Miller and in the beginning there was education. In the beginning there was education

In the beginning there was education

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The author shows the mechanisms of hidden cruelty in raising children and the roots of violence. Analyzing a number of life stories - drug addict patients, child killers and Adolf Hitler - Miller reveals the origins of the extreme personal destructiveness of these people in their early childhood: as children, they were subjected to cruel treatment and humiliation, which affected their personal characteristics. The basic principles of “destructive pedagogy” - suppressive and crippling child upbringing - are formulated.

For psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, as well as anyone interested in childhood problems.

In the beginning there was education

Per. with him. I.V. Silaeva

Foreword by the scientific editor

In this short preface, I wanted to outline those semantic accents of Alice Miller’s second book published in Russian, which, in my opinion, seem to be the most significant and significant.

First of all, it should be noted the author’s fundamental anti-pedagogical position, according to which any education is violence that negatively affects mental development child, and any pedagogy is the theory and practice of such violence. This is a very strong thesis and extremely difficult to accept. However, the author’s entire argument is aimed at not leaving the reader with the slightest illusion regarding the “humanistic” aspirations of pedagogy and teachers. It is the pedagogical practice that has existed for thousands of years that locks humanity in a vicious circle of violence, the logical ending of which is a fairly clearly visible global catastrophe.

If pedagogy acts for the author as the initial form of practice of interaction between people, as a kind of thesis, then the antithesis turns out to be psychotherapy - a relatively young form of such practice. The opposition between pedagogy and psychotherapy is a fundamental contradiction, a confrontation of two diametrically opposed ideas, two different logics. The pedagogical practice of interiorization and assimilation, control and arbitrariness, suppression and repression, silence, dependence and inequality is opposed by the psychotherapeutic practice of exteriorization and creativity, freedom and spontaneity, expression and awareness, speaking, autonomy and equality. It is psychotherapy that is humanity’s response to the totality of all those threats that have already found expression in two world wars and continue to seek their realization in a possible third (and last) world war. The external equivalent of the negative experiences of pain and anger repressed into the sphere of the unconscious are monstrous arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The splitting of the intellectual and affective lives of people ensures the constant improvement of both these weapons themselves and the means of their delivery. Pedagogy is responsible for all these external and internal “grapes of wrath”, for that potential of hatred and violence, which is only waiting for the right occasion to again be embodied in mass madness. It should be emphasized that awareness and understanding of the real connection between individual and social mental life is a characteristic feature of the views not only of A. Miller, but also of all the major psychotherapists of the 20th century. (from 3. Freud and C. Jung to W. Frankl and C. Rogers).

The struggle between the “calf” of psychotherapy and the thousand-year-old “oak tree” of pedagogy (may A. Solzhenitsyn forgive us for this use of his ironic metaphor) is a consequence and manifestation of a more general social opposition between civil society and the political state. If civil society is based on relationships of love (defined by A. Miller as openness, acceptance, focus, sensitivity to the true needs of man, to his essential manifestations), then the political state is something exactly the opposite - relations of power, domination and subordination - totalitarianism. The fundamental freedom of civil society is freedom of speech (self-expression), and the fundamental right is the right to be heard; The basic freedom of a political state is the freedom to exercise power, the freedom to dominate, and its basic right is the right to obey.

The mediator in the relations existing between civil society and the individual, between the political state and the individual is the family. At the same time, power relations in the system “political state -> family -> individual” are at the same time pedagogical relations - upbringing. The figures of the “leader” and the “father of the people,” the “boss” and the “native father” are constantly combined, and sometimes (with the triumph of totalitarianism) they completely coincide. On the contrary, in the system “civil society -> family -> individual” all social institutions are created and supported by individuals in order to ensure their needs, rights and freedoms. Both social and interpersonal (including family) relationships are in this case only means of self-expression and development of individuals and, therefore, in their essence, relationships of love for each specific person - psychotherapeutic relationships, psychotherapy.

In the sphere of modern spiritual production, pedagogical practice, the practice of training and education everywhere remains a global monopolist, continuing to fill the personal and collective unconscious of people with unexperienced and unconscious feelings of pain and anger. Illustrating his theoretical ideas with authentic materials from three psychobiographies (a drug addict, a political leader and a serial child killer), A. Miller analyzes in detail all the nuances of the relationships between the internal and external lives of these people, between their experiences and their actions, each time revealing the same natural sequence of events:

Any adult violence towards a child is at the same time a manifestation of unlove (i.e., lack of openness, non-acceptance, lack of address, non-sensitivity to its essential manifestations and genuine, basic needs for safety, understanding, self-expression);

A child's natural response to dislike is pain and anger;

- the “normal” reaction of an adult to a child’s pain and anger is a ban on their expression by the child;

- the child’s “normal” reaction to this ban is suppression and repression of his own feelings of pain and anger into the unconscious;

Splitting the child’s initially holistic experience into conscious and unconscious (repressed) experience;

Transformation of unconscious feelings of pain and anger into conscious hatred;

Projection of hatred onto substitute figures and idealization of “parental figures” and “happy childhood”;

Elimination of hatred in intra- and extra-destructive behavior;

Broadcasting the “ring of violence” (violence -> response -> prohibition -> 5 suppression -> repression -> splitting -> projection -> elimination -> violence) in relationships with other people, acting as a screen for a person’s projection of his own suppressed and experiences and feelings repressed into the unconscious;

The use of various kinds of pedagogical ideologies that provide social sanction for this kind of broadcast of violence under the guise of “educating” children, certain social and ethnic groups, national minorities, peoples and even races “for their own good.”

Any, every meeting between an adult and a child contains two diametrically opposed perspectives. One of them - the pedagogical perspective - reproduces the vicious “circle of violence”. Another - psychotherapeutic perspective - opens this vicious circle, frees the repressed emotional experience of childhood from the “dungeons” of the unconscious thanks to the special quality of therapeutic (accepting, empathic and congruent - according to C. Rogers) relationships.

Depedagogization of mass and individual consciousness, increasing the psychological and psychotherapeutic culture of people inevitably increases their sensitivity to all forms, manifestations and consequences of cruelty and violence in society, which, in turn, leads to an increase in the number of people with positive (non-repressed) emotional experience. Further opening of the “circle of violence” gradually, evolutionarily transforms the modern (“political”) family into a “civil” family, the modern (political) state into civil society.

What does the actual implementation of psychotherapeutic relationships in society depend on?

I will answer the question with a metaphor addressed to every reader of this book. What does the reality of your recovery depend on when the disease is known, the diagnosis has been made, and the medicine is at hand? The answer is extremely simple - solely and only from your good will, from your desire to get well.

Doctor of Psychology

The author shows the mechanisms of hidden cruelty in raising children and the roots of violence. Analyzing a series of life stories - drug addict patients, child killers and Adolf Hitler - Miller reveals the origins of the extreme personal destructiveness of these people in their early childhood: as children, they were subjected to cruel treatment and humiliation, which affected their personal characteristics. The basic principles of “destructive pedagogy” - suppressive and crippling child upbringing - are formulated.

For psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, as well as anyone interested in childhood problems.

In the beginning there was education

Per. with him. I.V. Silaeva

Foreword by the scientific editor

In this short preface, I wanted to outline those semantic accents of Alice Miller’s second book published in Russian, which, in my opinion, seem to be the most significant and significant.

First of all, it should be noted the author’s fundamental anti-pedagogical position, according to which any education is violence that negatively affects the mental development of the child, and any pedagogy is the theory and practice of such violence. This is a very strong thesis and extremely difficult to accept. However, the author’s entire argument is aimed at not leaving the reader with the slightest illusion regarding the “humanistic” aspirations of pedagogy and teachers. It is the pedagogical practice that has existed for thousands of years that locks humanity in a vicious circle of violence, the logical ending of which is a global catastrophe that is already quite clearly visible.

If pedagogy acts for the author as the initial form of practice of interaction between people, as a kind of thesis, then the antithesis turns out to be psychotherapy - a relatively young form of such practice. The opposition between pedagogy and psychotherapy is a fundamental contradiction, a confrontation of two diametrically opposed ideas, two different logics. The pedagogical practice of interiorization and assimilation, control and arbitrariness, suppression and repression, silence, dependence and inequality is opposed by the psychotherapeutic practice of exteriorization and creativity, freedom and spontaneity, expression and awareness, speaking, autonomy and equality. It is psychotherapy that is humanity’s response to the totality of all those threats that have already found expression in two world wars and continue to seek their realization in a possible third (and last) world war. The external equivalent of the negative experiences of pain and anger repressed into the sphere of the unconscious are monstrous arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The splitting of the intellectual and affective lives of people ensures the constant improvement of both these weapons themselves and the means of their delivery. Pedagogy is responsible for all these external and internal “grapes of wrath”, for that potential of hatred and violence, which is only waiting for the right occasion to again be embodied in mass madness. It should be emphasized that awareness and understanding of the real connection between individual and social mental life is a characteristic feature of the views not only of A. Miller, but also of all the major psychotherapists of the 20th century. (from 3. Freud and C. Jung to W. Frankl and C. Rogers).

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