Probably the marjority- of us belong to the category of “decent people who where once beaten,” since such treatment of children was a matter of course in past generations. Be that as it may, to some degree we can all be numbered among the survivors of “poisonous pedagogy.” yet it would be just as false to deduce from this fact of survival that our upbringing caused us no harm as it would be to maintain that a limited nuclear war would be harmless because a part of humanity would still be alive when it was over. Quite apart from the culpably frivolous attitude toward the victims this view betrays, it also fails to take into account the question of what aftereffects the survivors of a nuclear conflict would have to face. The situation is analogous to “poisonous pedagogy, ” for even if we, as survivors of severe childhood humiliations we all too readily make light of, don‘t kill ourselves or others, are not drug addicts or criminals, and are fortunate enough not to pass on the absurdities of our own childhood to our childeren so that they become psychotic, we can still function as dangerous carriers of infections. We will continue to infect the next generation with the virus of “poisonous pedagogy” as long as we claim that this kind of upbringing is harmless. It is here that we experience the harmful aftereffects of our survival, because we can protect ourselves form a poison only if it is clearly labeled as such, not if it is mixed, as it were, with ice cream advertised as being “For Your Own Good.” Our children will find themselves helpless when confronted with such labeling. When people who have been beaten or spanked as children attempt to play down the consequences by setting themselves up as examples, even claiming it was good for them, they are inevitably contributing to the continuation of cruelty in the world by this refusal to take their childhood tragedies seriously. Taking over this attitude, their children, pupils, and students will in turn beat their own children, citing their parents, teachers, and professors as authoirities. Don’t the consequences of having been a battered child find their most tragic expression in this type of thinking?
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What we do need is to have respect for their needs, their feelings, and their individuality, as well as for our own.
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All appeals to love, solidarity, and compassion will be useless if this crucial prerequisite of sympathy and understanding is missing.
This fact has special implicatons for trained psychologists, becuase without empathy they cannot apply their professional knowledge in a beneficial way, regardless of how much time they devote to their patients. The same is true for parents; even if they are highly educated and have sufficient time at their disposal, they are helpless when it comes to understanding their child so long as they must keep the sufferings of their own childhood at an emotional distance. On the other hand, it is possilbe for a working mother, for example, to grasp her child’s situation immediately, provided she has the necessary inner openness and freedom.
