Reply #111: Alice Miller discusses origins of excessive obedience to authority in childhood upbringing

[MikeH]

I indicated in a response to one of your earlier threads about the Swiss writer and psychotherapist Alice Miller, and her documentation of childhood abuse and mistreatment, and the long term effects of such abuse and mistreatment. She documents, for instance, that excessive obedience to authority is something that is learned in childhood, and is a natural result of childhood mistreatment, and fear of offending or displeasing one’s parents (or caretakers).

According to Alice Miller, it is essential for both individuals and society as a whole to become aware of and to take seriously the actual sufferings of children from abuse and mistreatment, much of which is done in the name of upbringing, and the long term damage as a result of such mistreatment.

What is essential for an individual person, according to Alice Miller, is to become aware, at the feeling level (as opposed to just intellectually), of what really happened to the person in childhood, and especially to dare to go against the deep-seated societal taboos about holding one’s parents (and other early caregivers and authority figures) accountable and responsible, rather than protecting them or exonerating them from any and all blame, or “forgiving” them. The commandment in the Bible to “honor your father and mother”, which in the biblical text does not make any exceptions if one’s parents are abusive or are otherwise not worthy of honor, and which unfortunately lies in the heart of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, is one such taboo.

If as a child one is mortally afraid of displeasing or offending one’s parents, then an obvious natural consequence is that the person as an adult will not be able to disobey authority figures.

As I have explained in this post in your earlier thread, I myself had a very difficult father, who did many very good things, but who also was often very overbearing and judgmental, and sometimes bordered on being abusive. I consider it to have been a very healthy milestone in my life to come to fully realize, a little over a year after my dad died, that some of his behavior was actually abusive at times. I.e. it was not just something wrong with me that I had problems with him. One of the major regrets and disappointments of my life was that I was not able to confront my dad or stand up to him the way I would have wanted to while he was alive.

Along with the realization that my dad had sometimes bordered on being abusive, I also came to realize that my having been a Christian, and supposedly having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, had not been of help to me in enabling me to deal with my dad, or with any other problems that I had. I eventually parted company with the Christian faith, and feel as certain as I do of anything that doing so was the right and healthy thing for me to do.

A common example of excessive obedience to authority, in our society, is that of the fundamentalist Christian to the idea that the Bible is the “inspired and inerrant Word of God”, and is not to be questioned or challenged. Thus a person can only be “saved” by “accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” in this present lifetime. If a person misses his or her chance in this lifetime, for whatever reason, or happens to guess wrong by adhering to a religion other than Christianity, tough luck for that person. If a murder victim is “unsaved”, tough luck for the victim. However if the murderer later “repents” and “accepts Christ”, the murder is let into heaven. That is what the Bible says, that is what God says, and God’s ways are higher than our ways, and past finding out. Who are we to question God?

It is not surprising that fundamentalist Christians, notably James Dobson, advocate physical discipline (spanking) of children, and that fundamentalist Christians come from backgrounds where that is practiced. It is not surprising to hear about fundamentalist Christian families that are very dysfunctional. It is not surprising that somebody like Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub, had felt very inadequate and unfit as a Christian mother, and had felt that it was necessary to kill her five children in order to save them from hell.

It is not surprising to hear of the Quiverfull movement, in which couples consider it to be a matter of obedience to have as many children as God would choose to bestow, and consider even contraception, not to mention abortion, to be wrong.

It is not surprising that fundamentalist Christians want to display the Ten Commandments in public places, one of which says to “honor your father and mother”, and makes no exceptions if one’s parents are or have been abusive or are otherwise not deserving of honor.