165 Quotes by Alice Miller

What is addiction really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood. The drug business would not nourish if there were not so many people who, in refusing to acknowledge their wounds, are in a permanent state of self-betrayal. Thus, people work to get rid of symptoms instead of searching out the cause.

If we do not work on all three levels – body, feeling, mind – the symptoms of our distress will keep returning, as the body goes on repeating the story stored in its cells until it is finally listened to and understood.

Unless the heir casts off his “inheritance” by becoming fully conscious of his true past, and thus of his true nature, loneliness in the parental home will necessarily be followed by an adulthood lived in emotional isolation.

That probably greatest of narcissistic wounds – not to have been loved just as one truly was – cannot heal without the work of mourning.

A system of morality tells us what to do and what not to do, but it cannot tell us what we should feel. Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated.

It is precisely because a child’s feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.

Is it possible, then, to free ourselves altogether from illusions? History demonstrates that they sneak in everywhere, that every life is full of them – perhaps because the truth often seems unbearable to us. And yet the truth is so essential that its loss exacts a heavy toll, in the form of grave illness. In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If.

Every patient clings to fantasies in which he sees himself in the active role so as to escape the pain of being defenseless and helpless. To achieve this he will accept guilt feelings, although they bind him to neurosis.

Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated.