“In the foreword Käbi Laretei gives a brief afterward perspective (where she with touching empathy tells about a couple of visits 2007 to the dying Ingmar Bergman).
As to the rest this fragmentary but nevertheless suggestive book is based on chronologically lined up letters between the lovers, and some extracts from a diary Käbi Laretei seems to have written in secrecy (reminding about Ingmar Bergman's mother, who also wrote a diary in secrecy about her problems living together with the strict father).
Käbi Laretei stands out as a clear-sighted and reflecting human being, where the difficulties combining art (piano-playing) and married life in many respects resemble Ingmar Bergman's.
Even though those two artist natures immediately are drawn to each other and feel a deep attraction and kinship, one have a feeling already early – in both parts – more or less articulated trials to protect oneself from a too complete association (or fusion) with the other.
The marital troubles are there built-in from the first moment. More and more it stands out that Käbi and Ingmar are engulfed by each other – as if they paradoxically enough were suffocated by the love they both are longing for.
Time and again light is shed upon how Ingmar Bergman both is longing for and avoiding nearness.
Käbi Laretei writes motherly in one of her letters: 'My little son, have confidence, assurance (??), patience – you have it in your art, also have it in love.' Ingmar Bergman replies with describing his demons and his struggle to get rid of them.”
Käbi Laretei was my piano-teacher for four years in all... She stimulated my intellectual interests (whether you notice it or not). Käbi mentions Alice Miller in one of her books!!! I wonder if her son with Bergman, Daniel, introduced Miller to her??
Struck me about disturbed contact with signals about hunger, in both directions so to say... A person in the nearest family said she could go a whole day without thinking she ought to eat something.
My thoughts: Either you discover late in the day that you haven't eaten, or you don't feel the signals telling you that you have eaten enough and you overeat.
Meaning that you can be insensitive to signals in both directions so to say! You adopt either one of these “attitudes.”
I think this has to do with things that probably dates back to very early in childhood connected to eating. Traumas around eating the maybe VERY small baby was exposed to and maybe also connected to experiences adding up to these earliest experiences later in childhood and further when you grew up.
But people don't have to be doomed because of these things, so long as the surrounding later doesn't deny the roots to those problems (and moralize over it) and the person in question gets help processing and not deny the problem and its possible roots...
Anna-Luise Kirkengen has written about what sexual abuse can lead to in this respect, if I remember right (I haven't her books here now).
And I think forcing a spoon (or other "things") into a baby's mouth can cause troubles later for that child (things we don't/can't connect to early experiences like these, because we can't imagine such things could occur, and definitely not occur from people who ought to love the small baby most of all).Maybe such things occur more often than we believe???
So moralizing over peoples' troubles with eating and how they look is - what? Contempt for weakness! Unemphatic. Conditional love if it comes from a parent towards a child (honestly lack of love actually!!!!). Maybe even added abuse??
Some have so limitless and bottomless needs because of early bad treatment and disrespect from their early caregivers (when it comes to a child's rightful and legitimate needs of deep respect for its feelings, its body, its boundaries, its integrity and good will and wish to love and become loved). And these losses can in some result in that they can never get enough of money, power etc. ( not getting those early needs filled is so painful for a child so it has to suppress its natural reaction to those things, and the later adult try to fill these needs in ways that harm themselves and other people, more the more power they have or get, so long as the person in question is in no or little contact with these things).
And other people who were treated badly early in their lives think they aren't worth a penny, not even worth a decent living maybe (they have to earn their whole living and right to exist in this world they can come to believe. And they can continue striving and struggling for this their whole life. If they should come to live on the street they would maybe think they don't deserve anything better).
The results of bad treatment are different in different people, probably depending on many different factors; on what sort of defense/s you (authomatically) used as a child, what role you were allotted by your caregivers etc. etc.
A child reflects the respect she or he got as a child. In respect or disrespect for her/himself and in her/his respect or disrespect for other people. I think. In if she/he thinks she/he is good enough as she/he is.
But a child doesn't chose defenses. Was it forced to adopt a certain role and thus certain defenses, attitudes?
And some people are stuck in denial and will never admit to what they have been through, and those persons are the most dangerous for other people? Those are the really dangerous people in this world?
And other people live in such conditions and circumstances so they are forced to do something, to process, or to founder. They have no other choice.
How do we see this in the society, what are the visble effects of this?
For instance that some never doubt that they have the rights to for instance their huge wages and an enormous power... And other people don't believe they deserve hardly anything. Are maybe even keeping silent of shame and don't raise their voices at all or ever.
We will probably never succeed in trying to enlighten the ones that never would doubt their rights.
Can we convince the ones under-valuating themselves either really? With this not said we shouldn't try!?
Can we continue calling state of affairs in the world in question? Both on a societal and a familial level (and a global)?AND point to the underlying factors, not least those earliest in life!??
And try to process our own experiences both as a child and as a later adult?
Probably an enormous struggle for many of us, and probably extremely painful. Many of us will probably only slightly touch upon the pain that our early caregivers' treatment and behavior caused.
Professionals ought to point at what maltreatment cause, and what maltreatment actually is! So we rather prevent it. Because it is so difficult to come to terms with later. Difficult, but possible with a lot of struggles. And some will only slightly recover. Some not at all, because they became so badly treated so they can't face the truth.
But it is as Miller says; if professionals should start doing this it would be to blame parents. And they are “afraid” of doing this, even because of personal reasons (standing up against their own parents and questioning what THEY did)? They are not only protecting parents in general, but not least their own parents? Or they are afraid of their own parents so they don't dare talking publicly about this, in a plain talk about those things.
They are so afraid for (the) punishment from their parents if they should dare to raise their voices, afraid even if those parents should happen to be dead and not actually capable of punishing them. Yes, we are all so afraid of our parents, to some degree!!?? Some very afraid and some not so much. But so many of us are that those topics are still so taboo to talk about!!!!???
Professionals ought to know this, they who are working with those (most) damaged poeople!!! And stop talking about that "each generation has to reclaim their own" (what? Life?).
Quickly: struck me when I spoke with my boyfriend (who is a child advocate). Why aren't the champions against abortions fighting with the same spirit, time and energy against child abuse???
Why aren't they fighting for the children THAT ARE ACTUALLY BORN and thus living among us, and against how they are treated, for better treatment of them (even when it comes to subtle maltreatment)? Why aren't they fighting for children's rights in all???
In the society I am living in this isn't a big topic (why? But that's another posting maybe). I just started to wonder.
And, quietly, I think this with anti-abortion campaigns is quite hypocritical...
By the way: why do women become unintentionally pregnant? Why are they living promiscuously? Why do those women become pregnant who aren't promiscuous? Can it be because of earlier child abuse in their life-history?
390 people in occupational groups (???) working with the youngest of us got the brutal reality presented for them during an eight hour long day. For many it was a tough awakening. Many times the audience was exhorted to look at the horror awakening pictures that rolled over the big viewing screen (they had to avert their gazes from what they saw? Didn't manage to look at it?).
When two doctors for forensic medicine showed pictures of abused children's corpses with big head and fracture damages one person fainted. A physician were sent for and they had to make a break in the program (also read here about Forensic medicine).
Many occupational groups need a massive awakening according to the Norwegian Children's Ombudsman Reidar Hjermann (also see here about him, those links are in Norwegian though). Not least family doctors need this.
At the same time he eulogized the big awakening among Norwegian dentists. They can capture children who have problems with having things in their mouth.
A dentist, specialist on pedodontics, came with powerful descriptions of how children have been victims for oral sexual abuse.
She said that 2006 35,000 Norwegian children didn't meet up to their appointments with their dentists, and only 7,000 gave an explanation.
“It's so important that we care!”
was her clear message.
“Do we dare to see when we see?”
was the, or a, background motto to this day.
Sigrun writes:
“It is this method occupational people ought to become exposed to too I have thought for many years.
I said to a psychologist I visited [as a client], that the ones treating [my addition and interpretation: psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists etc.] ought to become tied up to the chair and forced to look at child abuse on film.
Then they would maybe stop offending patients with
'It's not about how you have it, but about how you take it',
'All parents make their best',
'It's never too late to get a good childhood',
'It's only the vulnerable children that don't stand violence'
And maybe they would start to listen to clients telling them about abuse that never was visible too (humiliation, neglect, emotional and psychological abuse etc.)!? Listen to clients when they maybe after a long time start to recall and/or dare to tell about things.
Addition May 30: First the committee asked Astrid Lindgren not to hold the speech below, just recieve the prize at the prize ceremony. But then Astrid Lindgren said she wouldn't come at all. The committee changed its mind and Lindgren held her speech. Links to the speech in Swedish and German are at the bottom of this posting.
What I must do first is thank you, and this I do with all my heart. The German Booksellers' Peace Prize has such a luster around it and is such a great honor to receive that one almost totters when it is put into one's hands. And now I stand here, where so many wise men and women have stood during the years, putting their thoughts and hopes forth about the future of humanity and about the eternal peace that we all are longing for. What can I say that hasn't been said already in a better way than I can?
To talk about peace is to talk about something that doesn't exist. Real peace does not exist on our earth and has never existed other than as a goal that we evidently cannot reach. So long as humanity has lived on this orb it has dedicated itself to violence and war, and the fragile peace as it now exists is constantly threatened. At this moment the whole world is living in fear of a new war, a war that will destroy us all. At the prospect of this threat more people than ever are working for peace and disarmament—that is true. This could be a hope. But it is difficult to be hopeful. The politicians gather in large crowds at top-level meetings and talk so warmly for disarmament, but the only disarmament they desire is that of someone other than themselves. “Your land shall disarm, not mine!” No one wants to start with oneself—no one dares to start—because all are so afraid and have so little confidence in other's will to work toward peace. And while one disarmament conference replaces another, the most insane rearmament in humanity's history takes place. It is not strange that we are all afraid. Either we live in the East, North or South; either we live in a great and powerful country or a small, neutral one. But we know that a big new war would hit the whole of humanity, and whether it is in a neutral or not neutral heap of ruins that I lie dead can make no big difference.
Mustn't we, after all those thousands of years of constant wars, ask ourselves if it is because of some kind of construction fault in the whole species of man that we always take up violence? And ask if we are doomed to come to our end for our aggression's sake? We all want peace. Isn't there a possibility then that we can change before it is too late? That we can learn to dissociate ourselves from violence? Simply try to become a new strain of human beings? But how should that come about? And where should we, in that case, start?
I think we have to start from the foundation. With the children. You have given an author of children's books a peace prize; you must not expect any big political views or suggestions for international solutions to the problems. I want to talk about the children, my worries for them and my expectations for them. Those who are children now shall take over the handling of the world, if there is anything left of it. They shall decide between war and peace and what sort of society they shall have; if they prefer one in which violence continues to escalate or one in which human beings live in peace and community with each other.
Is there on the whole any hope that they shall be able to create a more peaceful world than what we have succeeded with? Why havewe failed so badly in spite of all good will? I recall what a shock it was for me when, still very young, I suddenly realized that those who governed countries and the world's destiny were no Gods with a superior outfit or clear, divine sight. They were human beings with the same weaknesses as I. But they had power, and they could in each moment come to the most ill-fated decisions by the impulses that ruled them. If things were against us, it could be war because of one single human being's desire for power or revenge or vanity or triumph or—what seemed to be the most common—blind faith in violence as the most efficient aid in all situations. And in the same way, one single good human being filled with consideration could ward off catastrophes, just through being good and filled with consideration and through repudiating violence.
Goethe has said “Überall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt”, and then it must be true. A child that is lovingly met and who loves its parents learns a loving attitude to its surrounding world, and keeps this basic attitude throughout life. Which is good, even if he or she comes to belong to those deciding the world's destiny. And should, contrary to expectation, he or she happen to become one of those deciding the world's destiny, that's good luck for us all—if their basic attitude is love and not violence. Future statesmen and politicians are formed in their character before they are even five years old—that's horrible but it is true.
Many parents are worried by those new signals and have begun to wonder if perhaps they have done wrong. Is an anti-authoritarian upbringing something objectionable? It is only if it becomes misunderstood.
An anti-authoritarian upbringing doesn't mean that children shall be left to care for themselves or to do precisely what they want. It doesn't mean they shall grow up without norms, by the way, or that they will reject them. Both children and adults need norms for conduct, and children learn more from their parents' example than from anything else. Of course a child shall have respect for its parents, but indeed—parents shall also have respect for their children and not abuse their natural advantage over them. A mutual, loving respect—that one wishes for both parents and for all children.
And for all those who are now screaming so eagerly for harder grips and tighter reins, I would want to tell you what an old lady once told me. She was a young mother when the common belief was “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. She hadn't been fully convinced of it, but at one time her little boy had done something, so she decided he “needed” a spanking—the first of his life. She said to him that he had to go out and find a birch for her. The little boy left and was out for a long time. At last he came back, crying, and said:”I didn't find any birch but here you have a stone you can throw on me.” Then she too began to cry, because suddenly she saw everything with the child's eyes. The child had thought “If my mother in fact wants to hurt me, then she can as well use a stone.” She put her arms around him and they cried together for a while. And then she put the stone on a shelf in the kitchen, and there it laid as an eternal reminder of the promise she gave herself at that moment: “Never violence!”
Well, if we now raise our children without violence or tight reins of any kind, do we then get a new human species living in eternal peace? Only a child book author can hope something so silly. I know it is an utopia. And of course there is so much else in our poor, sick world that has to be changed so that there can be peace. But we have, in the here and now—even without war—so incomprehensibly much cruelty and violence on earth. The children are indeed aware of it. They see and hear and read about it daily, and must think violence is a natural state. Mustn't we, at least in our homes and through our own examples show that there are other ways of living? Maybe it would be a good idea if we were to put a stone on the kitchen shelf as a reminder for children and ourselves: Never violence! It would yet maybe at last be a small contribution to the peace of the world.
just got this cartoon from a friend, click to make it larger.
Quite tiredly, thinking loudly: Something that has been spoken about for the last fifteen years here is “To put the student in the center.” At the same time we teachers shall compete in ways we didn't earlier (or have I forgotten how it actually was earlier, am I idealizing earlier times? But this doesn't mean I want old times back either, because it was probably other things then I don't want back now).
Fifteen years ago individual salary was introduced here too. And there are probably other similar things that was introduced then...
We are played out against each other. And many were skeptical to this and still are, thought many would become ass-kissers.
I thought the idea behind this was quite insolent too; as if we hadn't done a good job earlier and put a lot of efforts on doing a good job!
How many teachers try to prove how great they are through their students (even more than before)?
These wonders make me think further: to prove they/we are worth, love for instance? The (unconditional) love we didn't get as kids?
To prove our worth through students, in a similar manner as parents use their kids as outer signboards? Fulfilling the parents needs...
So are the students put in the center or are things done for their best?? Yes, for whose best are things actually done?
Has it become more fun working than it was before?
No, I would say.
Team work is a new model too. But do we work better together today than we did? For a good cause?
When I returned from the last vacation I also thought that
Even in today's world we need to cooperate! We are dependent on each other, in similar, the same or different ways as earlier times' people. We are both strong and fragile, no matter if we are rich or poor.
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
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Crisis
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I suppose some people might wonder why I'm not completely hysterical. Why
would I be hysterical? The building where I've lived for 22 years is
scheduled fo...
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Pharmaceutical marketing expert witness [image: screen2largeMM]
Dr. Peter Rost is a former Pfizer Marketing Vice President providing
services as a marketi...
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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