The false hope of changing something and the wall of silence...

a hazy day.

A reader’s letter on Miller’s web made me think. It stood:

“I too had difficulty walking away from these people, I wanted to explain to them and help them understand, but I too from reading your books I learned I cannot make someone to see and understand if they refuse to see their own truth and now I can walk away without difficult.”

No, you can’t convert people who don’t want to become converted believing in things Miller for instance has written about…

But it can be difficult walking away!! More difficult the less response you get!? You stay and beat your head bloody (in a false hope).

Addition: this is the same or similar phenomenon occurring in therapies too! Where clients get stuck in bad therapies with bad therapists in a hopeless effort to get something from the therapist the therapist can't and/or don't want to give. Even things the client has all rights to get. See Helga's story. It looks like many people have experienced what Helga experienced, but there are probably many clients whom never realize this, unfortunately.

And abuse also occurs in other contexts resembling therapies, like in forums dealing with peoples' childhoods... Where people are exposed to abuse by the ones that are responsible...

Perfectionism...

Came to think about perfectionism - and therapists - of some reason this morning (after an early talk on the phone)… In this case it was about having it perfectly cleaned up at home…

And continuing having almost perfectly even though you don’t manage that any longer because you have gotten old and don’t have the same powers or strengths any more. Not capable of grieving that truth, because there are other things behind these needs…

Unless you aren’t perfect you won’t be loved, get love… However, if I become then maybe… Struggling into old age with getting love, a love you will never get, because you should have gotten it then, struggling for a love that didn’t exist. But realizing the truth feels to painful, so the human being continue to struggle her/his whole life.

I thought further: if therapists understood this on an emotional level, not just with their brain, intellect, analysis and theories, they would be capable of helping!??

A client would immediately sense the emotional understanding from the helper.

But many clients continue struggling with therapists just of the reason they don’t get what they need (and are entitled to demand). In a false hope to get it, to enlighten them, make them more sensitive, empathic etc.

Clients do this to avoid the utterly painful disappointment; the original pain is also touched upon. A very justified feeling of disappointment. And that truth was so painful then so the child couldn’t take it in, or in the best cases partly take it in. With no help this truth is unbearable for a child: the truth that it isn’t loved but loved conditionally (but is that real, genuine love?).

A pain that would be bearable today with help and understanding and empathy?

Addition after lunch: Something I wrote two days ago after a nightly talk that felt like a relief…

Miller writes about people in middle-age at last finding a better partner than the one they found when they were younger in “Paths of Life” *… About how people eventually have found the right one fairly late in life. As Claudia, who as middle age had matured as woman, with Mark, and Daniel with Monica…

Relations late in life yet without struggles, but with more capacities than earlier to work these struggles out; work them out in a new and better way than earlier. Struggles not without pain though… Sometimes maybe with considerable pain?

I thought then, two days ago: some of the troubles we have (have had) and are facing would have been unnecessary? Maybe entirely? And we could have been more capable of dealing with difficulties, which ARE inevitable (and has nothing to do with if we are harmed or not??), in a much better way and easier if we hadn’t been harmed early in different ways; emotionally, physically and not so seldom sexually.

Many times also much more constructively, and without causing so much harm and damage, to ourselves and people nearest to us.

We would have been more capable of dealing with other hurt people in a much better way too? With other peoples’ attacks too? And with what they do and have done. In some cases we would probably have withdrawn in an early stage too entirely, because our feelings, emotions were so intact so we sensed and felt in an early stage what could happen?

* On Miller's site it stands about this book:

"How do our first experiences of pain and love affect our future adult lives and our relationships with others?/.../

The narratives explore the suffering and loneliness felt in the individual's formative years.

For some, the pain and inner isolation has dominated their adulthood and prevented them from enjoying fulfilling relationships despite the desire and need for contact and communication. For others, old fears and defensive patterns have been conquered, enabling them to enter into healthy relationships and find contentment./.../

Alice Miller's intention is to encourage us towards an awareness of the need to learn from experience, adapt to change and regain trust in order to break free of the negative effects of childhood trauma."

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En perfekt värld (A Perfect World).

I sitt perfekta hem i sin perfekta värld
Är det middag i kväll alla kommer va där
I sitt perfekta hem i sin perfekta värld
Hon smetar på läppstift från en postorderaffär

Och hon är vacker när hon ler
Ja hon är vacker när hon ler
Men det finns ingen i världen som vet
För lögner som är bra dom är en hemlighet

I sitt perfekta hem i sin perfekta värld
Alla fotografier står där dom ska
Bland gröna fåtöljer o tapeter i skärt
Hon sätter sig o väntar nu kommer dom snart

Och hon är vacker när hon ler
Ja hon är vacker när hon ler
Men det finns ingen i världen som vet
För lögner som är bra dom är en hemlighet
Men det finns ingen i världen som vet
För lögner som är bra dom är en hemlighet

Dom kommer hit o äter varje kväll
Men dom kommer ju försent varenda kväll

I sitt perfekta hem i sin perfekta värld
Hon dukar av bordet när TV:n är slut
Bland gröna fåtöljer o tapeter i skärt
Ska hon gå o sova eller ska hon gå ut

Och hon är vacker när hon ler
Ja hon är vacker när hon ler
Men det finns ingen i världen som vet
För lögner som är bra dom är en hemlighet
Men det finns ingen i världen som vet
För lögner som är bra dom är en hemlighet

Psychotherapy as indoctrination…

It stood in the Swedish part of wikipedia that penséer or pansies are often used by humanistic and free thought organizations internationally as a symbol for the free thought. Because it looks like a human face and in August when the flower slouch it looks like a human being sitting in deep thoughts. Does it?

I have blogged about the article "Psykoanalysen - det 20:e århundradets bluff?" by Randi Rostrup in ”Impuls tidskrift för psykologi” nr 3/1997 (s. 72-88) or ”The Psychoanalysis – the 20th century’s big bluff” in Swedish earlier in the posting “Psykoanalys som indoktrinering…” or ”Psychoanalysis as indoctrination…”. Now I want to try writing about it in English too. I think these things are true what concern other forms of therapies too.

In this article it stands that (my amateur-translation to English from my translation to Swedish of a Norwegian text):

“I have been told that some people get problems with their reality testing, because nothing looks as it is any longer. When the relation with the therapist as a real person is made invalid, this implicates that no matter what a therapist says or does, this is without meaning, importance or significance. Every negative reaction on the therapist’s behaviour is interpreted as a projection. The client can’t trust his/her perceptions any longer. This corresponds to the form of reality distortion and nullifying (making invalid) of experiences as Axelsson (1997) points out is a strongly contributory cause to psychic problems. “

When you enter a therapist’s office aren’t you there to recover and hopefully heal – at least a tiny little bit?

“The strong dependency, which is a prerequisite for psychoanalytically oriented treatment, can give fertile soil for an extended use of power-exercise [power abuse]./…/

…a pattern which often is identical with what the client has experienced earlier in life. It is hardly a coincidence that what communication research defines as control strategies (Wieman & Giles 1996) correspond psychoanalytically accepted treatment techniques as silence and avoiding eye contact. In this way the client quickly learns what is acceptable saying, meaning and thinking and what isn’t and thus accepts the therapist’s interpretations and definitions for to avoid rejection reactions. For a psychoanalyst this will always be about making and maintaining the control with the intention to maintain the authority. This lies implicitly as a fundamental, basic premise when it is assumed that the client doesn’t know her/his own best and therefore with all means will try to manipulate the therapist. The dangerous, risky in this is that the therapist then can loose what for instance Gullestad (1996) refers to as the ’independent position’.”

Miller writes quite a lot about unconscious manipulation.

“When a client gets a ‘negative therapeutic reaction’ i.e. is dissatisfied with not getting the help he or she needs and therefore finishes the therapy, the psychoanalytical tradition always says that it is the client that it is something wrong with, not the therapist or the therapy. Axelsen (1996) maintains that therapists whom have dissociated themselves from victim blaming tendencies see the client’s negative reactions as the therapist’s responsibility because the therapist cannot master his/her part of the interplay in the therapeutic relation.

A psychoanalytical oriented therapy will therefore most often be a new form of education with a powerful stamp of what Alice Miller (1980) calls ‘the poisonous pedagogy’, a new variant of ‘identification with the aggressor.’ The goal for the treatment is to replace an old superego with a new one with the help of classical indoctrination techniques. If a patient becomes ‘insubordinate’ and insists on the right to her/his own reality and denies accepting the therapist’s interpretations, it isn’t unusual that the therapist acts his/her parents out and uses the same educational methods against his/her patient, as he/she him/herself was exposed to as a child (Miller 1981).Some of the psychoanalytical oriented therapists today use the term ‘resistance against therapy’ about those patients. ‘Sound resisting-power against indoctrination’ one would perhaps rather call it.”

So true!!

Miller calls what Helga was exposed to for brainwashing.

See earlier posting “Help to self-destruction…”

And once again:

“If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.” (Alice Miller in “Paths of Life” in my amateur translation from the Swedish edition of this book)."

More about manipulation in therapy…

[Updated April 11 with a translation to Swedish of the first quotation] I have been tipped long ago about the book ”Gaslighting: The Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy & Analysis” by Theo L. Dorpat. It stands about it:

“In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them.

The more gross kinds of patient abuse, deliberate ones such as sexual and financial exploitation, are expressly forbidden by professional organizations [but they occur nevertheless]. However, there are no regulations discouraging the more covert [hemliga, dolda] forms of manipulation, which are not even considered exploitative by many clinicians. In this book, noted psychiatrist Theo. L. Dorpat strongly disagrees [with that they aren't exploitative, which he thinks they are?]. Using a contemporary interactional perspective, Dorpat demonstrates the destructive potential of manipulation and indoctrination in treatment.”

Also see Dorpat's new book “Wounded Monster – Hitler’s Path from Trauma to Malevolence” which sounds interesting:

”Few authors who have written about Hitler have understood the deeply damaging effects of psychic trauma on his private life and the way he functioned in the public sphere. Nearly all major biographers have neglected the importance of Hitler's childhood trauma and his later combat trauma during World War I. In Wounded Monster, Dorpat demonstrates how extreme emotional and physical abuse from his father, and his unusually long combat service during the Great War became the most formative influences of his life, resulting in severe, life-long, psychiatric disorders, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It is the first book to apply contemporary trauma theory to explain Hitler's malevolence [elakhet, illvilja].

This psychiatric biography of Hitler is the only work to discuss the central importance of his vulnerability to shame emotions, as well as the trauma-induced construction of an extensive repertoire of mainly unconscious mechanisms (including fight and flight) for the avoidance of feelings of shame.”

See earlier postings on Adolf Hitler, Jonathan Pincus on Hitler and Hatred, earlier posting on "Hat..." (the first part in Swedish, the second in English), a posting about bigotry, all postings on therapy abuse so far.

From bike ride this morning (see my on line photo album).

Addition April 11: See the site "Verbal and Emotional Abuse in Therapy." Translation of the first quotation above:

“I behandling är psykoterapeuten i en maktposition. Ofta missbrukas denna oavsiktligt. Medan terapeuter försöker förkroppsliga ett medkännande bekymmer för patienter [vara medkännande), använder de accepterade tekniker som oavsiktligt keder till kontroll, indoktrinering och terapeutiskt misslyckande [bristfällig terapi]. Tvärtemot den tradition och de värderingar som uppges eller läggs fram i psykoterapi, tvingar de [dock] patienter subtilt snarare än att respektera och genuint hjälpa dem.

De grövre överlagda, avsiktliga formerna av missbruk av patienter, som sexuellt och finansiellt utnyttjande, är uttryckligen förbjudna av yrkesorganisationer/fackorganisationer [men de förekommer ändå och kanske oftare än vi tror?]. Men det finns dock ingen reglering som avskräcker/hindrar de mer dolda, hemliga formerna av manipulation, vilka inte ens ses som utnyttjande eller exploatering av många kliniker [kliniskt praktiserande]. I sin bok är Theo L. Dorpat starkt oense med detta [med att de inte är utnyttjande, exploaterande, vilket han tycker att de är?]. Genom att använda samtidiga växelverkande perspektiv, visar Dorpat den destruktiva potentialen i manipulation och indoktrinering i [mången] behandling.”

Brainwashing…

Margaret Singer.

[Updated April 6] In a comment to my former posting on “Emotional abuse…” I was tipped about a Margaret Singer and her 6 criterias for thought reform (my amateur translation from Swedish) I guess it was from the site "hjärntvätt" (brainwashing):

1. Keeping a person unknowing of what is going on and what is happening.
2. Controlling a person’s time and if possible its physical environment (milieu).
3. Creating a sense of powerlessness, secret fear and dependency.
4. Repressing a lot of the person’s old behaviours and attitude.
5. Infusing new behaviours and attitude.
6. Pushing a closed system of logic forward, not allowing critics.

The commentator wrote:

“Her description of brainwashing was very similar to what I suffered in a ‘normal’ psychotherapy (except milieu and time control)."

And it was like Singer describes it the child had it once and as many children still have it? Being obedient and keeping quiet? Not questioning or seeing through? As many of us had it more or less? So we are so used to it and thus have difficulties seeing this through?

Addition April 6: was tipped by a friend on Robert Jay Lifton’s "Theory of thought reform":

• Milieu Control (controlled relations with the outer world)
• Mystical Manipulation (the group has a higher purpose than the rest)
• Demand for Purity (pushing the individual towards a not-attainable perfection)
• Confession (confess past and present sins)
• Sacred Science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
• Loading the Language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-white thinking, thought-stoppers)
• Doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
• Dispensing of existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)

Also see "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton.

And all these things you ought to avoid in therapy. And these are things many children have experienced when they grew up, in their families, to different degrees?

Translated the points above would be something in the style:

• Kontroll av miljön (kontrollerade relationer med den yttre världen)
• Mystisk manipulation (gruppen har ett högre syfte än resten, dvs. resten av världen? Manipulation av upplevelser vilka verkar vara spontana, men är planerade och orkestrerade)
• Krav på renhet (man pushar individen mot en ouppnåelig perfektion, världen ses svart-vit och medlemmarna är konstant förmanade att rätta sig efter gruppens ideologi och strävan efter perfektion)
• Bekännelse (man bekänner forna och nutida synder. Synder, som de definieras av gruppen, ska bekännas antingen inför en personlig ordningsman eller offentligt till gruppen)
• Helig vetenskap (övertygelser om gruppen är okränkbara, heliga och perfekta. Gruppens doktrin och ideologi ses om den ultimata sanningen, bortom allt ifrågasättande eller varje dispyt)
• Laddande av språket (nya meningar på ord, uppmuntrande av ett svart-vitt tänkande, tankestoppare. Gruppen tolkar och använder ord och fraser på ett nytt sätt så att den yttre världen ofta inte förstår)
• Doktrin över person (gruppen är viktigare än individen. Medlemmens personliga erfarenheter är underordnade den heliga vetenskapen och varje motsatt erfarenhet måste förnekas eller tolkas på nytt för att passa gruppens ideologi)
• Fördelande av existens (insiders räddas, outsiders är dömda. Gruppen har privilegiet, förmånsrätten att bestämma vem som har rätten att existera och vilken som inte har det)

Detta låter som något som skulle kunna existera i familjen för ett både litet och betydligt större barn i större eller mindre grad? Och dylika saker borde undvikas i terapi, både i individuell som gruppterapi.

Narcissistic authoritarianism in therapy/help groups...

read about our Easter-traditions here (picture from the open-air museum Skansen, Stockholm).

In the article ”Narcissistic Authoritarianism in Psychoanalysis” by a Daniel Shaw I read at page 4 about a trainee and his supervisor (supervisor 2), when Shaw during his fourth year in training to psychoanalyst brought up things he reacted on in something his supervisor then had done/said (my italics):

“Although I [as trainee] was the one initiating all the processing of what had happened, I appreciated his concession, and we got on pretty well from there. And yet, I would have to say that my trust was somewhat shaken from that point on.

This supervisor was willing to be accountable for his shaming, intimidating behavior, but only after I brought it up, and only nonchalantly, and with no apology. It is of course entirely expectable that one might slip up and err as a supervisor by being too didactic, or reacting hastily in a shaming way. This can and does happen with most supervisors, sooner or later. But as I see it, the supervisor then has the responsibility to process with the supervisee what has happened, and to repair the disruption. In the absence of such willingness to process, the supervisee, who is likely to be vulnerable to a shaming and intimidating supervisor, may develop more anxiety about disapproval than would already be normally present. His work as he presents it could then become organized around receiving the supervisor’s approval, around meeting supervisory requirements which are subjectively biased toward the supervisor’s particular theoretical and technical preferences, and which are shaped by the supervisor’s narcissistic concerns. The supervisee learns to develop a ‘false supervisee self’ based on compliance. In my view, this also greatly increases the chances that the supervisee will go on to elicit similar results with his patients.”

That the responsible doesn’t process what’s happened is power abuse and authoritarian, maybe also with a touch of narcissism Daniel Shaw means. And the risk is that the other part develop a false self or rather that a false self is strengthened! And this is the opposite of healing or of creating a healing environment!?

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Översatt till svenska blir det (litet fritt?):

”Fastän jag var den som initierade bearbetandet av det som hade hänt, uppskattade jag hans medgivande och vi kom ganska bra överens i fortsättningen. Men dock måste jag säga att min tillit var något skakad från och med denna händelse.

Denna handledare var villig att ta på sig ansvar för sitt skämmande, skrämmande beteende, men bara efter att jag tog upp det och bara nonchalant och utan ursäkt. Det är naturligtvis helt möjligt att anta att man kan göra fel som handledare genom att vara för undervisande [pekpinnig?] eller att man reagerar förhastat på ett skamingjutande sätt. Detta både kan hända och händer med de flesta handledare, förr eller senare. Men som jag ser det har handledaren då ansvaret att bearbeta det som hänt med den handledde och att reparera rämnan/brottet/schismen. I avsaknaden av en sådan villighet att bearbeta kan den handledde, som troligen är sårbar för en skamingjutande och skrämmande handledare, komma att utveckla mer ängslighet angående bifall/erkännande/godkännande än som redan skulle vara normalt närvarande. Det arbete som han presenterar det kan då bli organiserat runt erhållande av handledarens gillande, som att möta handledarbehov/krav som är subjektivt partiska med handledarens särskilda teoretiska och tekniska preferenser och vilka är skapade av handledarens narcissistiska intressen. Den handledde lär sig att utveckla ett ’falskt handledsjag’ baserat på eftergivenhet/tillmötesgående. Som jag ser det ökar också detta stort chansen att den handledde kommer att fortsätta locka fram liknande resultat med sina patienter.”

When I searched on Danel Shaw I found this article/essay by him "The Dark Side of Enlightenment - Sadomasochistic Aspects of the Quest for Perfection". But I am not really fond of "the psycho analytical terminology"...

Processing abuse experiences from so called help-groups and forums...

Came to think about the ourchildhood forum once again… Thinking loudly.

I think it’s important to process ones experiences from a sect or cult… (but it shall not be a prescription either, doing that?) To talk about it till you have talked about it enough…

And you can’t put everything back to childhood or to your family of origin (and maybe not even to a present dysfunctional family-building)! Some things you have to deal with here and now and don't put it back to anything but what you have just experienced. Under this you will possibly or very likely have to deal with earlier experiences, but not until you have dealt enough with the present, and actual abuse (which shouldn't be talked away)? And once again, if you get stuck - why is that? There is nothing wrong with the helper or the method you use?

Therapy abuse as sect and cult experiences you have to process I think. And probably talk about till you are free from these things? If you can’t let these things go it’s because you haven’t (got help) to process them I think. But I know people are encouraged to leave a subject (both by "helpers" and "friends") because now “it’s time doing that”. Because "that person has to think of something else, and don’t get stuck"!? (But why are people stuck?? And don’t get forward?).

And Miller writes that the utmost, the extreme form of silence is suicide. And suicides have occurred… Which is horrible. Because people didn’t really want to listen, whether this was conscious or unconscious in the “listener” and noone else wanted to listen (not even or not least those who were subscribers too at the same time and thus witnesses, but maybe not consciously knowing, and belonged to something looking like a sort of sect and cult?)? Helpers who thought they knew best what the one in despair needed???

Censoring (by rejecting postings) with no explanations except a message “Post was received” – what can that cause and what is that (quite authoritarian isn't it)? Don't the responsible have time writing an explanation, and thus not leaving the subscriber in wonders and fantasies and maybe even confusion? And what does it cause and has it caused?

Others on the list: have noone wondered where that and that person disappeared? And why?

And once again, this behaviour isn't it the same as many of our parents probably used, and as Miller has written about herself? That the parent didn't explain her/is behaviour and punishment. And the message turned out to be "If you don't understand why you are punished, rejected then you have really proved your badness! Seek, search for, do you utmost..."

How would people in real life react to a similar treatment? With anger? Some just walking away? And who are capable of just walking away, of leaving? Who are capable of processing this experience the best? Isn't it the less hurt??

If anything: in those circumstances it is even more important talking openly, and really communicating things. As honestly as possible, if you really want to do good (and how is t actually with that quite frankly)!?? Open, genuine talk. To avoid damage and abuse. And if there is nothing to hide I don’t understand what the problem is.

And people much be allowed to question and maybe even criticize, even strongly, forcefully criticize!? And be met in this, not being just "dismissed"!

Brainwashing can be very subtle? And very obvious too without people noticing it?

Miller writes in her book “Paths of Life” at page 157 in the Swedish edition (my amateur translation):

“Among the founders of the sects there are many paranoiac and megalomaniac [lidande av storhetsvansinne] psychotics who in the crowd of followers are seeking protection against their own agony in that they offer themselves as helpers and healers. /…/ they want to escape from their childish impotence/powerlessness and fight impotence/powerlessness on the symbolic level. At the same time they offer themselves as saviours, since they at last through their followers eulogizes feel powerful instead of powerless. But as soon as they fear being seen through/found out they force their disciples to silence.”

Miller (or her “team”) haven't met people (whose ability to question has got awoken, maybe through the exchanges with the others on the list and through processing and thinking on what is happening and wondering about it), she and/or her team has met people trying to point out “problems” with the ourchildhood forum not so good or professionally I think, from the experiences I have and what I have heard. Instead of listening and meeting the one writing people have been met with silence and if they have persevered even been threatened with retributions… Especially women have been I have a feeling, men have been (a little) better treated. Of some reason... I may be wrong.

And Miller has underscored (is this only my interpretation?) the importance that a therapist has adequate training and that he/she has revoked suppressions as much as possible to avoid projecting things on clients, and for being capable of handling transferences without hurting the client (help-seeker) even more...

Some quick reflections…

from rehearsal with choir (see my on-line photo-album).

Miller writes about when the ability is awoken (arisen) in the client to question and criticize, the therapist need to be able to handle this (my interpretation). And there it’s very important he (she) has worked her (his) things through to that degree so he (she) knows what he (she) is reacting on.

Abusive patients at Janov’s center, how come? Why? Empathy for ones self is said to make one more empathic for other people, what the hypothesis is… What’s wrong here? Is it the method or help which it is something “wrong” or faulty with?

What is true, genuine communication? Doesn’t moderators have to motivate their decisions?

People “exposed” to Janov’s method do they start to use defenses, because their feelings are so overwhelming? And would it be better if they still lived in real life during the therapy as a former patient suggested? Having access to real life, living in real life, and not among other people struggling and triggering things in each other?

I am wondering…

People rejected from ourchildhood.int seem to have committed suicide…

Aren’t those topics important to bring to surface and out in public? If there is nothing to hide I don’t understand what would be the problem??

But people abused perhaps need safe places to discuss this on, not going out in public?? But some are probably capable of going out in public!? And those are probably the less early harmed, or those who have been able to process what they have been exposed to… The more callous handles this "better"?? And the less callous worse? Are there people needing to become rehabilitated?? I think there is... Hearing that other people have been abused? In a similar way as those at Janov's center???

See earlier post about Janov's center... I think one can (and shall) have high demands on moderators, not least on a list calling itself Alice Miller's list... Even if Miller herself doesn't agree to this?

In a similar manner as you should have higher demands on all those in power... As we teachers!! Towards our pupils and students. Of course this doesn't mean we can't get abused by those under us. Because we can and we are??

But this is another question (though not unimportant I guess)... How to handle this professionally. Both as individual and as organization?? So we don't meet abuse with abuse...?

PS. That people have been abused by Alice Miller's team doesn't gain her ideas or herself. And I will claim people have been abused. If anything this must confuse (already confused)!!! Miller wrote herself (in the translation Barbara Rogers made, from French?) about confusing people by motivating a rejection/refusal... How does she mean I wonder?

And that moderators are nothing but ordinary human beings with good and bad sides are no excuse at all!!?? How many abusers doesn't claim this? But we are used to hear such explanations...

No, these things doesn't gain Miller or her ideas!!! She would gain on handling things differently!?

But it's maybe so that she (and members of her team, who that team now consist of) hasn't understood that there exist Internet-trolls at the net?? And how do one separate who are trolls from those who aren't? A key-question maybe or possibly? (and by the way; what do they suffer from?? Who are abusive in that way?).

Addition March 13: I read something in the style

"Silence is friend of the perpetrator."

Slideshow above from rehearsal with choir March 12. It became a long working-day yesterday. Was home at 21.30 (9:30 PM)...

Om internettroll står det bland annat i wikipedia:

”Ett gyllene talesätt är att det är ’sak och inte person’ som bör diskuteras i alla diskussionsforum. Så länge argument kan bemötas på ett sakligt och konstruktivt sätt uppstår oftast inga problem.”

My amateur-translation about Internet-trolls from the Swedish part of wikipedia:

"A golden mode of expression is that it is 'thing not person' that ought to be discussed in all discussion-forums. So long as arguments can be met on a unbiased (??) and constructive way no problems usually arises."

Very, very silently (I hope noone hears this, but I need to express it?): how tired I am... Of all and everything...

Only intelligent people "göre sig besvär" for some... (I wonder what the English translation of this is??) Smiling till the smile feels like a grimace, very, very stiff, not natural at all... No warmth in the eyes, just tiredness... It's not only the bright or intelligent who counts among all kids and young people I am working with, that's at least what I try, making no differences (how successful I am in this I guess other people have to judge about. And will underline that I am no angel, and don't want to be seen as such! Or do I maybe???)... Neither those young nor grown ups have to be enlightened either to deserve being rejected or counted on so long as they don't harm anyone...

Struggling to be liked - what's that about? Struggling so one gets totally exhausted... Is that harming other people actually? They maybe get irritated though?? (but who is that irritation about??). A lot of thoughts here in the evening...

The one struggling till she (he) gets blue - why is she (he)?? To get a love (or only being accepted, not striving for higher goals than just being accepted)? What love? A love that doesn't exist? Or a love that in fact exists, but which the person in question isn't capable of seeing (because she/he puts her/him so low)? Striving for people who maybe don't deserve all those efforts - at all even?? Tragedies... Maybe walking a whole long life not seeing what was in reach?

Helga - part 6...

Helga wrote that she believes that many who have been injured (in therapies, sects, cults etc.) are ashamed they have let themselves be exploited. And this unmotivated shame is holding them in the victim’s role. This is the reason why defectors (avhoppare) from sects are prevented from clearly and in detail relating/telling how and with what means the wool was pulled over their eyes (hur och med vilka medel de blev förda bakom ljuset). And Michelle and Helga thought Helga had been in a form of sect or cult even in her therapy.

Because of this shame-feeling in the injured the perpetrators can, unpunished, continue with their destructive activities. This is the reason why I have tried not to forget what happened to me and to understand it in all important aspects Helga writes.

I can’t change facts. That I was exploited as a child and misled by people whom I trusted on and now also by my therapist – that can’t be undone. But the remaining results of these violations I knew about. They consisted of disregard of the person I am and of my achievements. All I did for others was valueless in my eyes, and later I struggled like a slave (people in Feeling therapy worked themselves exhausted and thus even less capable of being critical and questioning things than they maybe were from the beginning) and let myself be exploited Helga writes.

When we make this clear to us; that the psychological results of a tragic childhood contains of a weak self-confidence we can get over its results as grown ups.

When we have made this clear to ourselves we have already weakened the compulsion to re-enact. We realize that we were oppressed children, patients, sect-followers, but with this insight we take the liberty not being that any more she thinks.

Gurus and leaders can’t take those steps she thinks. They have to remain at the top, no matter what it costs. Therefore they are steadfastly denying the fact that they were victims earlier (in their childhood and maybe also later as adults) and flee into the power, into promises about cure, into roles, poses, dissimulation and not seldom into frauds. And this is also true in family-systems, where a parent (usually a father) has to remain on top? Denying they were harmed once?

A human being whom has survived the childhood’s oppression will hardly flee to a power-position. If he has integrated his experiences he can liberate himself from compulsions and meet his partner and friends in an open communication.

Tragically there have been women stuck in this ‘sect’ for years without realising this Helga thought with shivers. But she only just (med nöd och näppe) got out of its claws and she shivers realizing what could have happened. There were other women, who had become bodily ill (paralyzed or at least bodily handicapped) and stuck in their homes, and Helga visited those, while the therapist got the fees. When Helga realized this she felt like a fool.

Helga writes to Michelle that thanks to her presence and her letters she has got help showing her feelings, and to no longer hide in solitude, but entrust herself to people whom want her best. Thus being able to break walls of silence; both those in therapy as those in her childhood. Maybe not all, but enough to free her from the worst?

Yes, to handle those things the best and bring these topics out “into the world” most effectively, how do we make this? How do we deal with those things and act in a way that is as little destructive or self-destructive, but constructive – and more effective and productive?

Why haven’t we been able to change so much in our own lives (haven’t we) although we have read Miller for maybe twenty years??

And why does this take such a long time? Does it?

Is it because we have to do most of the work on our own, and thus in a much slower pace?

And would our strivings be better and more efficient (effective) if we had solved our own problems to a higher degree? So we saw clearer and don’t bring so much of our unsolved stuff into things, especially into those that are most important?

So we don’t harm others or ourselves… No, people don’t consciously and deliberately try and find abusive people to be around.

Addition: To what degree is it possible to change dysfunctional behavior to a functional, and can we be cured by symbolically doing things? And if so, to what degree? But with this not said we don't have responsibility for what we do, say, how we behave... It's no excuse, but only an explanation. Because we have responsibility, no matter how harmed we have been? And are we allowed to meet abuse with abuse? Is it constructive to meet the one with contempt that can't handle her/his life better, that someone is weak etc.?

And if things haven't changed so much in our lives; why haven't they?

Are people deliberately and consciously trying to find abusive people to be around? Destructive drives we have to learn to control? Didn't learn to control early?? As Freud thought?? Ideas many therapists still are working after, without being aware of it maybe, or are even denying they are working after? Is this the Primary defense; the child blaming itself for being so lousy in handling things? In others this can be about blaming others (but this doesn't exclude questioning things if it is needed, but the difficulty is to know the difference!?)? Or struggling in a false hope of being able to change a situation, person etc.? etc. Postings under the label Primary defence.

---

My youngest brother is skiing the Vasaloppet today. He skied 90 km in 05:37 hours! We saw him coming to Mora now on the web!!! He turns 49 in June. The conditions were fairly tough it sounds...

Morning-tea in cups from Nittsjö keramik (lying in Rättvik, Dalarna).

Some more thoughts on therapy abuse…

Easter 2007 at the country-side, chocolate-cake with whipped cream and fruit.

In the shower: my relatives in the working-class (which I have had most contact with and have had further contact with, and where we played very freely when we grew up, as we did at home, but not at my paternal grandparent's home really) would never think of entering a therapist’s office…That is out of question. And earlier it was even more out of question. defenses (and denial) can take different expressions?

Not least was it so in my parents’ generation and earlier. Reading books could give one a lot of strange ideas, and working with creative things was no real occupation! And you shouldn’t think “too much”.

My youngest uncle is born 1935 and his wife is one year younger…

Helga was educated social worker, and she got her mom’s house in Santa Monica when her mother died, and thus she was seen as the rich and wealthy house-owner, who could afford paying expensive fees.

Michelle wrote that the sect-members she referred to (what Carol L. Mithers has written about in “Therapy Gone Mad…”) belonged to the middle-class; they were intelligent people, of whom many had Academic exams and was used to thinking.

How was this enslaving possible Michelle wondered? She thought that the patients through regression to childish helplessness obviously lost their ability for critical thinking or that they entirely directed the critics at themselves.

The people whom had come to the therapy-center to learn to perceive their feelings had been held away from exactly these true actual feelings instead, because their therapists had no use for those.

The members at the center had been exhorted to strict critics of their parents and at the same time been hindered refinedly seeing their contemporary extortionists through.

When the truths were revealed they became aware of that they had told the most intimate details about their childhoods and sexual lives in the “therapy-groups”, but that they had buried their true feelings and thoughts about the therapists behaviors inside instead. They had never really spoken with the other sect-members either. The patients’ lives were strictly controlled, day and night.

And they got a lot of perverse commands; couples who loved each others too much was ordered to have sex every day, so they should get enough of each others. People who didn’t’ really like each others were forced to intimate relations etc.

Michelle thought that regressive therapy-forms offer a certain favorable soil for these things. A human being suddenly thrown back to childish dependency can’t integrate her childhood. Only grown ups can do this with the help of a therapist who follows his patients and supports their independence, and who are not holding them in a childish dependency.

This dependency is the soil in which the illusion that the therapist can give a grown up human being all she lacked with her mother (and father) when she was a (small) child: being mirrored, understood, unconditionally loved (and given true, genuine respect, which is something a client has all rights to demand and expect!?).

If the mother is capable of this she has protected her child from being exploited later.

But expecting that shortages are possible to be taken back with a guru is self-delusion. It only leads to dependency on promises which can never be fulfilled, because the sect-follower isn’t a child any more and the guru isn’t his/her mother (or father) from the beginning of life. In spite of this this illusion is kept alive in many sects and religions.

Michelle writes that knowing this maybe can be of help to Helga; that she isn’t the only one who have done this experience (or been such a fool!) and succeeded to free herself from the confusion.

And I thought on the article I linked and quoted from yesterday (about the woman who was exposed to incest from she was 7, or earlier, till she was 14, and how her life had turned out later): how can it be to read this for the one that hasn’t been able to deal in the same way as this woman? How do newspapers nuance what they write? Are they “nuancing” things rather?? The Societal Denial again? Because I wonder if not more people have been exposed to things than we want to believe? Many more? Maybe almost all of us, but to different degrees. Some are less harmed, others more??

And - can a sexual abuser come to believe that what he (she) does isn't so harmful??

"See how she dealt with it!!!"

Minimizing and belittling the damage?? Which is absolutely intolerable and wrong!!! I guess most of those who have succeeded in their recovery would agree that the damage could have been undone, and the struggle to recover has taken so much of their time and life...

Also see the article "Compassion Gone Mad" by Heather Mac Donald.

And it was someone who wrote:

“I’m wondering why after many adult children finally say:

“Ok that’s enough! I’m done!”

and then they walk away and have little or nothing to do with the abusive parent after that, but they continue to or begin abusive relationships with others.

I know a woman who refused to speak with her dad because he molested her, but then started dating a man who was very mean to her and treated her like she was nothing.

He used her for sex just like her father did and abandoned her and then would come back just to hurt her.

After I stopped seeing my mother I became very friendly with a very mean woman who screamed at me when she got drunk I also dated a man who was mean and acted pretty much like my mother.”

Is it because they haven't actually worked things through (and this is certainly not easy or easy made)? And recovery isn't about solving things on a symbolic level??

Helga - part 5...

...My experiences the last years have also taught me that one can (only) master the results from childhood traumas if one can remove the actual trauma. As you have proved, these consequences consist of blockading due to fear, dumbness, and dispiritedness.

I agree with you, that if the grown up human being gets over this fear she will not have to go back to the old helplessness, despair and dumbness. The child’s impotent anger probably only arises if the grown up voluntarily puts herself into such a dependency as the one she was forced to live in in childhood. As in your childhood this path was barred for you. Regressed to a small child’s state you couldn’t possibly see that your tears were made an affair of and profited on.

It has been proved since long that one best gets over a shock if one doesn’t try to forget it, which one thought earlier, but instead that one feels what has been done to one and that one talk about this till the shock at last loses its meaning. Silence is exposed people’s biggest enemy.

It was no coincidence that Freud experienced his first hysteric patients’ paralysis symptoms as expressions for this forced silence. Women often express their states through bodily symptoms, through paralysis’s and language disturbances.

“I have to keep quiet, I have no permission showing my anger, not even to knowing what and whom it is about, must believe what I am told, mustn’t betray anybody, must remain immovable till the anger kills me.”

I know of women who have become bodily ill because they didn’t have the power to work themselves up to an accusation for sexual abuse in therapies

The fear of talking is so stubborn because its roots lies in childhood. But you can’t get over it there, but only in the here and now. If you have been exposed to abuse in the here and now, in therapy or in other circumstances, you can’t solve it there and then (i.e. in your childhood) and only blame your parents and not the perpetrators/abusers here and now. This is to cover the present reality up.

To break the silence was in fact life-threatening for many children. For grown ups this is true only in totalitarian regimes, and to them many sects belong. They are built on the old educational system, which people enlisted to them are all too well acquainted with from their childhoods.

Even many therapies are leaning on this system. The therapist (and other gurus) interprets critics from his patients as transference and in this way he disconnects them (this critic) from the first beginning. The patients’ perceptions becomes manipulated to that degree that they don’t dare to believe in their own senses any more, but develop real agony for them.

These mental manipulations can get a devastating effect on the psyche, but doesn’t necessarily have to affect the body at once.

However, there are other tools, the emotional manipulation, which unlike the mental rapidly affects the body.

In my view many healing movements are grounded on this. There are people with a so called charisma; to them many shamans belong, who have a talent for emotional manipulations.

Many of them uses this for others best, many on others misfortune, all due to their own ethical principles and interests. They chose a destructive career if the charisma is combined with a strong need for self-assertion and a psychopathic character. Both these things seem to be true for your therapist. And unfortunately not only for him.

Of course there are serious therapists who now as earlier carefully are revealing the sore points and by this make integration possible for their clients.

But there are more and more charlatans trying to earn money on regression. But the initial euphoria from the wizard’s apprentices seldom remains a longer time. With time troublesome transferences and co-transferences occur, which the self-proclaimed therapist has never learned to deal with.

Then he can rule over his clients with the help of indoctrination and manipulation, which can be successful for a while, and the sexual exploitation can help him to sweep undesired crisis’s and serious distress-situations under the rug.

What you have learned through your personal experiences I have learned through books and from my work with defectors from sects. Our conclusions seem to be pretty alike. We will probably have much to say about this when we meet. I am so glad for that and am looking forward to it.

I wish you all the best, Helga, enjoy the freedom you have fought (and struggled) yourself to.

Helga – part 4…

Michelle to Helga:

What you have told me made me very thoughtful. I have become aware of that we often stop at the economic sucking out, and easily get upset about this. Because this form of sucking out is easy to prove. But what you are describing goes much further.

You have looked into the question what this exploitation has meant in your emotional life and in this (entirely) personal way you have come across something that probably is true for many survivors and children: the humiliation and depreciation, which often led the child to overlook its own value later, that she simply can’t perceive it.

This leads to that this grown up human being tries to get the value she (I write she in this whole text, but she can also be a he) thinks she is lacking, either at the expense of her fellow human being or through achievements, which she increases more and more, because she can’t appreciate her own value. Why one chooses the destructive solution and the other the self-destructive I don’t know.

But first through accepting the fact that we have been victims we get the opportunity to leave the play between victim and perpetrator and abandon both roles.

If your therapist had been capable of understanding what he did and been capable of admitting this to his victims, the path to a new life would have laid open for him too. But his complicated relationships with his victims seem to have a very long history, and already through the slightest acknowledgment he would probably risk a storm of accusations from people who suddenly got permission to see him through. One can understand that he doesn’t take that risk.

Consequently he will continue his geschäft and try to ‘psychiatrize’ his critics, and maybe he will even increase his economic successes, so long as the need for gurus remains.

And this need will probably remain, because there are so many human beings whom have never experienced love and therefore are lacking the ability to see their gurus through.

That you could do this was maybe because you had experienced love from your aunt (father’s sister) and your father after all. Human beings whom lacked every form of warmth in their childhoods are probably lacking all possibilities to get this sort of insights as you have made.

Your spiritual suffering made you seek contact with an extortionist, but there was something in your prehistory which maybe also gave you the chance to liberate yourself at last. There are probably many who didn’t’ get that chance in their childhoods. These can hardly liberate themselves from the sect’s claws just like that.

Your story also strengthens me in my conviction in the priceless value for a therapy-damaged person to know a person who can confirm her perceptions.

This helps her to get over the worst. If this occurs in therapy, among friends or at a counseling-bureau doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that one gets the opportunity to openly tell someone who is capable of listening to what has happened to one, and that one isn’t encouraged (or forced) to seek the causes to the disturbance(s) only in ones relation to ones parents. Because it is only here and know one can sort the situation out and clear the situation up.

A child can’t do this.
...

Helga – part 3…

Helga replied that she had needed those six months to get more clarity. Now she thought she had come so far so she would have written to Michelle on her own, without being reminded.

“When you went to Peru it was as if you had died. You probably think this sounds strange, because of course you were reachable, I could have written. I could have replied to your loving letters to keep our contact going. But I couldn’t.

Even if I wrote kind letters to you I experienced myself as cut off from you for ever. For a long time I couldn’t understand this.

It was not until we met half a year ago I found the key which had been missing during the whole long therapy.

First it was Brigit who found it strange that I hardly knew anything about you. She wanted to know how it was when you left ten years ago. I didn’t remember. This surprised me. She said:

“How strange! Your best friend goes so far away, and you have no memory of your farewell? Did you feel abandoned then, after her departure?”

“No,”

I answered,

“I didn’t feel anything at all.”

I said these words calmly, surprised myself over my equanimity. But I discovered that I in some sense felt defiant, as a hurt child who isn’t possible to speak to.

"How come?"

I wondered.

"Brigit is kind; there is no need to react like that to her. She wants to help me. There is no reason for me to reject her."

At this simple truth my defiance broke down, I don’t know why it came then, but I started to cry. Now I suddenly felt the pain in being abandoned (the pain I had refused to feel and had held from myself when you left and with it memories of the whole event). At last I understood how motivated this was.”

When Helga was four her father had died. She was left with her mother, whom had a lot of problems herself and was incapable of giving Helga any security. A mother who strictly controlled her and at the same time clung firmly to her, because she needed someone and there was noone else but Helga. Helga had to take care of and fill her mothers needs and think of her.

It was impossible for Helga to feel or show her sorrow and despair over the loss of her father in her mother’s presence. Her mother first and foremost expected self-restraint from Helga and a good manner, but no expressions of emotions (but, once again, self-control!!!), not least as she was jealous to Helga’s love to her father.

Helga had to cleverly accept that her father was gone, i.e. silently and without emotions “accept” it.

Helga experienced Michelle’s departure in the same way. She couldn’t cry, as if somebody had forbidden it, and in a way she metaphorically "buried" Michelle.

Michelle’s mother had used all opportunities to teach Helga good manners. And maybe Helga thought that if she behaved well her father would return? Helga got used to not posing questions, this was forbidden (she had to figure things out on her own? And as good as she could on her own?).

After Michelle had left Helga met a man, but when she got pregnant this man left her, because he didn’t want the child. Helga had to handle all this. But her inner tension showed in difficulties to sleep. She started to take sleeping pills, and had to take stronger and stronger dozes till she realized that she had to do something about it. And thus the therapy.

But this therapy left her in the same childish state of helplessness and dependency, and the powerless anger which this led to, and she didn’t know how she should be able to change the state of affairs. She didn’t succeed in getting any use at all of all her crying. This state lasted for several years. And it was only the therapist who (greatly) benefited on this.

This man profited on Helga’s constant crying and idealized transference, instead of settling it, and Helga couldn’t break the vicious circle. She had got stuck at the same level as the little girl, who can’t understand what is done to her.

The therapist systematically depreciated all people whom stood her near, even Michelle and her co-workers and cousins, so at last she had noone else but him.

Helga thought the therapist only had figured out how he could intensify people’s childish needs, which aren’t possible to fulfill any more, till they were unendurable, to mitigate them with promises about cure. To reach this cure people are prepared to let themselves be exploited in different ways; economically, emotionally and sexually.

But this affair was so good that he probably saw no need to help her even if he had had those prerequisites, which he hadn’t.

The sexual violation often plays a special role. The women’s humiliation and the alleged intimacy shall prevent them from seeing the one through who is using them.

Helga thought that the sexual relation had given her an illusion of love, and as her therapist stayed alive she could tolerate his infidelity. What she had feared the most was her father’s death, because this had meant that she was handed out to her mother’s universally prevailing power.

But what she to whatever prize had tried to avoid occurred. She had become limitlessly dependent on a person who made her believe that he wanted and could help her, and who without hesitation or doubts wanted to drive her into a psychosis, only for to cover up what he himself had done.

Already with her mother Helga had experienced being talked away from her observations and thus made deeply insecure on her senses; on what she saw, heard, sensed (see Mellody on excessive control of reality or överdriven kontroll av verkligheten). She was so used to this that she had no chance of becoming aware that her therapist did the same thing to her once again. But much more consciously and skilfully.

It wasn’t until she met Brigit that she understood why she had let herself be blended for such a long time by this human being. And been able doing this with Brigit’s help in only six months.

He even succeeded in making her believe in his healing powers by showing her written “proofs”; letters from “healed”, which much later showed to be falsified. Emotionally she had got stuck as the small daughter in this relation, a daughter bravely enduring with her mother in the hope that she should “deserve” her father's return.

She had met with a man who had specialized in exploiting his patients’ special distresses as much as possible for his own aims

What gave him so much power over Helga were her early denied sorrow and the defence against the helplessness she had felt then. He now awoke this in the grown up woman, added fuel to it and exploited it.

When Helga met Michelle again then, six months ago, she wasn’t capable of telling her all she now had told her. It was the return of Michelle that helped her getting access to her history.