'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.'

'What do religion, psychology and "ancient alien theory" have in common? -- For Jung, the collective unconscious is a vast repository of human knowlege, instinct, memory and experience accumulated since the birth of the species and genetically and psychologically passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, the archaic collective unconscious is an invaluable and wisdom-filled source of information unconsciously linking us all together, much like the World Wide Web, the Internet, links us together and has become an integral part of our interconnected collective consciousness. ...many of the phenomena frequently cited by ancient alien theorists are more convincingly evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious than of early extraterrestrial influences. Whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and has visited this planet in UFO's, past or present, is still an open question. But it seems clear that deep in our collective unconscious resides the archetypal idea and imagery of these alien entities, just as the archetypal idea of God and the Devil live within us.' -- She's baaack. Mommy looms large over you laying in your crib. Nice, nasty, or indifferent? God, Devil, neither or both?

'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?

'A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics found that, within seconds of their birth, babies have the ability to sense whether their parents are losers. "From the moment they open their eyes, newborns can tell if their mother had no other options and was forced to settle for their father, or if their father is a sad sack who has no friends and gets drunk on a single glass of chardonnay," said researcher Dr. Stuart Lindstrom, explaining that despite their blurry vision, infants can still identify basic loser body types, and have specialized olfactory receptors allowing them to detect the odor of failure. "In fact, we've determined that as early as the second trimester, a fetus picks up on the income and social standing of its mother via the umbilical cord." The study also concluded that the screams of newborns stem from the sudden realization they will be stuck with their loser parents for at least 18 years.'

'Eric Erikson investigated and developed a stage theory about how children grow and develop psychosocial skills.' -- Trust vs Mistrust; Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt; Initiative vs Guilt; Industry vs Inferiority; Identity vs Confusion; Intimacy vs Isolation'

'We find them everywhere in fantasy fiction: the "orphaned heroes," young men and women whose parents are dead, absent, or unknown, who turn out to be the heirs to the kingdom, the destined pullers of swords from stones, the keys to the riddles, the prophesies' answers, the bearers of powerful magic. For young readers, there is a distinct brand of pleasure in inhabiting the skin of the orphan hero, tasting both the joys and terrors of operating as a fully independent being without the protective cushion (or burden, depending on the child's circumstance) of parents standing between them and the wide, wide world beyond. For children with difficult childhoods, the appeal is obvious; such stories provide escape, a vision of life beyond the confines of a troubled home. But even children from healthy families welcome escape from time to time. In the guise of the orphan hero they can shed their usual roles (the eldest daughter, middle son, the baby of the family, etc.) and enter other realms in which they are solitary actors. Without adults to guide them (or, contrarily, to restrict them), orphan heroes are thrown back, time and time again, on their own resources. I do not think we outgrow our need for such stories, accounting for their continuing popularity among adult readers as well — for who among us does not feel orphaned in this vast, strange world sometimes? Through Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, and Cinderella we experience the orphan within ourselves.'

"Attachment is impossible under such circumstances."

'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."

'Early relationships alter our brains before we learn to speak. As you learn together with your earliest caregivers how to regulate your emotions, your brain will be making lots of new pathways that are necessary for you to learn to become comfortable with your emotions and manage them for yourself. Your earliest bonds also serve as a model for all subsequent relationships, teaching you to form nourishing, enriching, and mutually beneficial relationships throughout your life. The bulk of these neural connections happen before you are two years old. In other words, much of the wiring up that determines how you respond emotionally and conduct relationships, happened pre-verbally. The logic, reason and language part of your brain develops so slowly that most of the patterns for how you feel are formed before you can reason with yourself and others.'

'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."

'How much longer do I have to bang every emotionally distant man in a 12-mile radius before I come to terms with the man who I unconsciously picked up demented ideas of intimacy and sexuality from? Come on already! So my dad left when I was 19, ran off with a girl who could have been my sister, and blamed the whole thing on me through a series of passive-aggressive letters over the next several years. It's not that complicated! Sleep around a lot in your mid-20s, experience an epiphanic moment of clarity, put to rest your lifelong male-acceptance issues, and move on already! People do it every day, right? But I've nailed plenty of dudes (and I mean plenty), and where's it gotten me? Unresolvable Sexual Tension City, that's where! Even when I let coworkers finger me in the back of the supply closet, that crazy old hollow feeling won't go away. And it's not through lack of effort on my part, that's for sure! I've got a rash on my ass from all the carpet burns!'

#OccupyTheFamily

'...the attention that we receive as babies impacts on our brain structures. Babies rely on their carers to soothe distress and restore equilibrium. -- ...children who lived with a depressed parent in infancy are more reactive to stress later in life; children who lived with a depressed parent later in childhood showed no such effect. This makes sense if we remember that the stress response is probably being "set" like a thermostat very early in life. It also makes sense in evolutionary terms to have newborn brains which are unfinished, because they can be adapted to fit the needs of the social group. In effect, they can be programmed to behave in ways that suit their community. However, it is a risky strategy. In a harsh environment, a baby's cries may be ignored, or he may be punished for being distressed. This is likely to produce an individual who becomes, in his turn, relatively insensitive and prone to aggression – and this could be useful in a tense, hostile community.'

From the book: 'A baby cries out. It is frightened, hungry, dirty or cold. The baby wants comfort, a parent and some human contact, an adult's strength, power and protection. The initial call is in Second Circle and expects and deserves a Second Circle response. If there is no response the cry will get more distraught and desperate, and will move into Third Circle. If there is still no response, the baby will withdraw into a detached First Circle. A genuine cry should have a genuine response. Is that too much to ask? The parent won't become the baby's slave, which is the parent's fear. Actually, the unanswered call will eventually come back to haunt parents and society. If appropriately answered, the baby will stop crying out, knowing they will be answered. In this way they develop confidence and self-esteem which allow them to stay present to and in the world. Confidence is a manifestation of entitlement and entitlement starts with the answered call.'

'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."

'Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are both excellent sources of entertainment, but they also offer a complex and interesting dissection of a man who learned to use his own fear against criminals.' -- "Kids generally – even if they're not directly responsible for some terrible event – personalize the event and take responsibility for it." -- "...Bruce Wayne is the mask."

'How our childhood experiences have an enormous impact on our openness to anarchic thought.'

'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."'

'After trying to present his parents with a rather condescending and manipulative colored-pencil drawing he had made of the three of them standing outside their house with big smiles on their crudely rendered faces, Sean told reporters in a trembling voice that can only be described as immensely irritating that he didn't "know who to talk to" about the situation with his parents, as though blabbing his mouth off about the lives of others were ever a wise idea. "Why is this happening?" whined the little shit for what felt like the 5,000th time this week, his pouty voice reaching levels of annoyance that would make even the most levelheaded adult want to pick up a chair and throw it across the room in sheer exasperation. "Is it my fault?" "I should just run away," added Sean, positing his first sensible thought in years. "Maybe that would make everything better."'

'Early experiences with caregivers gradually give rise to a system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviours about the self and others. This system, called the "internal working model of social relationships", continues to develop with time and experience. Internal models regulate, interpret and predict attachment-related behaviour in the self and the attachment figure. As they develop in line with environmental and developmental changes, they incorporate the capacity to reflect and communicate about past and future attachment relationships. They enable the child to handle new types of social interactions; knowing, for example, that an infant should be treated differently from an older child, or that interactions with teachers and parents share characteristics. This internal working model continues to develop through adulthood, helping cope with friendships, marriage and parenthood, all of which involve different behaviours and feelings.'

'The struggle to understand the infant-mother bond ranks as one of the great quests of modern psychology – one that touches us deeply, because it holds so many clues to how we became who we are. What do children need, at a minimum, in order to feel that the world of people is a positive place and that they themselves have value? What experiences in infancy will enable them to feel confident enough to explore, to develop healthy peer relations, to rebound from adversity? What custody or foster-care arrangements will best serve their emotional needs if the family should dissolve, and at what point do we decide that a neglectful or abusive mother is worse than a kind stranger? Which of us are at risk of being parents who will raise insecure children, and what can be done to minimize that risk? These are all questions of huge theoretical and practical interest.'

"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

"Politics is all about getting unmet needs met through the state. And the unmet needs are childhood needs. What people are really trying to do when they want political solutions is they are trying to avoid the pain of dealing with what was missing in their childhoods."

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

'The attempt to escape from feelings has its origins in a babyhood in which the baby's feelings have not been identified and responded to in a contingent way. You can only change emotional processing by doing it differently. When a particular feeling is aroused, neurotransmitters are released from the subcortex and old neural networks automatically become activated to manage this state of arousal in the old way. If your therapist accepts your feelings, they do not have to be denied by the neural network which would normally do that, or acted upon by the neural network that would normally respond in that way. The therapist's acceptance allows a mental space to reflect on the feelings and consider how to respond afresh. Whilst the feelings are alive and active, so too are the stress hormones which will assist new (higher brain) cortisol synapses to be made in response to the sub-cortical signals. Together with the therapist, new networks can be developed.'

'The root of statism is our view of children.' -- "Parents have no clue why they're telling their children to do stuff – it's just cultural photocopying over and over – and children get that very quickly. And children are hurt by that. Children are very hurt by their parents being revealed as not only false gods but very often as devils claiming to be good. The merciless light of the curious and optimistic child – the skeptical but not nihilistic child – that irradiates most adult souls. That combination of curiosity and optimism, questioning rationality – and trust... [parents] feel that children are aggressing against them... And so they have to convince the child that questions are evil... and fundamentally, it's because the child can see the truth that the parents don't want them to see. ...all of the parent's hypocrisies and falsehoods become clear and parents can't handle that and so they project all of their falsehoods and manipulation and corruption onto the child..."

'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.'

'The last decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of infants and young children. Scientists used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Recently, they have discovered that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined. And there is good reason to believe that babies are actually cleverer, more thoughtful, and even more conscious than adults. A new baby's captivated gaze at her mother's face lays the foundations for love and morality. A toddler's unstoppable explorations of his playpen hold the key to scientific discovery. A three-year-old's wild make-believe explains how we can imagine the future, write novels, and invent new technologies.' -- Discussion on imaginary friends and the mecosystem.

'Stefan Molyneux: "Thinkers who ignore childhood and its effects on the psyche, and then say they want to reform society, are exactly the same as communists or socialists who ignore the workings of the free-market and say they want to optimize economics – it can’t be done and it’s just a kind of scam."'

'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.'

'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.'

"The cycle of life is that children are inconvenient when they're very young, and parents are inconvenient when they're very old."

'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.'

'"A lot of people thought I was crazy or egotistical for doing those things, but they were merely projections of various childhood traumas and insecurities borne of postmodern alienation," West said. "Luckily, I found ways to make up for my deep-seated psychological needs, and I am now a fully actualized adult."'

'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."

'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."

'...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.'

'#6. the main locus of epigenetic variations is the slow evolution of the individual conscious self that looks forward to its future and creates its own extended present, a self that evolves mainly through the growth of love in the parent-child relationship; #7. the rate of innovation in cultural evolution is determined by the conditions for parental love and therefore increase in individual self-assertion in each society, all cultural evolutions being preceded by a childrearing evolution; and #8. the locus of psychogenic evolution has historically been affected far more by maternal than paternal influence – indeed, entirely maternal in the crucial first nine months of life – rather than males and females each contributing half of the genetic information as occurs in neo-Darwinian evolution. -- ...it it has mainly been the mothers who have produced epigenetic novelty; so to discover the laws of cultural evolution one must "follow the mothers" through history.'

'#2. vehicles of transmission include neuronal groups in the brains of individual parents and children, not solely genes in the sexual organs of parents; #3. the selection of variations is accomplished through changes in a very narrow part of the human environment—the family, the main organizer of emotional symbols, particularly the mother—rather than simply through changes in the ecology; #4. preservation of emergent variations in some individuals is often prevented from being swamped by the less developed childrearing practices of the rest of the culture via the psychogenic pump effects of migration; #5. limitations to emergent variations (psychogenic devolution) occurs either because of conditions adverse to childrearing such as wars, plagues or droughts—or because sudden increased social freedom for adults creates excessive growth panic, anxieties which are turned against children as poison containers, thereby producing devolution in childrearing in a portion of a given society...'

'The psychogenic theory of evolution is based not upon Spencer and Darwin's "survival of the fittest" products of the most ruthless parents but upon the "survival of the most innovative and cooperative" products of the most loving parents. The processes of historical evolution, based upon the very slow growth of love and cooperation, are therefore the exact opposite from those of neo-Darwinian natural selection, based overwhelmingly upon conflict and competition. They include: #1. The production of variations through psychogenesis is by creating through more love different early epigenetic environments – more advanced fetal and early childhood developmental paths – not through random genetic mutations and recombinations i.e., through variations in the structures of neuronal groups achieved during post-genetic development after inception, not through mutations in DNA prior to inception...'

'The central hypothesis of the psychogenic theory of historical evolution is that epigenetic neuronal variations originating in changing interpersonal relationships with caretakers rather than only through genetic variations originating through natural selections are the primary source of the evolution of the psyche and society. "The more evolved the species is the greater the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the structure of the nervous system." The fundamental evolutionary direction in Homo sapiens is towards better interpersonal relationships, not just the satisfaction of biological instincts. While adaptation to the natural environment is the key to genetic evolution, relationship to the human environment is the key to psychological evolution, to the evolution of "human nature." Psychogenesis is also the key to cultural evolution, since the range of evolution of childrearing in every society puts inevitable limits upon what it can accomplish politically, economically and socially.'

'Environments are also opportunities, not just straightjackets. ..."men reach out to embrace and create their ecosystems, rather than the reverse proposition." It is when early childrearing experiences are impaired that children are forced to reduce their behavioral flexibility and are therefore as adults unable to improve their environments and experience cultural stagnation. The secret as to why England and not France or Germany spawned the Industrial Revolution first goes back to England's advanced childrearing in its smaller medieval households, not to any ecological advantage. English political freedom, religious tolerance, industry and innovation were all psychoclass achievements, dependent upon childrearing evolution. The most important unsolved question in cultural evolution is therefore to explain the rate of innovation and adoption of new techniques of exploiting what resources exist – factors that depend crucially upon the local rate of evolution of childrearing.'

'All mourning is ambivalence. You're never too far from age 2, when your rage is magically powerful. ...the unconscious never forgets even the briefest of hates. Sometimes the guilt has a convenient narrative: caring for a cancer-ridden, demented parent who exhausted your physical and emotional resources, and then finally(!) dies. -- In most (all?) zombie movies, there is always a scene in which a main character confronts a loved one turned zombie. The rest of the previous zombie attacks are merely prelude to that one, specific, pivotal interaction. Quick, bolt the door, ambivalence is coming. Movies give the loved-one zombie a momentary flash of the old self – is it remembering, is it a trap, or are you seeing what you want to see? ...how the living negotiate that bit of mourning determines if they'll be able to put the dead to rest, or are going to have be tied to them forever.'