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- If this post resonates with you, there are two books I highly recommend, both by the renowned psychologist Alice Miller [1].
The first is For Your Own Good (1981), in which she describes the "poisonous pedagogy" of emotional and physical abuse passed down from generation to generation, and how we minimize and turn a blind eye to it because we want to follow the 4th commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother" (or in this case, a Confucian equivalent) -- at tremendous cost to ourselves, our own children, and society at large. It is one of the most eye-opening books I have ever read.
The second is her more recent The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting (2005), which is more therapeutic and focused on how people's physical pain and sickness can dissipate when they are able to finally stand up for themselves and their own emotional needs, rather than continue to pretend their abusive parents were actually good.
Alice Miller's first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979) is her best-known, but in my opinion, the above two books show her understanding evolving to become even more sophisticated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)
- Read Alice Miller+s books. Eg: The Drama of the Gifted Child The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
- Offtopic but regarding the supression of the child from the parent: few people realize how severely the large majority of parents damage their children and supress their innate creativity and drive.
This is also very hard to realize as an adult because it gets unconsiously supressed.
The following books opened my eyes at the fact how dangerous it is for the grown up adult to then keep thinking "yeah, but my parents did the best you could you know?" even though they completely destroyed his innate creativity and freedom.
Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies
TLDR version of these books is that a large majority of parents tried to mold them as children and fit them into boxes or supressed their needs and wants as children and never truly listened to them. This then causes uncousious guilt/anxiety/etc... feeling in the person as adult and prevents him from "taking oportunities" etc..
And at the core of the issue is the forced-upon-us belief that we always have to respect our parents, even though we secretely hate them. Saying "yeah but they did something good for me you know" is actually a huge problem that will only keep us from seeing the fact that many in fact do not like/love their parents very much because the parents did not truly listen to them etc...
As long as we try to weight the good vs the bad moments we will relapse into the false indoctrinated compassion/guilt towards our parents, into denial of the cruelties we experienced as a child, all because people say that we should try to "balance the good vs the bad". But this does not work in practice. This balancing process seems to be a reflection of how we tried to cope as children to survive. The adult must reject this balancing process because it only causes confusion without resolving anything. Many people when they break contact from parents feel guilty and think even more about their own parents: the "experts" and her parents have reinforced the indoctrinated belief in this person that "this individual has no right to his own life, feelings and needs." It was this desire of the child to believe that the parents were good that led to these supressions because the child blamed himself. This is why when a therapists says "try to see the good" it will only cause great harm. regression and confusion: since it was this need of the child to "try and see the good" in his parents when there was none that caused these issues in the first place.
So anyone who even slightly suspects that their parents supressed him as a child and denied him freedom of expression etc... will find many answers in those books above.
- What did me a lot of good was reading these two books by Alice Miller which describe how childhood trauma caused by parents causes issues and why many modern psychiatrists still overlook this crucial issue, perhaps it might help you, it definitely helped me:
Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies
- This is bad and will never allow the person to be free.
Merely the fact that an "alter ego" is needed points to the fact that the person experiences fear and anxiety towards something.
If he needs an alter ego to overcome that it is supression/dissociation. This will ensure that this person will never be free of it.
This only looks good on the surface, but in reality this will emprison the person for life.
Those who wish to come to the root of the issue will find many answers here:
Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies
- His father caused his "lack of desire to speak" by beating him for each speaking error while he was a child.
Dirac solved this error as best as a child could: by not speaking. This trauma lasted to his death.
Someone will now say "citation needed", and to those people I give these 2 books to read and what I wrote above will become as clear as day.
Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies
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