THE BODY NEVER LIES - THE LINGERING EFFECTS OF CRUEL PARENTING - ALICE MILLER, PH.D

                             BOOK REVIEW

BY SADIA WALI

 

World-renowned psychoanalyst, Alice Miller has devoted a lifetime to studying the cruelties inflicted on children. In The Body Never Lies, Miller goes further investigating the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the adult body.

Using numerous case histories gathered from her practice, as well as examining the biographical stories of other writers such as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others, Miller exhibited how a child's emotional traumas, humiliation, and rage create physical and mental  disorders. While discussing the lives of these literary  celebrities, Miller explored  the traumas that haunted each author's childhood. She also connected the writers' painful childhoods with their age of maturity, causing severe mental disorders and sickness such as depression, anorexia, cancer, and even insanity.

  
Miller examined parental spanking to sexual abuse and emotional blackmail. According to the writer, the societal pressures  cause parents to adopt harsh and tyrannical  attitude with   children. To combat the devastating effects of such jarring, Miller recommended the therapy of "Enlightened Witness" to reaffirm the patient's repressed reactions to a forgotten childhood experience.

Miller also discussed  that religion can  help young  Individuals  to  become healthy and conscious adults. She urged society to realize that the Fourth Commandment -"Honor thy father and thy mother"- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argued not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical child rearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.

Finally, identifying the consequences, she stated that “Parents and guardians who abuse their children, both physically and mentally, leave them embarrassed and hurt. The inability of most children to properly express such feelings causes them to perpetuate the cycle by lashing out at their family, friends, and, above all their own children, who will inevitably do the same.’’

By reading this book, I found a calm and encouraging voice of Miller. The book provide us  an insight  to authoritarian parenting and its direct and indirect effect on child’s personality. The clinical therapy offered by the writer  boost up healing powers of the adult self and the body.

To know about negative temperaments and mood of your child and how to tackle depression, illness and other conflicts, parents are recommended to read this book and

analyse the factors which are causing physical problems in their children.

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Promoting peace -Bridging the gap between cultures is urgent and necessary for peace, stability and development

By SADIA WALI

The world is experiencing complex challenges, such as violent extremism, identity-based conflicts and cultural and religious constraint. Ethno nationalism, racism and discrimination against minority groups, religious extremism and violations of human rights are the cause of an increasing number of local and regional conflicts across the world.

FROM A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE TO A CULTURE OF PEACE, A UNESCO publication says,

“The word peace has a variety of meanings in different contexts. In international affairs, it is employed to denote relations between states. Elsewhere, it is associated with internal conditions in a country, in a society, between groups, organizations and social structures or between man and his natural environment. In ethics or morality, the word ‘peace’ is used to characterize human relationships and attitudes or to determine an individual’s frame of mind, often qualified as ‘inner peace. In the law of nations, ‘peace’ denotes the contrary of war, which is most frequently defined as a resort to armed struggle and hostilities”

Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, ‘the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. The Yamoussoukro Declaration proposed to base a peace culture ‘on the universal values of respect for life, liberty, justice, solidarity, tolerance, human rights and equality between women and men’. All these values may be grouped around such key notions as justice, human rights, democracy, development, non-violence and peaceful resolution of conflicts.

A culture of peace is intimately linked with a culture of human rights and democracy, thus these racial disputes and conflicts have raised the question how can we deal with these in a constructive way. Johan Galtung, Elise Boulding and Santiago Genovéseminent peace researchers and philosophers have emphasized on conflict prevention and post-conflict peace-building procedures. They stressed upon rethinking peace and designing new modalities for its achievement at the international, regional, national and local levels. These modalities are renewed focus on good governance, rule of law, sustainable development, and respect for human rights, economic and social marginalization.

UNESCO has raised awareness worldwide about the importance of dialogue, diversity and inclusion. UNESCO World Report: Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue.  PART I  says, Equitable exchange and dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based on mutual understanding and respect and the equal dignity of all cultures is the essential prerequisite for constructing social cohesion, reconciliation among peoples and peace among nations.

Challenges to building intercultural dialogue include: building intercultural competencies, promoting interfaith dialogue, and reconciling conflicting memories. Interfaith dialogue is a crucial dimension of international understanding, and thus of conflict resolution; playing a vital role in the field of Cultural Diplomacy, interfaith dialogue fosters reciprocal understanding, acceptance and tolerance amongst different religious communities.

The U.S. State Department released the Country Reports 2014-15 on Terrorism which states that nearly 33,000 people were killed and 34,700 injured in almost 13,500 terrorist attacks around the world in 2014-15. The terrorist attacks took place in 95 countries, but were concentrated in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Syria. The report points out that terrorism in 2015 was marked by numerous kidnappings and hostage-taking events citing more than 9,400 people kidnapped or taken hostage in terrorist attacks particularly in Iraq and Syria. The root causes of increased terrorism around the world are ethno-nationalism, racial and cultural discrimination, socio-economic status and lack of political inclusiveness in states or grievances to combat terrorism.

General Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova said: "We see an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Syria and Iraq. We see cultural cleansing on massive scale, humanity’s shared heritage destroyed, looted and sold off. Countering violent extremism calls for action in every society, especially with young women and men, who, in their aspirations and their diversity are our greatest ambassadors of peace,”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in remarks to General Assembly debate on peace operations, 12 October 2015 said, “The historic adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals last month underscores a long-standing truth: there will be no peace without development, no development without peace, and neither without respect for human rights.”UN Secretary General has rightly underlined the centrality of tolerance, promotion of inter-cultural dialogue and mutual respect for global peace. At a time when various parts of the world is hungering for peace and the phenomenon of racism, xenophobia, extremism and various other forms of violence are stirring the very edifice of a peaceful global society, all efforts needs to be made to promote voices of compassion and love.

United Nations General Assembly stipulates certain duties and obligations for states in order to promote peace and calls upon all states to discourage and eliminate incitement to racial hatred, national or other discrimination, injustice or advocacy of violence and war.

President Obama clearly emphasized about the nature of the struggle against violent extremism and the most appropriate response: "Ideologies are not defeated by guns but new ideas," he said. ‎ "‎The path is not less democracy but more democracy, HR and the rule of law. “We have to work together‎ to build diverse, tolerant, inclusive societies to defeat violent extremism," said President Obama, adding 

"We will win the battle and this requires diligence, focus, and sustainable efforts by all of us."

The most senior United Nations humanitarian official stressed that the failure of parties to the conflict in Syria to uphold the basic tenets of international law has propelled the Syrian people to levels of tragedy and despair which could barely have been imagined five years ago.

“By any measure, the situation in Syria has worsened since the beginning of the year,” the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, told the UN Security Council during a briefing on the situation in the country.

Prime Minister Abadi of Iraq said, ‎ "We have to stop foreign fighters, stop financing, stop the enslavement of women, stop theft of artifacts.‎"

Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, the King of Jordan and Prime Minister of Italy, MatteoRenzi has highlighted the role of collaboration and dialogue among communities in bringing back peace in the region.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia said  "No crime and violence is justified in the name of religion. Moderation in Islam and its associated values of humility and compassion are values that help to promote values of compassion, respect, tolerance and mutual understanding.”

Members of the European Council have reacted with deep sorrow and strong unity to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. These attacks targeted the fundamental values and human rights that are at the heart of the European Union - solidarity, freedom, including freedom of expression, pluralism, democracy, tolerance and human dignity. We will safeguard our common values and protect all from violence based on ethnic or religious motivations and racism they said.

The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, laid emphasis on the urgency of collective action in the struggle against Violent Extremism. This was also echoed by the Prime Minister of Belgium, who said: "only together can we make progress towards a safer world."

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif said, "Pakistan is fully committed to the objectives of nonproliferation and disarmament. Pakistan is also participating in global efforts to prevent and combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction he said. He proposed for renewed peace talks with India. He said that these talks aimed at defining the relationship between the Asian countries ‘as one of cooperation, not confrontation.’

 Promotion of non-violence and peace is not just about the absence of war. It is not an end or final goal, but a process. It is about creating an enabling environment for promoting peaceful social change through advocacy, knowledge sharing and networking that increase tolerance and encourage conflict prevention. Peaceful exchange of views and ideas builds understanding, empathy and tolerance and identifies new possibilities for peaceful coexistence among nations and peoples of the region.

We are living through a period of global transition. Technology is connecting us ever more closely, and cross-cultural exchanges are deepening every day. Societies are more diverse and intolerance is on the rise. We have to prepare learners to become good citizens in their communities, nation and the world and equip them with the skills that promote peace and human dignity at all levels of interaction.  Teach girls and boys not just how to live together but how to act together as global citizens. We need to nurture tolerance from playgrounds to parliaments.

“Let us join hands to accept differences and to end violence. No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive” - #‎MahatmaGandhi

Let every dream become Martin Luther King’s dream, let every step towards peace become Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March and let every obstacle in your path become Nelson Mandela’s painful twenty-seven years in prison. Promise yourself that you will contribute your best to make the phenomenon of violence outdated, promise yourself that you will try to motivate your friends to walk on the path of non-violence.  Rise up to the level of love, compassion and peace and create powerful, long-lasting change to make this world a better place to live.

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