'Families, freedom and virtue – the theory.'

'Dopamine, which is released during the stress response, stimulates areas of the prefrontal cortex, probably resulting in heightened attention and improved cognitive capacity. Chronic stress, however, appears to cause an overproduction of dopamine, which can result in reduced attention, increased overall vigilance, as well as a diminished capacity to learn new material and increased paranoid and psychotic behavior.'

'Parents generally teach their children about "stranger danger" from an early age, telling them not to talk to, walk with or take gifts or candy from strangers. But statistics show danger often lurks closer to home. According to numbers provided by the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, the vast majority of children who are sexually abused are abused by someone they know -- most often a family member, an adult the family trusts or, in some instances, another child.' [http://tinyurl.com/bwxcnok: 90 percent of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68 percent are abused by family members.] -- Who watches the watch-wo/men?

'"The shadow," wrote Jung (1963), is "that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious" (cited in Diamond, p. 96). The shadow is a primordial part of our human inheritance, which, try as we might, can never be eluded. The pervasive Freudian defense mechanism known as projection is how most people deny their shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in oneself. Such projection of the shadow is engaged in not only by individuals but groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, and commonly occurs during wars and other contentious conflicts in which the outsider, enemy or adversary is made a scapegoat, dehumanized, and demonized. Two World Wars and the current escalation of violence testify to the terrible truth of this collective phenomenon. Since the turn of the twenty-first century we are witnessing a menacing resurgence of epidemic demonization or collective psychosis in the seemingly inevitable violent global collision between radical Islam and Judeo-Christian or secular western culture, each side projecting its collective shadow and perceiving the other as evil incarnate.'

"Men are a problem, men are useful, men are the enemy, men are rapists, men are killers, men are violent, men serve no good purpose, men are oppressors, men are inconvenient, men are annoying, men are privileged, men are scum, men are unemotional, men are too aggressive, men are exploitative..." -- Men are raised by women.

"...there is a strong social condemnation of men standing up for themselves, they're supposed to stand up for other people, but not for themselves..." "...there is no socially or instinctively ingrained taboo against attacking men, there never has been. In fact, the absorption of violence and hostility is a man's natural place in the scheme of things. These perceptions are what lead people to try to justify a woman beating a man in public by assuming he must have done something to deserve it. Men are dangerous, women are harmless. Men are the appropriate targets of violence and men act while women are acted upon. So when feminism fights for women – even when its representatives are actively attacking and doing harm to men in order to do that – most people see those attacks as harmless and reactive rather than active, attacks aimed at a group whose natural role is to absorb them. It's the desperate desires that exists in most of us [who were raised by abusive mothers, girls and boys both] to recharacterize all female action – especially hostility and violence – as reactive, that left society wide open to the snake oil of patriarchy theory..." -- Sugar and spice and all things nice!

'Why are borderlines attracted to broken men? To alcoholics? To rageful narcissists? Affect. "I never know what mood he'll be in." The range, the energy means you are connected. No abandonment is conceivable if the guy is beating you. "But he cheats on her as well!" He'll be back. Right? This is set up in childhood 100% of the time. The kid learns what works, learns what gets him the affect he needs. If the parents are loving all the time not much "work" is necessary. But if Dad is distant, or interested in chasing skirts (such daughters grow up trying to look like the kind of girl Dad is attracted to), or mom's always drunk, then "work" happens, and the kid starts to try new ways of getting the affect, and unfortunately the easiest way to get sucky parents to give you affect is to enrage them. That works awesomely. The best is when the parent beats you mercilessly, and then does a 180 and apologizes profusely, hugs you, buys you gifts, "oh, baby, I am so sorry I did that, Daddy was just upset..." Nothing in life will ever match up to that, except maybe a boyfriend who does that. Remember: the goal of this strategy is not happiness, it is avoiding abandonment.'

'How does addiction change the brain? According to Dr. Gabor Mate, it's a difficult struggle for hard core drug addicts to kick their habit because their brains are impaired. In a new book, he looks at the common roots of addictive behaviours and what can be done about them. It's called "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction".' -- "Drugs are not addictive to a person not predisposed to become addicted. Predisposition is set according to early stress. ...most substance abusers were themselves abused as children. Early experiences powerfully shape the brain, plus they create the lifelong emotional pain that the drug then comes along to soothe. The trauma is passed on from one generation to the next because the parenting styles are inherited – not genetically – but biologically, and behaviorally, and psychologically, from one generation to the next. If we want people to make the choice to give up their addiction, we first of all have to de-stress them. When people's cortisol levels are high they're much more likely to use the drug to try to soothe their stresses. We're talking about people who were emotionally traumatized and have a deep sense of shame about their very existence."

'It became evident that traumatic life experiences during childhood and adolescence were far more common in an obese population than was comfortably recognized. We slowly discovered that major weight loss is often sexually or physically threatening and that obesity, whatever its health risks, is protective emotionally. Ultimately, we saw that certain of our more intractable public health problems such as obesity are often also unconsciously attempted solutions to problems dating back to the earliest years but hidden by time, by shame, by secrecy, and by social taboos against exploring certain areas of life experience. -- Putting it plainly in regard to obesity, we have seen that obesity is not the core problem. Obesity is the marker for the problem and sometimes is a solution. This is a profoundly important realization because none of us expects to cure a problem by treating its symptom. -- The general principles underlying the unconscious, compulsive use of food as a psychoactive agent are common to any of the addictions. Whether we are talking about the next mouthful, the next drink, the next cigarette, the next sexual partner, or the next dose of whatever psychoactive chemical we might buy on the street, the concept is equally applicable: It’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.'

'In the first functional MRI brain scan study to investigate the impact of physical abuse and domestic violence on children, scientists at UCL in collaboration with the Anna Freud Centre, found that exposure to family violence was associated with increased brain activity in two specific brain areas (the anterior insula and the amygdala) when children viewed pictures of angry faces. Previous fMRI studies that scanned the brains of soldiers exposed to violent combat situations have shown the same pattern of heightened activation in these two areas of the brain, which are associated with threat detection. The authors suggest that both maltreated children and soldiers may have adapted to be ‘hyper-aware’ of danger in their environment. Dr McCrory said: “Even though we know that maltreatment represents one of the most potent environmental risk factors associated with anxiety and depression, relatively little is known how such adversity ‘gets under the skin’ and increases a child’s later vulnerability.”' -- Repetition Compulsion

'A radical theory about the origins, power and popularity of Harry Potter versus Star Wars versus Lord of the Rings.' -- "If you cannot leave an abusive relationship – or you will not leave an abusive relationship – you will leave reality."

"The great danger to society is not that children don't listen to society, the great danger is that they do."

'The shocking science about the long-term effects of corporal punishment, essential viewing for every parent.' -- "Changing from how you were parented to how you are parenting is one of the most difficult – and essential – things in the world."

'Childhood maltreatment, it is thought, causes changes to the brain, immune system and some hormone glands - some of which are still present in adulthood. One possible mechanism is what is known as epigenetic changes to the DNA. While there is no change in the genetic code, the environment can alter the way genes are expressed. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said: "It may seem obvious that traumatic events in our lives can make us depressed, but this study highlights how particularly damaging such traumas can be when experienced during childhood, when our brains are still developing. "We should all be concerned at how abuse and neglect creates a painful legacy that can last a lifetime, increasing our chances of experiencing repeated episodes of depression and reducing the effects of those treatments that are available to us. "Yet we should not lose hope. Research such as this can point the way to better treatments and preventative measures."'

"What I do think we should be thinking is, at our loss and at our peril do we just perceive this situation as simply large numbers of kids simply being morally flawed. I think that explanation falls short. If there is such a thing called childhood then surely adults should be taking responsibility for it. -- It’s not just about poverty, actually. I completely agree and there are lots of people out there that will tell you that they’ve been to Oxford and Cambridge and university and succeeded, and they came from poor backgrounds. I’m not talking about material poverty alone. You can just about survive material poverty if you have some kind of an emotional care around you. But these children have a double-whammy damage. Their carers are disturbed and dysfunctional, addicted to substances often – and they live in the ghettos of Britain where civil society doesn’t offer them a way out." -- Interview MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/?bdgmdceo1dtdxvz

'Are opportunities available to everyone in today's society?' -- "...is that an individual who simply made a bad choice?"

'Most books and articles ... begin with the belief that wars are for utilitarian purposes, “to get something.” They may admit that wars are “anything but rational,” but explain the causes of wars by saying they occur “when hardliners dominate their leadership”—never asking why only periodically do these hardliners come to power, promising that they “will not discuss individual factors of human nature” and consider the minds of nations starting wars as “black boxes.” But no modern war has been shown to have been started because of greed, and none have in fact been profitable for nations starting them if the full cost of maintaining the military and of loss of productive life are considered. Even maintaining the British Empire was actually an economic loss. Wars are pathological moral crusades against “evil,” revenge group-fantasies, designed to “get respect” for oneself and make up for the disrespect and abuse of their early years.'

'Shrugging off the burdens of your history...' -- "Our tendency when we're abused is to look at it as though it's personal: *I* was abused. But the fundamental thing about abuse is that it is anti-empathetic. You cannot abuse someone that you are empathizing with. ...abuse is never, ever, personal. It has nothing to do with *us* as individuals. Once we detach the personal from [abuse] there's a certain amount of relief because what we're describing is an unhappy accident. [Personalization] is what children cling to because if it's not personal then we're completely invisible – and children can't psychologically survive that. ...it seems like a universal survival tactic of children is to take it personally; it's the only way to create a bond when you're being [abused]. The defense mechanism that kicks in is: if I can take it personally, I can pretend to have control. We take it personally as a way of avoiding hopelessness, helplessness and catastrophic depression... "

'...people first become hypervigilant and paranoid as catacholamine imbalances and serotonin depletion lead them to expect attack, then engage in sacrificial restaging rituals that are usually both sadistic – inflicting the trauma upon others – and masochistic – destroying your own wealth and even sacrificing your own lives. The result is a feeling of relief that we have survived the apocalypse in our heads plus a feeling of triumph produced by the manic opioid surge. Thus our early traumas become wired into separate emotional memory module and become projected onto the historical stage in such a manner that they appear to be happening to the group rather than being internal, creating group-fantasies so intense and compelling that they take on a life of their own, a life that is imagined as happening in a dissociated sphere called "society." These group-fantasies are dissociated and seem to have a life of their own, a life we term "social" or "political" or "religious."'

'...the history of humanity is founded upon the abuse of children. Most historical families once practiced infanticide, erotic beating and incest. Most states sacrificed and mutilated their children to relieve the guilt of adults. Even today, we continue to arrange the daily killing, maiming, molestation and starvation of children through our social, military and economic activities. I would like to summarize here some of the evidence I have found as to why child abuse has been humanity's most powerful and most successful ritual, why it has been the cause of war and social violence, and why the eradication of child abuse and neglect is the most important social task we face today. -- The main psychological mechanism that operates in all child abuse involves using children as what I have termed poison containers – receptacles into which adults project disowned parts of their psyches, so they can control these feelings in another body without danger to themselves.'

'...the human brain at birth is not fully developed. The abilities a person's brain develops depend on experiences in the first three years of life. Studies on abandoned and severely mistreated Romanian children revealed striking lesions in certain areas of the brain and marked emotional and cognitive insufficiencies in later life. According to very recent neurobiological findings, repeated traumatization leads to an increased release of stress hormones that attack the sensitive tissue of the brain and destroy existing neurons. Other studies of mistreated children have revealed that the areas of the brain responsible for the "management" of emotions are 20 to 30 percent smaller than in normal persons. In the absence of positive factors, affection and helping witnesses, the only course open to the mistreated individual is the disavowal of personal suffering and the idealization of cruelty with all its devastating after-effects.'

'Why does a 13-year old with a three-minute, basically homemade, song get so much attention? Perhaps, the amount of attention paid to her is inverse to how fearful people are about commenting on significant issues facing their lives. We would suggest what is going on is what Sigmund Freud called "displacement." People are angry at how their lives are turning out, worried about their futures and generally feel helpless and increasingly furious because of the collapsing economy. No one is going to get into trouble for criticizing Justin Bieber, even harshly. But make the wrong comment in the wrong chat room about, say, Barack Obama and the police may show up at your door. So much attention and vituperation. Western society is in decline. People are well aware – deep down anyway – what's going on. But because of society's larger sickness, their anger and frustration is being channeled into unusual venues and finds its expression in places where it might not be expected.'

'Repressed fear ... is the fear a very small child has of its parents. They pay for such self-betrayal with depression, suicide, or severe illnesses leading to an early death. The assumption I proceed from is this: for most people the idea that they were not loved by their parents is unbearable. The more evidence there is for this deprivation, the more strongly these people cling to the illusion of having been loved. They also cling to their feelings of guilt, which provide misleading confirmation that if their parents did not treat them lovingly then it was all their own fault, the fault of their mistakes and failings. Depression is the body's rebellion against this lie. Many people would prefer to die (either literally or symbolically by killing off their feelings), rather than experience the helplessness of the little child exploited by the parents for their own ambitions or used as a projection screen for their pent-up feelings of hatred.'

'Most of us were mistreated as children and had to learn to deny this fact at a very early stage in order to survive. We were forced to believe that we were humiliated and tormented "for our own good," that the beatings we received did not hurt and were harmless, that such treatment served to protect the community (as otherwise we would have turned into dangerous monsters). ...most people are not prepared to question and abandon preconceptions of this kind. Instead they chant this perverse litany: "My parents did their best to bring me up properly, I was a difficult child, and I needed strict discipline." Obviously, people who have been brought up to believe this cannot conceivably feel indignation about cruelty to children. Since their own childhood, they have been dissociated from their true feelings, from the pain caused by humiliation and torment. To feel their indignation they would need to get back in touch with that childhood pain. And who will want to do that?'

'...in contrast to our conscious mind our body cannot be deceived by intellectual arguments. It is the guardian of our truth because it carries within the experiences of our whole life and makes sure that we can live with the truth of our organism. With the help of symptoms it forces us to acknowledge this truth, not only emotionally but also mentally, to provide that we can live in harmony with our "inner child", once disrespected and humiliated. A child has no other choice than to idealize and to love his persecutors, to hope they will eventually change and to cling to them, because there is nobody else. Especially the most seriously abused children cling a lifetime to their parents if they have not experienced a successful therapy. The adult however, whose health is suffering as a consequence of the early mistreatment, does have the choice. Even if our parents should change, nothing can heal the early trauma unless WE have changed. Our symptoms are the child's unheard language.'

'Blindness makes it possible to survive. This is the way that the abuse of children has functioned since time immemorial. Blindness and forgiveness are essential to survival. But at the same time they lead to repetition and do harm to innocent people. To break through this vicious circle we need to understand that love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And when it requires new victims, it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse. If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness. I no longer need to reenact what happened to me with the help of innocent people because now I KNOW what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.'

'What kind of person would I be if I could not react, temporarily at least, to injustice, presumption, evil, or arrogant idiocy with feelings of anger or rage? Would that not be an amputation of my emotional life? ...I should have access to ALL my feelings for the rest of my life, as well as conscious access to my own history as an explanation for the intensity of my responses. This would quickly temper that intensity without having serious physical consequences of the kind caused by the suppression of emotions that have remained unconscious. ...I can learn to understand my feelings rather than condemn them, to regard them as friends and protectors instead of fearing them as something alien that needs to be fought against. Though our parents, teachers, or priests may have taught us to practice such self-amputation, we must ultimately realize that it is in fact very dangerous. There can be no doubt that we are then the victims of severe mutilation.'

'...ask the candidate for your therapist about her childhood and her experiences during her training. Where did she get her training, what was helpful to her, what was not? ...does she protect people who damaged her? Does she minimize the damage? Was she beaten as a child? How does she value this experience? Is she really aware of its consequences for her later life, or is she denying its importance? Does she avoid the confrontation with her own pain? In the last case she will do everything to silence you, not always visibly. -- ...you may even find [that a therapist wants to make you feel like a] helpless child... Then you may end up in a dependence on them and on your feelings of a helpless, unchangeable rage against your parents without being able to free yourself for what YOU really need. A good therapist must help you to find and fulfill YOUR OWN needs, neglected for such a long time, needs for free expression, for being understood, respected and taken seriously.'

'The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear. Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of its rights and its speech, deceived in its love and its trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in its pain, such a child is blind, lost, and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults. It is without orientation and completely defenseless. Its whole being would like to shout out its anger, give voice to its feeling of outrage, call for help. But that is exactly what it may not do. All its normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed it to help it survive, remain blocked. Thus, the healthy impulse to protest against inhumanity has to be suppressed. Some therapists fear this truth. By refusing to forgive, I give up my illusions. A mistreated child cannot live without them. But a grown-up therapist must be able to manage it. His or her patients should be able to ask: "Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to?"'

'...a tyrant will abuse his power in a destructive way as long as he either encounters no resistance at all or is able to nip that resistance in the bud. ...the unconscious aim concealed behind all his conscious activities, remains the same: to use his power to blot out the humiliations inflicted on him in childhood and denied by him ever since. But this aim can never be achieved. The past cannot be expunged, nor can one come to terms with it as long as one denies the suffering it involved. As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties inflicted by parent figures and a striking indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to cruel treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belonged to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil...'

'We loved our parents, so we believed them when they told us it was for our own good. Most of us still believe it and go around asserting that one cannot bring up children without slaps and smacks - in other words, without resorting to humiliation. And then there is no way out of the vicious circle of violence and denial of the humiliation inflicted on them. The need for revenge, reprisal, punishment lives on within them. The rage suppressed in childhood is transformed into murderous hate. Religious and ethnic groups are only too willing to provide the ideologies justifying the cultivation and projection of that hate. Humiliation is a poison that is difficult to exterminate because it is used for extermination and the production of new humiliation that fuels the proliferation of violence and masks the underlying problems. To get out of this vicious circle we must face up to our own truth. We WERE humiliated children, we WERE the victims of our parents' ignorance, of their histories...'

'Children who are given love, respect, understanding, kindness, and warmth will naturally develop different characteristics from those who experience neglect, contempt, violence or abuse, and never have anyone they can turn to for kindness and affection. Such absence of trust and love is a common denominator in the formative years of all the dictators I have studied. The result is that these children will tend to glorify the violence inflicted upon them and later to take advantage of every possible opportunity to exercise such violence... Children learn by imitation. Their bodies do not learn what we try to instill in them by words but what they have experienced physically. Battered, injured children will learn to batter and injure others; sheltered, respected children will learn to respect and protect those weaker than themselves. Children have nothing else to go on but their own experiences. Evil exists. But it is not something that some people are born with.'

'The horrors of terrorist violence are something we can all watch on our television screens; the horrors in which children grow up are very rarely shown in the media. Thus, most people are not informed about the main source of hatred. They speculate about political, religious, economic or cultural reasons but the speculations are turning in darkness because the true reason must remain obscured: the suppression and subsequent denial of early rage that often ends up in hatred with an endless number of ideologies. Hatred is hatred and rage is rage, all over the world and at any time the same... They are always the fruits of very strong emotions, reactions to injuries to their dignity endured in childhood, normal reactions of the body that were not allowed to express themselves in a safe way. Nobody comes to the world with the wish to destroy. Every newborn, independently from the culture, religion or ethnic origins needs to love, be loved, protected, and respected.'

'...the only thing beaten children learn is to fear their parents, not to drive carefully or stay out of trouble. They will also feel guilty and learn to play down their own pain. Being subjected to physical attacks they are defenseless to fend off merely instills in children a "gut" conviction that they obviously merit neither protection nor respect. This false message is then stored in the children's bodies as information and will influence their view of the world and their later attitude toward their own children. Such children will be unable to defend their right to human dignity, unable to recognize physical pain as a danger signal and act accordingly. Even their immune system may be affected. In the absence of other persons to model their behavior on -- enlightened or knowing witnesses -- these children will see the language of violence and hypocrisy as the only really effective means of communication.'

'[Parents] have been prevented from loving their children as a result of the injuries inflicted on them in their own childhood. We can learn from them, and if we do, we will cease to idealize motherly love at all costs. Then we will no longer be forced to analyze infants as screaming monsters. Instead we will begin to understand their inner worlds, to grasp the loneliness and impotence of children growing up with parents that deny them any kind of loving communication because they themselves have never experienced it. Then we will recognize in the screams of the infant a logical and justified response to the usually unconscious but none the less factual and real cruelties of the parents, which have yet to be appreciated as such by society. And the worst thing is that children have to learn to see [parental cruelty] as quite normal behavior because they know nothing else. Children always love their parents unstintingly, whatever they do to them.'

'... the consequences of early, invisible injuries are so severe precisely because they derive from the trivialization of childhood suffering and the denial of its importance. Adults can easily imagine that they would be horrified and humiliated if they were suddenly attacked by a raging giant many times bigger than themselves. Yet assume that small children will not react in the same way... Parents believe that slaps and spanking do not hurt. Such treatment is designed to impress certain values on their children. And the children end up believing that themselves. Some even learn to laugh the whole thing off and to deride the pain they felt at the humiliations inflicted on them. As adults they adhere to this derision, they are proud of their own cynicism... they comply with the demands of a society that attaches supreme importance to considerate treatment for parents. ...these people obstinately trivialize their own sufferings, even if they are therapists themselves.'

'...when we stop playing down our sufferings and embark on a respectful engagement with them and with the child. The doors barring us off from our own selves suddenly swing open. ...therapy is only successful if it can change this perspective... People who genuinely succeed in feeling how they suffered from their parents' behavior as a child will usually lose their empathy for their parents and gain love for themselves. They will train their affections on the children they once were. But for this change of perspective to succeed, we need a witness who sides fully with the child and does not hesitate to condemn the deeds of its parents. The FAQ list (see "Articles" on this Web page) can help to establish whether the therapist is in a position to do that. I believe that therapists who identify with the parents can be dangerous. But genuine Enlightened Witnesses can help us to abandon denial and face up to our own past, so that we can finally leave it behind without feelings of guilt.'

'Children have no choice but suppress their fear and anger, otherwise they could not sustain their love for their parents... Truly attempting to understand the child within means acknowledging and recognizing its sufferings, rather than denying them. Then we can provide supportive company for that mistreated infant, an infant left entirely alone with its fears, deprived of the consolation and support that a helping witness could have provided. By offering guidance to the child we once were, we can create a new atmosphere he can respond to, helping him to see that it is not the whole world that is full of dangers, but above all the world of his family that he was doomed to fear in every moment of his existence. We never knew what bad mood might prompt our mother to expose us to the full force of her aggression. We never knew what we could do to defend ourselves. No one came to our aid; no one saw that we were in danger. And in the end we learned not to perceive that danger ourselves.'

'In childhood, acceptance and expression of ... rage would have involved severe punishment or total abandonment, and the fear of these consequences lives on in the adult children. But as soon as they realize that they are no longer in danger, they will be able to understand the situation they were in as children and to rebel inwardly against the cruelties perpetrated on them, instead of continuing to forgive them "generously." The reality of childhood will never go away. Even if these parents were suddenly all transformed into angels, the memories of their cruelties, their hatred, their rejection remain... The task devolving on the adult children is to free themselves of those memories, not by forgiving and forgetting, but by accepting the logical response to torture, the experience of rage they have denied themselves for so long. The only thing that can help us to relinquish our blindness and spare our children the same fate is the courage to accept this truth.'

'The regularity with which true feelings were denied or split off made me realize that almost all of us tend to deny, or at least play down, the pain caused by the injuries we suffered in childhood. We do this because we still fear punishment at the hands of our parents, who could not bear to accept us as we truly were. These childhood fears live on in the adult. If they remain unconscious, that is if they are not identified as such, then they will retain their virulence to the end of our lives. Unfortunately, these fears also live on in those who advance theories that camouflage childhood reality and that concentrate instead on the nature of “psychical structures.” This approach began with Freud and was later taken over by C.G. Jung and others. Like present-day “spiritualist” interpretations, these theories all served one purpose: to allay the fears of the maltreated children these therapists still were.'

'Revelation of the Method concerns mind control in the last stages and at a high level. When you tell someone what you are doing to them - murder, mayhem, kidnap, rape, you name it - and they do nothing to stop you or protect themselves, you have created a doubly enslaved subject.' -- How many fingers, Winston?

'The spectacular economic and political progress of much of the world in the 20th century was an achievement of the improvement in childrearing modes of the families that reduced child abuse, as more caring mothers began to give their children love and respect, plus were also able to reduce the jealousy of their spouses so fathers could be closer to their children. Yet because most 20th century families still abused their children, the improvement in industrialization during the century produced periodic "growth panics" during which adults re-experienced their parental abuse, and men went on more and more destructive wars to restore their masculinity and "get respect" from other nations. Plus of course the technological improvements soon led to a tremendous increase in the ability to kill others during wars, so that wars in the 20th century killed over 180 million people, mostly civilians—culminating in the current global-annihilation possibilities of nuclear nations.'

'At the beginning of our lives we were, as very small children, totally dependent on our parents. And we believed, we HAD TO believe, that we were loved by them. Even when we were abused we couldn't realize this. ...transference is unavoidable if we were once abused children. We can ... strive to feel the fear of the small baby, scared to death by the two big human beings holding our body and soul in their hands and doing or saying to us whatever they wanted, totally careless about our future, about what consequences their abuse might have on our lives. They acted like robots, directed by their own childhoods, unable of any kind of reflection whatsoever. ...the transference becomes our guide that will enable the small child in us to BELIEVE what their body KNEW its whole life but his mind could never believe: that so much evil and hatred can be directed towards a small, innocent child only because the parents have endured the same and have never questioned this.'

'Ways to stop self attacking and free yourself from your inner critic.'

'I don't know what being molested is like...'

'Contains spoilers. Sadly, this movie is about one in three girls, and one in five boys.'

'Early-childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse and witnessing domestic violence undermine the normal wiring of brain circuits, especially those circuits connecting the left and right sides of the brain through a massive bundle of connections called the corpus callosum. Impairment in integrating information between right and left hemispheres is associated with increased risk of craving, drug abuse and dependence, and a weakened ability to make moral judgments. In a study published in 2006, the researchers showed that parental verbal abuse was more strongly associated with these detrimental effects on brain development than was parental physical abuse. In a new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (July), they report that exposure to verbal abuse from peers is associated with elevated psychiatric symptoms and corpus callosum abnormalities. The most sensitive period for verbal abuse from peers in impairing brain development was exposure during the middle school years.'

'...the comic's style of relating to people may partly mirror their early adventures with their mother. ...he or she becomes an expert in "reading" his or her mother, and then later learns how to "scan the world in a very sensitive way, looking for contradictions to decode and reconcile, hunting out cues as to how to win approval and support." ...comedians are obsessed with instability. ...this focus on inconstancy may represent an effort at mastery, and that the comedian seeks to adapt to a threat that was of painful intensity in their early childhood. The comics tended to have lower self-esteems and to say bad things about themselves. ...the comedian's focus on his or her smallness may be a result of the reduced significance he or she felt as a child and that much comic behavior is aimed at reducing the discrepancy of smallness between themselves and others. ...they viewed themselves as healers. ...uncovering truths that many people usually try to banish from awareness.'

"When you've got a gun to your head, morality is irrelevant. The only people who are perfectly guilty are the intellectuals. The intellectuals who have the intelligence, the ability and the language skills to introspect and to deal with their own childhoods, and to stop projecting their own trauma onto the world as 'philosophical' systems. They're trying to normalize their own childhood experience by projecting it as a universal ideal thus inflicting it upon other people. And that's part of the rage that abused people have towards those who never tried to help them. My whole struggle as a communicator about family history, if you wanted to sum it up in a nutshell, is to get you to stop normalizing your histories. To stop you from thinking it wasn't so bad. To stop you from thinking it could have been worse. To stop you thinking that your parents did the best they could. Because we need to denormalize our experiences relative to reality, not relative to social norms."

"You really can't see any deeper into other people than you've seen into yourself." -- Stefan Molyneux

How many fingers, Winston?: "My position that religiosity is fundamentally child abuse because it is the aggressive infliction of empty and bigoted conclusions upon the minds of children – and you do not have the right as a parent to inflict your bigotries and preferences and faith onto your children. You DON'T own their minds."

'The unspoken truth behind the most terrifying novel in the world.' -- "Orwell was a murderer. Constant war – that's the constant war against the conscience that occurs in the soul of the murderer. The conscience has to be so overridden by this aggressive ego: O'Brien. O'Brien is the [false-self internalized father and dictator] part of Orwell that murdered, and the remaining shreds of his original [true-self] is Winston. The murder occurs before he writes the book and that's why Winston hasn't got a chance. ['Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.'] Winston is interested in the truth about the past...There is an independent self that wants to examine history but can't get any details, and that attempts to resist, and attempts to form a relationship with an outsider, with a skeptic, with someone who does understand evil and who judges the family... Big Brother. It's the family. He tries to have a relationship outside the family and the family destroys him for that."

"The true purpose of power is to have huge vats of the population that you can vomit your own poison into rather than deal with it yourself."

The "Sheeple" as a poison container for parental/sibling trauma: "If you come up with an ideology that is fundamentally impossible for, and opposed to, reality and human nature and the necessities of our biological development... why would you set up something like Anarcho-Communism? which not only is it impossible in the world but you can't even do it in your own life—at least you can do Anarcho-Capitalism/voluntary association and peaceful relations in your own life—but you can't do no property in your own life... So I think that is a way of doing 'I'm too good for this world,' where you set up this ideology of 'virtue' that is more about pomposity and hatred than it is about the desire to motivate others to be good. You set up this standard of 'virtue' which is impossible and distasteful and weird for people—and then what happens is, you get to be angry at them for not [reaching] your lofty 'moral' standards and so you get to vent all your disgust onto the world."

'Buddhism: the doctrine that you are not allowed to protect yourself!' -- Turning the other cheek.

'...parents are the child's most lethal enemy, because inside the parents' psyches lie a powerful, dangerous alter that is their own parent's death wishes toward the child. "To appease the mother she must destroy the child, but the child is a love object too. To preserve the child she must renounce mother... She is trapped in a desperate conflict: kill mother and preserve the baby or kill the baby and preserve the mother." Mothers in the past routinely chose killing the baby, by the billions, driven to it by her devil alter (her own destructive mother image in her head). Women since the beginning of time have felt that their children "really" belonged to God-a symbol of the grandmother, and that "the child was a gift that God had every right to reclaim." When killing her child, therefore, the mother was simply acting as her own mother's avenger. What helped the dissociation was such beliefs as denying that the babies were human ... during most of history...'

'The act of having a child is, "the most forbidden act of self-realization, the ultimate and least pardonable offense," and brings with it inevitable fears of maternal retribution for one's success and individuation. Mothers in antiquity hallucinated female demons were actually grandmother alters in the mothers' heads, so jealous of their having babies that they sucked out their blood and otherwise murdered them. All early societies invented sacrificial rituals wherein babies were tortured and killed to honor maternal goddesses ... vowing that, "although Mommy wants to kill me for having sex and making a baby, if I kill the baby instead [usually the first-born was sacrificed], I can then go on having sex and other babies with less fear of retribution." Child sacrifice was the foundation of all great religions, depicted in myths as absolutely necessary to save the world from "chaos," that is, from terrible inner annihilation anxiety as punishment for success.'

'...mothers earlier in history mainly saw their children as their own screaming, needy, dominating mothers-forming a "hypersymbiotic relationship" wherein the child is expected to make up for all the love missing in the mother's own life, cure her post-partum depression and restore her vitality. The need to shut up the mother's angry voice in babies lead to their being tied up, neglected and beaten. It is only when one realizes their own severe neglect and abuse and the extent to which their babies are poison containers for their feelings that one can begin to understand why mothers in the past routinely killed, neglected and abused their children. What is miraculous – and what is the source of most social progress – is that mothers throughout history have slowly and successfully struggled with their fear and hatred with so little help from others and have managed to evolve the loving, empathic childrearing one can find in many families around the world today.'

'The problem with having only women raising children is that parenting is an emotionally demanding task, requiring considerable maturity, and throughout history girls have grown up universally despised. When a girl was born, said the Hebrews, "the walls wept." Japanese lullabies sang, "If it's a girl, stamp on her." In medieval Muslim cultures "a grave used to be prepared ... if the new-born was a female she was immediately thrown by her mother into the grave. Girls from birth have everywhere been considered full of dangerous pollution-the projected hatred of adults – and were therefore more often killed, exposed, abandoned, malnourished, raped and neglected than boys. To expect horribly abused girls to magically become mature, loving caretakers when as teenagers they go to live as virtual slaves in a strange family simply goes against the conclusions of every clinical study showing the disastrous effects of trauma upon the ability to mother.'

'Most of the time, parents simply reinflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child's explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn't get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture. Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.'

'The evolution of childhood mainly consists of parents slowly giving up killing, abandoning, mutilating, battering, terrorizing, sexually abusing and using their children for their own emotional needs and instead creating loving conditions for growth of the self. The psychogenic theory defines progress in evolution as increases in self awareness, freedom, human potential, empathy, love, trust, self control and a preponderance of conscious decisions rather than as an increase in technological, economic or political complexity. This means that some cultures on low technological levels could actually be further evolved in human terms than others that are more complex technologically and politically. The amount of time and resources any society devotes to its children's needs is far more likely to be an accurate index of its level of civilization than any of the anthropological indices of complexity or energy utilization. -- ...every expression of love toward children heals society...'

'In China before the tenth century A.D. men began to footbind little girls... This vicious anti-daughter emotional atmosphere extreme even for a time that was generally cruel and unfeeling towards daughters was obviously not conducive to mothers producing innovations in childrearing when the little girls grew up. Therefore China which was culturally ahead of the West in many ways at the time of the introduction of footbinding, became culturally and politically "frozen" until the twentieth century, when footbinding was stopped and boy-girl sex ratios in many areas dropped from 200/100 to near equality. The result was that whereas for much of its history China punished all novelty, during the twentieth century rapid cultural, political and economic evolution could resume. Japan, which shared much of Chinese culture but did not adopt footbinding of daughters, avoided the psychogenic arrest of China and could share in the scientific and industrial revolution as it occurred in the West.'

'Nations engage in manic economic and political projects to get a "dopamine rush" that counters the depression and guilt about their success. Political paranoia and slow ego disintegration are seen in conspiratorial group-fantasies, fears of femininity [countered by persecution of homosexuals], imaginary humiliations by other nations [countered by a search for external enemies as grandiosity fails and Poison Alerts and sacrificial group-fantasies proliferate] [and Purity Crusades multiply as anti-modern and anti-child (Bad Boy) movements]. These are countered in the economic sphere by manic overinvestment, risky ventures, excess money supply growth, soaring debt and stock market speculations, and in the political sphere by jingoistic nationalism, expansionist ventures, military buildups and belligerent, insulting foreign affair behavior. As in drug addiction, each dopamine rush leaves a dopamine hangover that requires an even larger manic activity to overcome the resulting depression.'

'...anorexics are dominated by fantasies of persecution by the Dragon Mother, who "gives her child the impossible task of filling her ‘limitless void'" so the child fears being "eaten alive." To prevent this, when these children grow up and try to individuate, they refuse to eat so they won't have any flesh on them for the Dragon Mother to devour. Economic depressions evidence similar group-fantasies of devouring mommies; they are "economic anorexias" where nations inflict economic wounds upon themselves to limit consumption, become "all bones" and not tempt the devouring Dragon Mother. -- One of the best defenses against fears of maternal engulfment is merging with a Phallic Leader to restore potency. The most effective Phallic Leaders [are] "narcissistic personalities ... characterized by intense self-involvement ... lack of empathy ... oscillate between feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence ... inferiority and low self-esteem ... susceptible to feelings of shame and humiliation."'

'That depressions are self-inflicted wounds and not just the results of "mysteriously wrongheaded monetary policies" is still not admitted by most economists. The task of controlling growth panic by depressions is given to central banks, which first flood the nation with low interest liquidity to encourage overinvestment, excess borrowing, inflation and stock market bubbles, and then, when the expansion becomes too sinful for the national psyche, reverse the monetary expansion by increasing interest rates and reducing liquidity ("Taking away the punch bowl when the party gets going.") Depressions come because really people become depressed, reducing their spending and investment, and feel hopeless. ...nations enter into depressions because they feel persecuted for their prosperity and individuation by what Jungians have termed the "Dragon Mother" – the needy, "devouring mother of infancy who cannot let her children go because she needs them for her own psychic survival."

'(3) Internal Sacrifice Solution: If the leader cannot find an external enemy with whom to engage in a sacrificial war, he often turns to an internal sacrifice, either a violent revolution or an economic downturn. As Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon said in 1929 as the Federal Reserve pushed the world into the Great Depression, "It will purge the rottenness out of the system." Business cycles are driven by the manic and depressive cycles of group-fantasy, as manic defenses against growth panic are followed by depressive collapses into emotional despair and inaction. Depressions and recessions are thus not due to "the Invisible Hand" of economics but are motivated sacrifices that often kill more people than wars do, halting dangerous prosperity and social progress that seem to be getting "out of control." Periodic economic downturns are the antidotes administered by sacrificial priests for the disease of "greed." ..."greedy" childhood selves felt to be responsible for the trauma...'

'(2) Martial Solution: If an external enemy can be found who will co-operate by humiliating the nation as they felt humiliated by their parents during childhood, this enemy can now be seen as the source of all their fears, and military action can be taken by the now-heroic leader in order to clear out the pollution and produce a rebirth of national strength and purpose. Wars are often preceded by apocalyptic growth panic movements, "Great Awakenings" and other end-of-the-world group-fantasies. The leader is split into two parts, and the "poison" part is projected into the "enemy" leader, who agrees to engage in a mutual humiliation ritual and then fight the cosmic battle between good and evil and "flush out" the nation's fears. The nation feels often enormous relief by the designation of the enemy, rather than being fearful of war's destructiveness. The finding of an external enemy as a poison container produces a burst of dopamine-filled euphoria.'

'(1) Regicidal Solution: If the leader fails to find an appropriate enemy, he himself can be designated as the enemy of the nation, and a ritual slaying is enacted, either by actual regicide or by throwing him out of office. Should he be reelected at the end of his first term, a symbolic death and rebirth ritual is enacted, and the leader has more time to find a solution to the growth panic.'

'#Strong Phase: The leader is portrayed as grandiose, phallic and invincible, able to ... contain the unconscious anxieties of the nation; #Collapse Phase; #Upheaval Phase: The leader begins the upheaval phase pictured as a wimp, overwhelmed by poisonous forces, impotent to ward off disaster... Anti-children crusades multiply, attacking people's projected inner child for being spoiled, sinful, greedy and out of control. When the growth panic is at a peak, "poison alerts" are declared and fears of maternal abandonment and wishes for maternal engulfment and rebirth proliferate. Rational national progress seems to be unimportant, group-delusions and group-trance projects are at a peak, and action becomes irresistible as the nation searches for some magical restoration of potency. This restoration, rebirth or revitalization wish turns into a group ritual that at times can take one or more of three forms: (1) Regicidal Solution, (2) Martial Solution, (3) Internal Sacrifice Solution'

'The notion that leaders really lead, not follow, is as much a group-fantasy as the leader's charismatic power to command the sun's rise and fall. A leader is a single individual sitting at a desk in one corner of one city. The power we conditionally delegate to him resides in the group-fantasy, since the leader's function is to act as a poison container for our group-fantasies. If he should unexpectedly die, the container disappears and our fears return to us in a rush. Even if he has been a totally incompetent leader, we panic. ...the charisma of leaders is purely a defensive grandiosity of our own, compensating for our feelings of childhood helplessness. Thus a leader's strength seems inevitably to decay. ...there are four phases of group-fantasies about leaders, as they become less and less able to provide grandiose manic solutions to the nation's growing growth panic: (1) strong, (2) cracking, (3) collapse and (4) upheaval.' ...

'...the leader is less a figure of authority than he is a delegate, someone who "takes the blame" for us. As poison container for our dissociated social alter, the leader is expected to absorb our violent feelings without collapsing. Many societies actually designate "filth men" to help the leader with this task, relatives who exchange blood with him so they can "intercept" the poisonous feelings of the people directed at him. In modern nations, cabinet members are our "filth men," and are sacrificed when the leader is under attack. This leadership task of being the delegate of irrational desires of the people makes leaders experts in masochism, rather than sadism, as traditional power theory requires. Only by carefully following our unconscious commands are leaders followed. We might follow them into war and lay down our lives to combat an enemy they alone designated, but the moment they try to ignore the group-fantasy and avoid our hidden commands, people simply do not hear them.'

'Political leaders are intuitively aware that their main function is to provide grandiose manic antidotes to growth panic. Every society acknowledges somehow its function as a defense against maternal engulfment. The more primitive the dominant childrearing mode of a society, the more growth panic must be defended against. The fears of abandonment that are triggered by social progress are felt by nations to be dramatized in their relationship with their leader, who is felt to be growing more and more distant and less and less able to provide grandiose manic projects to defend against their growing growth panic. The increasing impotence and weakness of the leader can be seen in the much-watched "ratings" he gets in his public opinion polls, which, after starting at a peak, usually decline during his term, unless revived by some particularly effective defensive manic action that the leader engages in. ...growing growth panic makes [leaders] seem more distant, less potent.'

'Societies whose institutions progress beyond their average childrearing mode become the most fearful and most violent, since their growth panic depends upon both the amount of early trauma and the amount of social progress. Thus unaccustomed Weimar freedoms lead directly to Auschwitz in a Germany formed by brutal childrearing. If there ever were a society where parents really helped their children to individuate, it would be a society without growth panics, without engulfment fears and without delusional enemies. The enemy is a poison container for groups failing to grapple with the problems of an emerging self. The enemy therefore inherits the imagery of their growth panic, so the enemy is usually described in terms of our childhood desires for growth. "They" (for instance, Jews) are imagined to be guilty of the pejorative form of every one of our desires: "greed" (all our wants); "lust" (our sexual desire); "pushiness" (our striving) and so on.'

'The reason small groups and nations are unconsciously experienced as destructive mothers is that group development requires an increase in independence and individuation, as members grow, respond to new challenges and try to change their patterns of behavior. This independence revives earlier feelings of maternal abandonment. The worse the childrearing, the more growth panic is triggered by individuation and self assertion. More advanced psychoclasses cause "too much" social progress for the majority of society. Old defenses become unavailable and people cannot dominate scapegoats—wives, slaves, servants, minorities—in quite the same way as before. These less advanced psychoclasses—the majority—begin to experience tremendous growth panic, and new ways to handle their anxiety must be invented. For them, change is everywhere; things seem to be "getting out of control." This is why growth and self assertion [is] proscribed by the religious and political systems of most societies.'

'The central fantasy function of the leader of any group, small or large, is to defend against repetitions of early trauma and abandonment, along with handling wishes for merging with the terrifying mother. The group is a mouth ...essentially female and maternal... One of the most active, or rather paralyzing, unconscious group representations is that of a Hydra: the group is felt to be a single body with a dozen arms at the ends of which are heads and mouths... ready to devour one another if they are not satisfied. When the leader is imagined to be strong, he can successfully defend against the group's engulfment fears; when the leader appears to weaken, all growth is dangerous, and desires for merging and fears of maternal engulfment increase, so the leader must somehow act to defend against the growth panic. ...the group leader is imagined to have mastered the group-as-mother and thus to have gained some of her [power] for himself. This makes him a threat as well as a protector...'

'Our social alters contain early levels of our unbearable hurts ("Why didn't mommy want me?" "Why did daddy hit me?"), restaged as fairy tales ("Are there witches?" "Will the monster kill me?") and then as social questions ("Shall we take children away from teenage mothers?" "Is Saddam Hussein a new Hitler who will blow up the world?"). The adaptive function of social alters is that they allow people to go about their daily business without being overwhelmed by traumatic memories... By dissociating early persecutors into our social alters and then identifying with these persecutors in our social lives, human beings manage to live more sane daily lives, while warding off unseen but felt dangers by "feeding" victims of society to terrifying religious, political and economic divinities. So important to our sanity is the social alter that when a poison container for a group-fantasy is removed, tremendous anxiety is aroused that has to be defended against by creating a replacement.'

'It was useless to point out to people who are dissociated and in a social trance that children or other poison containers were helpless human beings who were the victims of their actions. The children were full of our projections; they weren't real to us. Ultimately our social alters merge with the perpetrator of early traumas. In group-fantasy, we merge with the aggressor in order to avoid feeling helpless and then inflict damage upon child-scapegoats under the guise of "saving children." We see this merging with the perpetrator in every scapegoating group-fantasy. When anti-Semites persecute Jews, they are merged with the abusing parent and punishing the abused child. Jews must be persecuted... Adult events, political and economic history, usually provide only proximate causes of scapegoating group-fantasies; their ultimate cause lies in earlier traumatic events.'

'If helpless children of the poor were seen as bad babies, then obviously they were all scapegoats who were "poison containers" needed by the nation to feel early memories of hunger and despair at being unloved and abused. Without poison containers, we would have to feel these feelings ourselves. The childhood sources for Gingrich's political program are so overt they should be obvious to all, yet because we are in a social trance when we hear him we collude to deny them. The media widely reported, for instance, that Gingrich was a child of a teenage mother, but carefully didn't connect it with his speeches on how teenage mothers should be punished... The traumatic events of his infancy had to be restaged and millions of children made to feel his despair because in his social alter the child feels responsible for his or her own abuse and neglect, and so a scapegoat for the child self must be punished. As always in politics, the social alter's primary identification is with the abuser.'

'Social scientists have been puzzled by Milgram's experiments, wondering why people were so easily talked into inflicting pain so gratuitously. The real explanation is that, by joining a group – the "university experiment" – they switched into their social alters and merged with their own sadistic internalized persecutor, which was quite willing to take responsibility for ordering pain inflicted upon others. Their "struggle with themselves" over whether to obey was really a struggle between their social alters and their main selves. The crucial element was the existence of the group-as-terrifying-parent, the all-powerful university. Those who continue to replicate Milgram's experiments and who are still puzzled as to why "the most banal and superficial of rationales is enough to produce destructive behavior in human beings" simply underestimate the amount of trauma most people have experienced and the effectiveness of the social trance in allowing them to restage these hurts.'