When it had long since outgrown his purely medical implications and become a world movement which penetrated into every field of s...cience and every domain of the intellect: literature, the history of art, religion and prehistory; mythology, folklore, pedagogy, and what not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoever inquires about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. If the question is not just a rhetorical one and the ...questioner has the patience to listen, he will come to realize that we love with horror and hate with an inexplicable love whatever caused us our greatest pain and difficulty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Punishment followed on a grand scale. For ten days, an unconscionable length of time, my father blessed the palms of his child's o...utstretched, four-year-old hands with a sharp switch. Seven strokes a day on each hand; that makes one hundred forty strokes and then some. This put an end to the child's innocence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mis...treated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other wo...rds, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The father receives his power from God (and from his own father). The teacher finds the soil already prepared for obedience, and t...he political leader has only to harvest what has been sown.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child within ...us--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to acce...pt certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although n...ot always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspringLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is unlikely that someone could proclaim "truths" that are counter to physical laws for very long (for example, that it is healt...hy for children to run around in bathing suits in winter and in fur coats in summer) without appearing ridiculous. But it is perfectly normal to speak of the necessity of striking and humiliating children and robbing them of their autonomy, at the same time using such high-sounding words as chastising, upbringing, and guiding onto the right path.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »