måndag 24 september 2007

Physician on brain pathology and child abuse and the silence in society…

Read this readers’ letter on Miller’s web, written by a physician. He writes for instance:

“The message the average patient gets from this kind of information is that he can do nothing to change his situation, and it often leads him to be pessimistic and skeptical toward psychotherapy in general. The result is also that the patient becomes dependent on his psychiatrist and drugs /…/

Furthermore, scientific debate in this field distracts our attention from the most burning questions, and here lies its greatest danger.
It is easier to ask questions about blood flows than to ask meaningful questions, such as ‘What and how much is done to
day to stop child abuse in my country?’ Or ‘What do therapists contribute toward this goal and what do governments and policy-makers contribute in terms of education and legislation?’ Question like ‘Do we unwittingly use prisons and psychiatric research and hospitals to silence the outcry if the abused and mystify it with technical language?’; Is the research our governments and industry sponsor the RIGHT kind of research we need to answer the questions that interest us? /…/

Why, then, are those millions of dollars invested in MRIs and not spent on more projects like this website, for example, or to finance large-scale educational campaigns for parents? Why are dangerous and outdated approaches, like psychoanalytic therapy, criminal prisons and psychiatric electroshock are continuously being supported and practiced? How much research is being done to establish alternatives to these approaches? What kind of information can help us and are we using the right methods to obtain it?”

I’m not sure Miller or Rogers understand what he tries to say?? They are speaking about the same things actually, but not even Miller understands this!?

I don’t have time now to analyze what I thought or read in this physician’s two letters to Miller… But I think he tried to say something… The other letter: see here.

I also want to cite a commentator in a blog, he (she??) wrote something in the style:

“I am noting that many liberals get mad when people who suffers and have a tough life [the blog-owner had linked to an open letter from a woman to a female politician in Stockholm, both in the same age, with a husband and children; about her conditions as suffering from breast-cancer] make their voices heard. They are scorning them with baby-language of the type ‘but, poor little creep who whines. Buaaaahhhhhh.’ And so on.

I am no psychologist, but even an autodidact as I can see the symptoms of severe personality-disturbances in the liberals’ rhetoric.

They are probably suffering from bad growing up environments, parental coldness and an enormous lack of love and warmth in their lives. I mean, think if these liberals gets children one day, what will they say to the kid that cries?

‘Buuuaaaahhhhh, sure, what damn pity it is with you, you pathetic shit, you just want and want and want! When I was small, I can tell you, I was locked into the wardrobe if I cried and look at me now, I managed! Why shouldn’t you make it too then? So keep quiet, you ugly troll!! [what are you complaining about!? You spoiled, weak creature!!! Shame on you, and I will ignore you entirely, you be sure of that!]’"

Came to think about the client in therapy which told the therapist how the father walked away when the client as child refused to enter the school-bus when she was in a severe crisis as 10 year old. The therapist smiled (contemptuously??). The child felt enormous shame when she walked back home with her parents in front of her disappearing in the distance. The mom following the father too!! Feeling

“I am just a nuisance, of no benefit at all. I am only a burden to those enormously occupied and hard-working parents, who tries and tries! I am a nuisance for everyone! Noone likes me and will never like me!! Unless I am not trying and striving the best I can to be perfect? To be someone they won’t be ashamed of (as now) but proud of! Then, maybe, I will get love!???”

She took an enormous burden on her! Wasn't really allowed to fail, even if the grown ups repeatedly told her that she should allow herself to fail (by the way she also heard this from a female physician, therapist, later as grown up, that she should allow herself to fail or something in that style. But noone asked why she had problems with this, despite she had her own wonders about, and carefully tried to communicate it to her "helpers"!! Testing them how they took this... A deep sigh). The 10-year old girl then felt, desperate, not knowing where to turn, what to do (no grown up who saw and reacted!!! Seeing the small girl really):

“They should get rid of me!!!”
So she went out into the forest…Thought she should disappear... The parents should be/get "unburdened" and after she had disappeared live happily all their life!!!!? As long as they had her, they wouldn't! They would have problems to their deaths!? Now she could relieve them maybe?

From the therapist no compassion or empathy or rage or indignation at all on behalf of the small child!!!! (thumb down to him!!!!! I would like to tell him now! face to face how stupid and what a bad helper he was, and probably still is, if he hasn't changed radically - but is this possible?). By this probably strengthening the self-blame, but that seemed on the other hand to be his method; to make his clients blame themselves and realize their guilt in all and everything!!! His clients (female!!!) had never in their whole lives blamed themselves or ever being burdened to the ground with guilt?? Or self-blame??

Later as adult this client has problems with being liked and accepted… Can experiences like this from her father (and from the loving self-sacrificing mother who could react in the way written about above:

“What a pity it is with you!”
with a deep contempt, with a voice I can't describe really, an entirely different picture of that loving mom all and everyone saw, when her child was sad rebellious, angry etc. Even as grown up woman, and may this have contributed to this need (very hidden in many ways) to be liked, and all this causes, for instance shaky hands? With problems with all that has with competition to do (she hasn't learned it properly as child?? The immediate reaction/conclusion from many therapist, who offer her help with this, to learn this now if not earlier? But I wonder if children shall have to compete at all!!?? I suggest they shouldn't have to! If they didn't have to I think they would handle competition in adult life much, much better, then many of us now does, because we had to compete as children). Some small wonders… Struck me yesterday after work I had done… And what occurred there…

And, what lousy therapist, wasn’t it/isn’t it?? What “roundabout” has she had to go in her life, despite she was fairly well-informed from the beginning, but he managed to confuse her and what she saw, sensed, heard etc. Not trusting her own senses enough or her ability to understand…

This therapist is still working as therapist...

As Miller wrote: The way/path would lie open even to him if he realized and understood...

If that can be a "comfort"...

Addition at 19:30: see "Peaceful Parenting for a Peaceful World" by Jan Hunt and others (HTML-version), something I truly recommend. And a third letter from the physician mentioned above. Photo on Alice Miller.

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