Reply #105: Alice Miller writes about a person’s childhood upbringing leading one into becoming “authoritarian"

[MikeH]

First, I want to let you know, Time for change, that I always look forward to and enjoy your thoughtful posts with your thoughtful analyses. I have linked to your journal on my journal blogroll.

I have come to like and appreciate Bob Altmeyer’s book about authoritarians and the phenomenon of authoritarianism in followers and leaders.

The Swiss writer and psychologist, Alice Miller, in her books and in her web sites, deals with the matter of the matter of the often harmful effects of a person’s childhood upbringing, and childhood abuse and mistreatment, and the long term effects of such abuse and mistreatment.

Of particular note is her now online book For Your Own Good (a phrase my father used very often; I had a very difficult father), written in the early 1980’s, which starts by documenting the horrific, soul-destroying upbringing recommended by child rearing manuals of past centuries. One such manual was very popular in Germany in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, right at the time that the future perpetrators of the Nazi holocaust were children. She documents that all of the Nazi holocaust perpetrators, without exception (as far as she could find), had “strict” (actually soul-murdering) upbringings. Her book has an entire chapter on Hitler, which documents that he was constantly abused and tormented by his father, and shows how when he became dictator he manifested pretty much his own childhood history.

Here is a passage in Alice Miller’s book about Rudolf Höss, a commandment at Auschwitz, which includes a quote by him.

The strong emphasis on obedience in Rudolf Höss's early upbringing left its indelible mark on him, too. Certainly his father did not intend to raise him to be a commandant at Auschwitz; on the contrary, as a strict Catholic, he had a missionary career in mind for his son. But he had instilled in him at an early age the principle that the authorities must always be obeyed, no matter what their demands. Höss writes:

Our guests were mostly priests of every sort. As the years passed, my father's religious fervor increased. Whenever time permitted, he would take me on pilgrimages to all the holy places in our own country, as well as to Einsiedeln in Switzerland and to Lourdes in France. He prayed passionately that the grace of God might be bestowed on me, so that I might one day become a priest blessed by God. I, too, was as deeply religious as was possible for a boy of my age, and I took my religious duties very seriously. I prayed with true, childlike gravity and performed my duties as acolyte with great earnestness. I had been brought up by my parents to be respectful and obedient toward all adults, and especially the elderly, regardless of their social status. I was taught that my highest duty was to help those in need. It was constantly impressed upon me in forceful terms that I must obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents, teachers, and priests, and indeed of all adults, including servants, and that nothing must distract me from I this duty. Whatever they said was always right. These basic principles by which I was brought up became second nature to me.

When the authorities later required Höss to run the machinery of death in Auschwitz, how could he have refused? And later, after his arrest, when he was given the assignment of writing an account of his life, he not only performed this task faithfully and conscientiously but politely expressed gratitude for the fact that the time in prison passed more quickly because of "this interesting occupation." His account has provided the world with deep insight into the background of a multitude of otherwise incomprehensible crimes.

In another section of her book, which starts with an excerpt from Heinrich Himmler’s Posen speech in 1943, she has the following passages, which strikingly demonstrate how people who have had a certain childhood upbringing come to be authoritarian followers.

People with any sensitivity cannot be turned into mass murderers overnight. But the men and women who carried out "the final solution" did not let their feelings stand in their way for the simple reason that they had been raised from infancy not to have any feelings of their own but to experience their parents' wishes as their own. These were people who, as children, had been proud of being tough and not crying, of carrying out all their duties "gladly," of not being afraid--that is, at bottom, of not having an inner life at all.

and

This perfect adaptation to society's norms--in other words, to what is called "healthy normality"--carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. He has never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Führer or to an ideaology. Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not. And how is this to be judged? Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem too threatening to him.

Altmeyer in his book describes both authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders. Alice Miller in her book did not show why one person might become an authoritarian follower while another person might become an authoritarian leader (like Hitler). That question was beyond the scope of her book, and I don’t think it was being asked at the time she wrote it.