Skip to News Feed /_Facebook_/ * Nenad * Home1**0/Requests/ Find Friends Settings Friend RequestsSee All 0/Messages/ Mark All as Read Send a New Message InboxOtherSee All 0/Notifications/ NotificationsMark as Read SettingsNotificationsSee All */Privacy Shortcuts/Privacy Shortcuts/_Search_/ Privacy Shortcuts// Search for helpSee More Settingsor visit Privacy Basics Visit Help Center *Account Settings//Search FacebookBlood Does not Flow in Artificial LimbsJanuary 9, 2015 at 1:33am//Once feelings have been eliminated, the submissive person functionsperfectly and reliably even if he knows no one is going to check up onhim: This perfect adaptation to societys normsin other words, to whatis called healthy normalitycarries with it the danger that such aperson can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss ofautonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but aswitching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway forthe person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated bythe principle of obedience. He never gone beyond the stage of idealizinghis parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; thisidealization can easily be transferred to a Fuhrer or an ideology. Sinceauthoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for theirchildren to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what isdemanded of them is right or wrong. And how is this to be judged? Whereare the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been toldwhat was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity tobecome familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts atcriticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threateningfor the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then hewill find himself at the mercy of authorities for better or worse, justas an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no tothose more powerful will always seem too threatening to him.Witness of sudden political upheavals report again and again with whatastonishing facility many people are able to adapt to a new situation.Overnight they can advocate views totally different from those they heldthe day beforewithout noticing the contradiction. With the change inpower structure, yesterday has completely disappeared for them.And yet, even if this observation should apply to manyperhaps even themostpeople, it is not true for everyone. There have always beenindividuals who refused to be reprogrammed quickly, if ever. We coulduse our psychoanalytic knowledge to address the question of what causesthis important, even crucial, difference; with its aid, we could attemptto discover why some people are so extraordinarily susceptible to thedictates of leaders and groups and why others remain immune to theseinfluences.We admire people who oppose the regime in a totalitarian country andthink they have courage or a strong moral sense or have remained trueto their principles or the like. We may also smile at their naivet,thinking, Dont they realize that their words are of no use at allagainst this oppressive power? That they will have to pay dearly fortheir protest?Yet it is possible that both those who admire and those who scorn theseprotesters are missing the real point: *individuals who refuse to adaptto a totalitarian regime are not doing so out a sense of duty or becauseof naivet but because they cannot help but be true to themselves*. Thelonger I wrestle with these questions, the more I am inclined to seecourage, integrity, and a capacity for love not as virtues, not asmoral categories, but as the consequences of a benign fate.*Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that becomenecessary when something essential is lacking*. The more successfully aperson was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the largerthe arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheseshas to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources ofstrength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. *Blood does not flowin artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters.*What was considered good yesterday candepending on the decree ofgovernment or partybe considered evil and corrupt today, and viceversa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves.*They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves.Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail toaffect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but oncethey have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. Andwhen they sense that something is being demanded of them to which theirwhole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot*.This is the case with people who had the good fortune of being sure oftheir parents love even if they had to disappoint certain parentalexpectations. Or with people who, although they did not have this goodfortune to begin with, learned laterfor example, in analysisto riskthe loss of love in order to regain their lost self. They will not bewilling to relinquish it again for any price in the world.The artificial nature of moral laws and rules of behavior is mostclearly discernible in a situation in which lies and deception arepowerless, i,e., in the mother-child relationship. *A sense of duty maynot be fruitful soil for love but it undoubtedly is for mutual guiltfeelings, and the child will forever be bound to the mother by cripplingfeelings of guilt and gratitude*. The Swiss author Robert Walser oncesaid: There are mothers who choose a favorite from among theirchildren, and it may be that they will stone this child with theirkisses and threaten its very existence. If he had known, had known onan emotional level, that he was describing his own fate, his life mightnot have ended in a mental institution.It is unlikely that strictly intellectual attempts to seek explanationsand gain understanding during adulthood can be sufficient to undo earlychildhood conditioning. *Someone who has learned at his or her peril toobey unwritten laws and renounce feelings at a tender age will obey thewritten laws all the more readily, lacking any inner resistance. Butsince no one can live entirely without feelings, such a person will joingroups that sanction or even encourage the forbidden feelings, which heor she will finally be allowed to live out within a collective framework.**Every ideology offers its adherents the opportunity to discharge theirpent-up affect collectively while retaining the idealized primaryobject, which is transferred to new leader figures or to the group inorder to make up for the lack of a satisfying symbiosis with themother.* Idealization of a narcissistically cathected group guaranteescollective grandiosity. *Since every ideology provides a scapegoatoutside the confines of its own splendid group, the weak and scornedchild who is part of the total self but has been split off and neveracknowledge can now be openly scorned and assailed in this scapegoat.The reference in Himmlers speech to the bacillus of weakness which isto be exterminated and cauterized demonstrates very clearly the roleassigned to the Jews by someone suffering from grandiosity who attemptsto split off the unwelcome elements of his own psyche*.In the same way that analytic familiarity with the mechanisms ofsplitting off and projection can help us to understand the phenomenon ofthe Holocaust, a knowledge of the history of the Third Reich helps us tosee the consequences of poisonous pedagogy more clearly. Against thebackdrop of the rejection of childishness instilled by our training, itbecomes easier to understand why men and women had little difficultyleading a million children, whom they regarded as the bearers of thefeared portions of their own psyche, into the gas chambers. One caneven imagine that by shouting at them, beating them, or photographingthem, they were finally able to release the hatred going back to earlychildhood. From the start, it had been the aim of their upbringing tostifle childish, playful, and life-affirming side. The crueltyinflicted on them, the psychic murder of the child they once were, hadto be passed on in the same way: each time they sent another Jewishchild to the gas ovens, they were in essence murdering the child withinthemselves.From the book: /For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing andthe Roots of Violence/ By Alice Miller Page 83,84 and 85Like Share*// Sylvie Imelda Shene and 2 otherslike this.*Nenad SimicWrite a comment...Facing Childhood Traumas s photo.Facing Childhood Traumas *Notes by Facing Childhood Traumas*All Notes* Get Notes via RSS* Embed Post* ReportPeople You May KnowSee AllPeople You May KnowOlivera Kovaevi12 mutual friends //Add Friend Jasmine Harris//Add Friend Vaja Lovelady1 mutual friend //Add Friend Velimir Abramovi10 mutual friends //Add Friend Turistiki Vodi Kroz Srbiju7 mutual friends //Add Friend Fiona Burdette//Add Friend Kreativno Slobodno Vrijeme (Amela Grbo)3 mutual friends //Add Friend About Create AdCreate Page DevelopersCareers Privacy Cookies Terms Help Facebook 2015English (US) //Updesh Rajoriya likes Ana Carolina Carro s photo.Eli Vasileva likes Ekskluziva s photo.Michael Thornton likes Karen Long s post.Irena Savin likes Kavita Sharma s photo.Gezim Berisha and TC Sefiha Selvi are now friends.Show Older// *oMilena ZlatanovioEmina MilosavljevicoSonja BorozanoTatjana SilajdzijaoNatasa CincarevicoJovana Mirkovio46m//Corinna Kloseo oVera EracoCentar Za Komunikaciju BjankoMORE FRIENDS (3)oWeb//Mia MantrioWeb//Updesh RajoriyaoWeb//Gorica Jankovi//Clear//0 * Dummy Chat (3)Chat*Loading...//ClearNew Message//