't exist in this series (from 1973), except from the beginning of it, compared to today when the children are at the center.
Something other people have established. Earlier (for those born 40-50 years ago or more) it was the dad who decided what the family should do: The mom helped realize and support this. Today the children decide, what to eat (parents make different dishes to the children and the parents), where to go on holidays etc.
Erland Josephson characterized the series with the words “being shut in” and “egocentricity”, not being seen by each other..
Käbi's new book has the title “Where did all this love disappear?”
When she had returned home after the funeral of Ingmar Bergman, almost two years ago now, she started to wonder “how it actually was” and recalled that she had almost 250 letters from Bergman lying somewhere, letters they wrote to each other from everywhere after their first meeting till they broke from their marriages and got married.
Bergman had visited a rehearsal in Malmö with Käbi playing the fourth piano-concerto by Beethoven, and he immediately fell in love, the start point for their relation.
Reading those letters made her surprised over the passion, a passion she had forgotten for the most part, and she got inspired writing a second book about her love relation and marriage with Bergman.
The reading of those old letters was also quite peculiar she said.
They met 1959 and broke up ten years later.
Käbi thought her pianist career was a main reason for this divorce. She couldn't think of giving her profession up and just be Bergman's wife. Not just support the genius.
The young male programme-leader also pointed out to Käbi and the audience that those letters are remarkable, that he and his generation-mates don't know how to write such paper-letters. It's quite different writing emails to each other...
I had Käbi as my piano-teacher for four years in all during my education and she awoke my "intellectual interests," and made me interested in Ingmar Bergman. She didn't only stimulate my piano-playing, but also other things...
I was struck by her continued admiration of him, an admiration that to a great part was mutual.
Their relation came to a fantastic friendship Käbi means, a friendship with both Ingmar and his last wife Ingrid.
In this article you can read that all power and energy is directed towards the one who is addicted. My addition: from all the other people in the family (relation). The article writes about persons standing near (sister, brother, lover etc.) wanting to help.
And about the clever (no needy) one:
“I have always been the one who has managed on my own.”
My wonder: was this the one becoming burnout? Thought of a family where the siblings (or even all family members) were allotted different roles. And whose fault was this? Who was to blame for this? he older sibling? The youngest? The one in the midst? Or ANY sibling?
Don't all children have needs? The same fundamental/basic needs? And are entitled getting those filled, irrespective of how many kids there exists in the family, if one or both parents are sick, if one child is born disabled or becomes disabled, has problems etc? (why does a child get problems? Why so many kids if there are many? Do kids come from God, with the stork?)
“I gave and gave without getting anything back, it was a one-way-communication and you can’t manage this long term.”
You break down (or become invisible) or break with the person in question.
When you can manage the situation (if you can, get the help to develop an own self to a certain degree) you at last get strength for yourself.
“When you are co-dependent you want to help, one thinks one is the one who can change the situation, but now I understood that you don’t help the addict through always standing by him/her.“
For the one used to taking care of other people and putting her/his own needs last it’s a big step doing something else then taking responsibility for a grown up person, but letting her(him take responsibility for her/him. Not fixing things for other people, letting them take responsibility for their own stuff, themselves.
The most important isn’t the addict, but that you yourself feel well, you can read in this article.
“I feel much better and have gotten a better self-esteem. I am gladder, my eyes are sparkling. I am doing things more in my own interest, as attending courses, meditate and listen to mental relaxation.”
It’s usual that the one living near an addict gives up her/his own life and focus on the other person (and his/her dependency). At the same time one is struggling with fury, disappointment and hopes. Often the addiction becomes something shameful that the close standing (feels she/he) has to hide, making the co-dependent alone, and thus making her/him having no one to talk to. But one of the most important things a co-dependent can do is finding such a person, a person to talk to.
Realizing the truth is extremely painful struck me all of a sudden when I read this article.
How many children haven’t been taught to “think of other people”…Not being egoistic.
And how many have heard:
“He (she) is so caring (about other people)!”
about a sibling, with a warm voice from a mother? As if this isn’t natural! And as if this doesn’t come naturally when time has come? If the child has been treated with respect and care.
How many haven’t heard parents (mothers) saying:
“He is… She is… and she is…”
Meaning another child isn’t this way!? Meaning this child should be a model or a deterrent example? Or what?
And I think the phenomenon trying to rescue another grown up person can occur in other circumstances too...Not always is about rescuing a person from addictions to drugs...
[Slightly edited October 1]. Quickly written after a long day at work: The Swedish leader-writer and priest Helle Klein writes in her blog that she thinks the economism gets both material and existential consequences.
She wonders how what’s now going on in the current financial crisis will end.
“The greediness digs its own grave – unfortunately many small-savers [??] are drawn with in this crisis.”
The Swedish debater and journalist Dan Josefsson said at the book-fair in Gothenburg recently that:
“Loneliness is a malignant tumour on our society.”
He and a psychotherapist have written a book together called something like “The Secrecy –from glance to lasting relation”(if we just "take ourselves in the collar" as we say here and become the clever girls and boys we will manage it!!! My interpretation from what I read about the book. Of course; all who haven't been so badly hurt will manage this, but those who were more badly treated... What about them?). Addition October 9: the home site for this book, see here.
In the book flood from this year’s fair (mass?) the need of help with relations appears. The human beings of today seem to have difficulties with the love –not with sex, kicks of happiness or enjoyment, but with lasting and deep relations.
Of 9 million people in Sweden 2, 5 million are living in one-person households. Over 1, 5 million of these have hardly any contact with their families. 200,000 say they don’t have any friends.
A lot of people call help-phones. All sorts of people are calling: young, old, people born in Sweden and abroad, men and women. Many carry a huge agony. The dismounting of the psychiatry is shown clearly. Other people are struggling with their addiction(s). Strikingly many women are drinking too much. But obviously many are merely alone. They have nobody to talk with. They are longing for connection beyond themselves.
Loneliness is the Western world’s big problem child. We have everything, but not. The affluence of things has to compensate for broken relations (but more and more people don’t have material things either, we are returning more and more to the class-society again).
However, all those offers of therapy, lifestyle coaching and self-realization say that we have to change ourselves, not the society * (the tendency to blame ourselves is strengthened! Very practical for the ones in power on all levels).
If one topic of conversation in our time is the loneliness, the other is the financial crisis. The bank system in USA is breaking down and the confidence for the societal economies is crashing.
Maybe these two societal phenomena – the loneliness and the greediness - belong together?
“The capitalism is a condition in the world and in the soul”
Franz Kafka once claimed.
His provoking metaphor hold things together we use to hold apart – the economic and the existential aspects/things.
One of Klein’s teachers at the university, Per Frostin, once wrote an essay with the heading “The Capitalism Chokes the Love.”
He searched for the talk in society and church about the economism’s and consumism’s influence not only on the societal solidarity but also on our ability to maintain loving relations, enter into marriages and devote ourselves to family life.
This essay, published more than twenty years ago, feels more burning today than ever Klein thinks.
Our quarter-of-a-year-capitalism is not only a neoliberal economical system but also an ideology with a view on man which says: go in for, invest in yourself, and seek for the largest profit for your own sake.
Those ideals are the opposite of solidarity and love. The calculated egoism is breaking both the societal economies and human-between-relations down.
What has Alice Miller said about these things?? Is material things a substitute for other things? For instance love?
* In many circumstances quite moralistic - and not least unemphatic.
The American psychotherapist Jean Jenson writes that
"And the best is that the better our mental health becomes, the more we dissociate from power exercise and violence [in whatever form]."
And it was that with perverted needs and substitutes... Denial of needs "I don't need..." And as I don't have any needs I can't get hurt. And see the phenomenon divide and rule. Something we probably learned as children: siblings were played out against each other, more or less deliberately and/or consciously. A power-tool.
How would we have reacted and resonated and how would the society and world have looked like if a sound development had occurred, i.e., if we had been truly and genuinely respectfully treated as very small kids and up? If more people had been? Because this kind of truly respectful (non-authoritarian) treatment is very rare?
A Swedish journalist said something about conservatism...
"When people say adults behave and think like children, what they more properly mean is that they behave and think like children who are profoundly damaged -- children who are already made emotionally numb by the typical kind of emotional abuse to which most children are subjected many times a day, children who have been forced to deny their own pain simply to survive, and who are therefore unable to grasp the pain of others. Most adults were once such children; one of the ways the damage reveals itself when they become adults is the denial described above... /.../
Many children believe that 'wishing will make it so,' just as they believe that there are no consequences for their actions that cannot be undone. But again, children who believe this are those children who are already damaged. Healthy children do not think in this manner. But most of us were greatly damaged as children, and most of us deny what ought to be unavoidable truths because we learned to do this in our earliest years of life./…/
…most Americans -- and our entire governing class and almost all commentators and bloggers -- refuse to grasp them. It is as if these ideas are written in a dead language. Certainly, the language is dead to them, for they have made themselves incapable of understanding it. To recognize a truth of this kind threatens the mechanism of denial that lies at the very center of their sense of themselves, at the very center of their identity. So the truth cannot be acknowledged.”
Addition in the evening: The author of the article (in a local newspaper here) writes that she laid zapping between different TV-channels when she suddenly saw Philip McGraw.
She writes that she detests him and that she has had enough of self help books. Some years ago she wrote a review on one of his thick books and was met with opposition from both wise and stupid people in her circle of acquaintances.
“What are you complaining about?”
one said.
“Dr Phil not only gives people good advices, he also helps people for whom it has gone wrong in life practically.”
Yes, I know, she writes. But I also know that this man has made a multi billion fortune on spreading his ideas with a pretended godlike infallibility on how we in the west world (each one of us) shall become well adapted and happy [being obedient and keeping quiet?]. Dr Phil is the biggest, and the west world is abounded with self-help books and articles in newspapers in his spirit, because this is something lucrative.
Yes, certainly!
In the developing countries where people are struggling against starvation and deadly diseases advices like the ones in these books are of course meaningless.
The needs for self help seems to be enormous in our part of the world, so when I am critical to them I feel both split and confused when I try to understand why I am so angry she writes.
Yes, I think one can become…
She thinks what the self-help books are concentrating on are given truths: that one can feel sorry for human beings and that our need for comfort is limitless. In these books we shall become pupils to the authors and learn to become safer, wiser, more aware about our selves, more effective, healthy, beautiful etc. etc. Through hard inner will and thought power we shall chastise ourselves, see our flaws and improve. And in this way reach our true inner selves and find happiness.
Of course this sounds great, she writes. Ideas that permeate the west-word’s philosophy of life and more or less steer our thoughts. Thoughts the super-guru Phil is allowed to cement in our consciousnesses many times a day through million TVs as if these were in-debatable truths to follow.
She thinks it’s a pity that those books contributes to creating and adding fuel to a private-egoism, a focusing on the own self which stands in contrast to human kindness – and socialism (as she writes! Even though I am left-oriented politically, to be honest, I don't think these things HAVE to have with socialism to do I have to add :-) Even though I grew up in a middle-class family where all are well-educated and academics, and we had it fairly well materially).
Addition May 20: The power on many levels, maybe all, is (strongly) interested in dividing and ruling? Not interested in that people genuinely care about each other and truly cooperate? Caring both about themselves in a sound way and about others in a sound way too. What is a sound egoism and what is an unsound? Because of course we probably need to protect ourselves too many times! But protect ourselves effectively and constructively and not self-destructively or destructively, i.e. not harming ourselves or others - or the nature etc. But are the advices and tools we get effective for this? Miller is right: we are in denial about the true roots and causes, and the methods we use in dealing with problems are accordingly ineffective?
Yes, the results are those?
She thinks what’s wrong with those books is that they act as an intermediary in the belief that a human being can develop herself by own power (and will). But she thinks this isn’t possible, because human beings can only grow in interplay with others.
In one of these books (or actually many of them) it stands “love yourself” but life’s great gift isn’t that to love each other (and truly love), and when this happens isn't that a miracle (my addition)? She wonders if those fighting for their careers, their money, their looks and appearances, firmly, hardly encased in the importance of their own selves are the happiest.
She thinks that in those self-help books people seem to be divided in closed ME’s while "the others" serves as usable and preferably admiring objects. About the joy in deep friendship one can’t read, and nothing about goodness human beings between. The self-help human being shall counteract her negative feelings such as guilt and shame. But think of a world without these feelings, how would that world actually be?
She is however hoping that the small children still smiling at us with their teeth like grains of rice (risgrynständer) will understand in twenty years that egoism is a lonely and unhappy state, a state that has to be done something about.
She writes that between Dr Phil, the guru, and a mom a 16-year old pregnant girl was sitting on the TV crying while Dr Phil strictly told the mother that she should have given her daughter sex instructions in time!!!
After this she couldn’t see more and turned the TV off.
When I had read this article this morning and was on my way to work I threw some words down that was triggered (written with deep irony): What weakling are you? Who can’t manage your life? Not keeping things in check and control!!
Writing for a couple of hours after work. Have had three small pianists, they started playing piano a 6 year, and have played four years soon, playing in a quite big wind-orchestra this evening for the first time.
it looked like this on parts of the road when I drove here on Tuesday! (parking-permissions on the windscreen, not so beautiful! :-))
[Updated in the end March 29. I will perhaps proof-read this text later. I did the translation very quickly - once again. Now I am going to the town to shop food, tomato-seeds etc.]
Some blog postings triggered thoughts… About oppression and who need to plead the cause (föra talan) of the oppressed? Who ought to be spokesman to the oppressed? Who need to plead the child's/children's cause? Can the child do this on her/his own? Who need to plead to other oppressed’s cause?
There was a review of a new book about “the mother” of the Master Suppression Techniques Berit Ås. Angela Davis had said to Ås that it isn’t poverty in itself which causes rebellion. For rebellion (and questioning) to happen/occur or take place a leader from the higher societal classes ["higher societal classes" in a metaphorical sense too!!??] is needed to step forward and lead the oppressed people/person(s) and their revolts(s) [a therapist has this role too? Helping her/his client understanding, questioning, seeing as wrong, rebel against wrongdoings that were done - and are done].
I draw parallels to different relations and different levels of the society, and even to the world’s...
A child needs having someone pleading its right on the “lowest” level already… A child needs help to be able to question and see as wrong and to rebel. Without this what happens?
Children in general in society need this too!? That things are spoken about and able to speak about. That about taboos... What's unspeakable and taboo, things one isn't allowed to touch upon?
And what does a child actually need (respectful treatment for its person, feelings etc.)? What does a grown up need? What are righteous, justified needs for a human being in a society, things we all need and which are justified for all living human beings?
All with power of different degrees have more responsibility for what they do, say, behave etc. towards the one under him/her. Journalists have responsibility for what they write…
The postings which triggered this posting were written from a feminist view(stand?)point…
About how it is in society today, and how it was. And a common denominator is that there is a real backlash in society. Which I agree to too.
I want to translate from the texts:
Ås is influenced by the Norwegian psychologist Robert Levin (a former teacher of hers?). According to him and his research the democratic leadership is the most effective, functions most effectively, and the authoritarian leadership results in discord, dissension and bad cooperation in the groups exposed to this sort of leadership[thinking of our quite authoritarian school-minister Jan Björklund, leader of the liberal party here, and other authoritarian 'leaderships' such as those in therapies, help-forums etc. What does an authoritarian leadership cause in these, and what has it caused?].
Ås and the interviewer, and author of the book about Ås, thinks that the society in fact is leaning on an invisible women-cultural basis, that would fall apart, fall to pieces, if women one day decided to come out on strike (if they should say: No, we don't find ourselves in this!?). This culture is held together with women’s unpaid jobs, the work which isn’t valued, isn’t paid and isn’t spoken of but is taken for granted – as the air we breathe. Ås also says that it is the exploitation of women which characterizes the man’s culture.
And back to what Angela Davis said; that it isn’t poverty in itself which cause rebellion. A leader from the higher societal classes is needed for rebellion. A reflection from me: and to these “higher societal classes” mothers belong for children, fathers too, men for women in many occasions (because men still have more power, a higher status etc.) etc. etc. …
The reviewer writes that today when the individualism is highest fashion and the prevailing liberal ideology claims that all are unrestrictedly egoistic [but why are we if we are???] we are made blind to this fact.
Of course this lays in the oppressors interests, that we all get suspicious towards these persons fighting for many people’s rights and not least that we dispatch those people fighting for groups they themselves aren’t part of, don't belong to [as Cecilia von Krusenstjerna, daughter to the former VD for Volvo P. G. Gyllenhammar in a discussion-program recently about "Are we on our way back to a maiden-society? (having servants again)"!!]. Nonetheless such a disinterested, altruistic behaviour has been the condition, not only for the working-class’ climbing from unrestrained sucking out, but also for women’s liberation. For example, without the support from men women’s fight for equality would have been in vain.
The reviewer thinks on J. S. Mills standpoints, as well as the men which made it possible for women getting Academic exams and work with research despite powerful critics from contemporary co-brothers.
That Berit Ås is very critical to the neoliberalism’s emphasis on the egoism and the individualization of society you can’t miss. She believes in teamwork and cooperation, on the thesis that together we are strong; alone we can’t bring any change about.
But I would add that teamwork and cooperation shouldn't be a prescription in everything we do either; that all have to be involved in everything!!?? Must one exclude the other though? Because, yes, I need my own time and I need a certain amount of freedom... The collective doesn't have to (and shall/should not) exclude the individual... I am an individualist too, but also need people around me!? Does the collective have to exclude the individual or vice versa, the individual exclude the collective*? What would be the soundest? What did Pia Mellody say about independence/dependence?
A younger woman than the reviewer above writes in another posting, on her blog:
“It feels a little cliché-like to say, but it’s true that we live in a time, an era, with an enormous fixation on appearances and looks [is this blog a satire upon this, or only about joking and having fun???], where human dignity is converted into bridges of the noses, rows of teeth and body-shapes [Aren't we good as we are, and if not why not? Do we need to be perfect? In every sense? Being superhuman beings? People rebelling through self-destructiveness and/or destructiveness? And the power, stand in for our parents, tells us whom, what and how we ought to be? Yes, what is actually human dignity?]? Or, we are already there?
I often walk over the cemetery to my work, an old cemetery in central Uppsala, with mossy stones over great dead men and their more or less deeply, under the forgetfulness’ anonymity, buried spouses. A picture of past times./…/ …that one still is there with the wave of life and its strong forces of sickness, and just establish, accept, the dead ones implacable suborder.”
Quotes from Angela Davis:
"Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel [driva fram] people toward social emancipation [social frigörelse]."
"Imprisonment [fångenskap] has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems."
Jag översätter större delen av brevet, snabbt och litet fritt (mina kursiveringar):
"Med stort intresse har jag läst er bok 'Gärningsmän - Hur helt vanliga människor blir massmördare' [på förlag Daidalos på svenska] på franska och har hittat många intressanta analyser, som har rättat till och korrigerat det jag redan visste från Browning och Goldhagen. Men på en avgörande punkt delar jag inte er syn. Jag är faktiskt förvånad att - som läsare av Alicer Millers 'För ditt eget bästa' [Har inte hunnit kolla titeln på svenska!], som också är nämnd i en fotnot - så refererar ni inte alls till vad hon har skrivit eller bevisat.
Hon skriver faktiskt i sin bok hur Tyskland [tyskarna] i början av 1900-talet vanligtvis levde under oket av ett auktoritärt, utvecklingshämmande sätt att uppfostra [!!! Som vi inte fick ifrågasätta och fortfarande inte får ifrågasätta!]. Det var kutym att slå barn nästan överallt i Europa och över hela världen, men Alice Miller visar på att grymhet och disciplin hade en särskild plats i det tyska sättet att uppfostra. Det är därför det är så förvånande att ni har lämnat detta utan övervägande.
Ni använder ofta termen 'normal' och 'de flesta normala människorna' - och redan detta i undertiteln till er bok - och ni strävar efter att demonstrera att dessa människor kan bli massmördare om omständigheterna så tillåter.
Men kan man karaktärisera människor som 'normala' vilka som barn måste uthärda grymheter från sina föräldrar och som inte fick ifrågasätta dem? De är förstås normala i så måtto att de anpassade sig till normerna för uppfostran som rådde då, men är de 'normala' om man jämför dem med barn som blev mötta och behandlade med respekt? Skulle ni anse djur normala - till exempel hundar eller hästar - om det hade blivit mirakulöst möjligt att deras föräldrar skulle ha behandlat dem med samma sorts våld som nästan alla tyska barn upplevde före nazi-tiden? Och detta under hela deras barndom och ungdom och ibland också efter sedan de kommit upp i åren? Skulle ni då inte säga att dessa djur hade blivit sjukgjorda och att de betedde sig onormalt? Idag är återverkningarna av uppfostrande våld bättre kända. Vi vet deras mångfaldigande likaväl som att slag, som föräldrar utdelar under slutförandet av hjärnan[s utveckling], blir inpäglat i dess djupaste skikt och påverkar det medfödda/naturliga beteendet hos barnet. /.../
Denna uppfostran ökar barnets potential för våld genom att tidigt ge det beteendemönster märkta av kallt och vredgat våld. Eftersom de är tvingade att aceptera slagen utan någon reaktion, ackumuleras raseri i dem vilket kommer att tagas ut på alla syndabockar som råkar vara tillgängliga [inklusive egna barn senare!!!]. Det har visats dem att våld mycket väl kan utdelas mot andra 'för deras eget bästa'. Med andra ord, gjorde det uppenbart för dem att detta är normalt och lämpligt - i någon slags abstrakt idé om 'godhet' - att tillfoga våld mot försvarslösa varelser [som inte kan försvara sig varken fysiskt eller med ord, och som också är kanske helt och totalt beroende].
I tillägg till detta så skadar detta förmågan till medkänsla [istället för motsatsen!!], vilket är ett av de bästa sätten att sätta stopp för våld. För att inte lida alltför mycket och även för att kunna överleva, måste slagna barn stänga av sig själva från sina känslor. Men genom att förhärda sig mot sina egna känslor. förhärdar de sig också mot känslor från andra; sålunda kan det inte förvåna att de senare är kapabla till kallblodigt mördande. Våldet under vilket de led, har också förstört den mest universella etiska principen, den gyllene regeln i dem att 'Allt vad ni vill att människorna skall göra för er, det skall ni också göra för dem. Det är vad lagen och profeterna säger' [Matt. 7:12, Bibel 2000.In English] därför att deras våldsamma föräldrar har lärt dem motsatsen. Detta våld har raderat ut den ursprungliga instinkten att skydda de unga, sin avkomma, därför att de måste uthärda sina föräldrars aggression från tidigt i livet. Är det då förvånande om de är kapabla att mörda barn kallblodigt och under krigsomständigheter och under stöd av en stöttande ideologi? [se den amerikanske neurobiologen Jonathan Pincus om samhälleligt bifall!!!].
Till slut har Alice Miller också bevisat att exakt samma känslor för vad som är etiskt rätt lika väl som för logiskt tänkande blir skadat/förstört [!!!Ja, även det logiska tänkandet blir skadat!!] hos slagna barn, som blev slagna för 'sitt eget bästa', därför att de associerar våld som någonting gott och accepterar denna motsägelse. Barn vars moralkategorier/moraluppfattning och intelligens har blivit skadad i sådan utsträckning kan då lyssna på de mest galna och skymfliga tal liknande dem Hitler och hans efterföljare höll, utan att protestera och till och med lyssna på dem med upprymdhet och segerglädje. Dessutom, vanan att lyda våldsamma bud, inlärda sedan tidig barndom, förbereder uppenbarligen människor för att underordna sig militär disciplin lika väl som våldsamma politiker som lockar fram minnet av faderlig disciplin och personlighet.
Av dessa anledningar tror jag inte att man kan hävda att massmördare var 'normala' mänskliga varelser, eller endast göra så mellan många citationstecken! Uppfostran i forna Jugoslavien, i Ruanda och Kambodja var också märkt av stort våld.
Att ni inte tog hänsyn till Alice Millers insikter/förståelse har förvånat mig inte mindre eftersom ni påstår - när ni för frågan om oberoende på tal - att 'förmågan till autonomi förutsätter upplevelsen av tillgivna band och av lycka'!
Känner ni till Samuel och Pearl Oliners studie om uppväxten hos mer än 400 'i nationen rättskaffens [människor]' vilka demonstrerade den mycket anmärkningsvärda förmågan att tänka och agera självständig [tror han syftar på 'Righteous People in the Holocaust.' by Samuel and Pearl M. Oliner, edited by Israel Charney,som kom 1989]? I deras svar framkommer följande punkter klart: de hade älskande föräldrar som lärde dem altruism (troligen mer genom att vara rollmodeller än genom sina tillrättavisningar), föräldrar vilka litade på dem och vilka gav dem en ickeauktoritär och ickeförtryckande uppfostran. Enligt er är massmördare 'normala' människor, medan de 'rättskaffens' snarare är ovanliga personligheter /.../ Borde man inte fortsätta antagandet att dessa var ordinära, normala barn som blev verkligt normala vuxna därför att de växt upp på ett sätt som tog hänsyn till deras personlighet?
Men det som gör det så svårt att ta konsekvenserna av en våldsam uppfostran i beräkningen är faktumet att vi alla mer eller mindre har måst uthärda dylik uppfostran och att det är en av de första slutsatser man drar att den är den normala och fördelaktiga [för att skydda sig själv mot smärtan av insikten om hur det verkligen var!??]."
Jag tyckte det var ganska intressant att läsa att Maurel anser att älskande förädrar, som inte använder en auktoritär eller förtyckande metod att uppfostra sina barn lär sina barn altruism!! Vilket också innebär att egoism också är något som man lär av sina föräldrar?? Och jag tänker också på fenomen vi ser i samhället idag, som man öppet går ut med (nyliberaler som är anhängare av Ayn Rand inte minst. Jag sökte på inlägg om Ayn Rand och fick upp bland annat detta, detta och detta inlägg).
Se också bland annat Jonathan Pincus forskning om seriemördare (här alla inlägg under kategorin J.H. Pincus, 27 stycken!!).
Mexikanskan María Pía Lara har också kommit med boken "Narrating Evil. A postmetaphysical theory of reflective judgment" (Columbia University Press), vilken Linder också nämner i sin artikel.
Publikationer av Samuel och Pearl Oliner här. Se “Do Unto Others: Extraodinary Acts of Ordinary People” av Samuel Oliner (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2003), om denna bok står det:
“This book explores what gives an individual a sense of responsibility, what leads to the development of care and compassion, and what it means to put the welfare of others ahead of one's own. Having been saved from the Nazis at age 12 as the result of one non-Jewish family's altruism, Oliner has made a lifelong study of the nature of altruism. Weaving together moving personal testimony and years of observation, Oliner makes sense of the factors that elicit altruistic behavior-exceptional acts by ordinary people in ordinary times.”
Video med Samuel Oliner se nedan. Se mer om de personer som nämnts i texten ovan här nedan (på engelska).
Jag skulle vilja skriva nästa inlägg om vad Pia Melody betraktar som kränkningar... För att kanske ytterligare öka insikten och förståelsen för hur barn upplever saker och för vad vi upplevde som kränkningar när vi var barn. För att vi på sikt ska förstå mer och mer om varför vi har de problem vi har...
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I translated almost the whole letter from Oliver Maurel to Harald Welzer above. You can read it in its origin at Miller's web, here.
I thought it was very interesting that Maurel wrote that he thinks altruism is something a child learns from his/her parents... And I think egoism must be taught too... Thought of all neoliberals having Ayn Rand as guru... I have only read about Rand at the net, bt what Ihave read so far and the ideas her followers hasn't appealed to me at all...
But first and foremost it means a lot to read about people questioning (and thus also condemning and viewing as wrong)and pinting out things, such as:
...the repercussions of educational violence /.../
...the implementation of the brain, become impressed into its deepest layers and impact the innate behaviors of the child./.../
...this education impairs the ability for compassion, which is one of the most effective means to put a brake on violence. In order not to suffer too much or even in order to survive, beaten children must cut themselves off from their feelings. But by hardening themselves against their own emotions, they also harden themselves against the emotions of others; thus it cannot astonish that they later are capable of a cold-blooded murder. The violence, under which they suffered, has also destroyed within them for example the most profound and universal ethical principal, the golden rule: «Do not do unto others what you do not wish to be done to you» because their violent parents have taught them the opposite. This violence has erased within them the primal instinct to protect their young, their offspring, because they had to suffer their parents’ aggressions from their early childhood on./.../
Finally, Alice Miller has also proven that exactly the senses for what is ethically right as well as for logical thinking are damaged in beaten children who are beaten «for their own good» because they associate violence as something good and accept this contradiction. Children whose moral categories and intelligence have been damaged to such an extent can then listen, without protest or even with elation, to the most insane and outrageous speeches, like those of Hitler and his following. Furthermore, the habit to obey violent commands, learned since childhood, evidently prepares people to submit to military discipline as well as to violent politicians that call forth the memory of paternal discipline and personality./.../
...demonstrated the very remarkable ability to think and act for themselves? In their answers, the following points emerge clearly: they had loving parents who taught them altruism (probably more by being role-models than through their admonitions), who trusted them and who granted them a non-authoritarian and non-repressive education./.../
demonstrated the very remarkable ability to think and act for themselves? In their answers, the following points emerge clearly: they had loving parents who taught them altruism (probably more by being role-models than through their admonitions), who trusted them and who granted them a non-authoritarian and non-repressive education."
But I react at something in this text, as to Barbar Rogers introduction to this letter, as if what Welzer has written is some kind of abuse against Alice Miller personally, as if it is SHE that is hurt... Of course she can be on behalf of all of us who have been hurt, but there is a but... As the mother that became hurt!!?? Or how shall I express this? Alice Miller has done a lot, and mayb meant enormlously for this topic (mental health and illhealth) but isn' the main question child-abuse, and not Alice Miller and her feelings???
I have linked earlier postings and new sites... Many (most of them??) are in English.
I would like to write about what Pia Melody view as violations... Which can increase the understanding and insight for and about how children experience things, and for things it maybe had to suppress to survive...
About Christopher Browning at Wikipedia. The controversy between Goldhagen and Browning here and here for instance.
Addition February 4: see Alice Miller on the political consequences of child-abuse here.
Alice Miller wrote:
"But working toward a better, more aware future cannot be done in isolation from the ongoing attempt to understand our history in all its facets, for us as individuals and as society. The work started by Lloyd deMause and continued by him and other psychohistorians is to my knowledge the first systematic research in this direction.
The history of child-rearing might be more illuminating than many others in illustrating the dangers for society at large attendant on willful ignorance about child development. The ongoing research on babies from birth to three might be helpful for eventually overcoming this ignorance. It may enable some historians to raise more frequently the question raised for the first time by Lloyd deMause: what does it feel like to be an abused infant, without any enlightened witnesses?
Unfortunately, the early childhood of people who recently mercilessly killed in Rwanda has not yet become an issue for psychological or sociological investigation.
But should empathic psychohistorians once become interested in finding out and describing the atmosphere of the first years of the killer's life, they could probably be able to explain some of the events that still seem inexplicable."
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.
Makt avslöjar en persons grundläggande moral …
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Crisis
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I suppose some people might wonder why I'm not completely hysterical. Why
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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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