There’s a link—rarely acknowledged—between childhood repression and adult ideological zeal. In Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, Alice Miller explored how individuals who grew up under emotional suppression, strict control, or outright abuse, later seek belonging and emotional catharsis in collective movements. These groups—political, social, religious—often function not as rational communities but as surrogate families, offering what their real ones never did: a place to feel seen, to express repressed emotions, and to direct rage toward a “permitted” enemy.

In our modern world, this dynamic plays out with striking intensity. Movements that appear to be political in nature are often emotionally charged arenas where unresolved childhood pain is played out. The "Free Palestine" movement is a recent and powerful example of this. What appears on the surface to be a call for justice often reveals a deeper emotional reality: people projecting their unprocessed childhood wounds onto a convenient external “oppressor.” The result is not activism, but a form of ritualized projection.

The Psychology of Repression → Rage

Most people have never been taught to connect their adult behaviors with their childhood experiences. As Miller showed, many children grow up in environments where anger, sadness, or even individual thought are discouraged or punished. These children learn to suppress their true feelings and adapt to please the adults around them. But the feelings don’t disappear—they get buried, stored in the body, the nervous system, and the unconscious.

> “The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it.”

— Alice Miller

As these children grow into adults, their inner pain seeks release. But because it was never safe to confront their parents—the true source of their emotional wounding—they look for substitute figures or ideologies onto which they can project their unresolved emotions. That’s where the collective comes in.

The Collective as Surrogate Mother

For the emotionally abandoned or over-controlled child, the collective is deeply seductive. It provides:

Belonging (“I’m finally part of something”),

Permission to feel (“I can be angry, as long as it’s at the right target”),

Pseudo-morality (“I’m a good person because I support the oppressed”).

But all of this is conditional. The collective doesn't encourage true emotional healing—it redirects pain toward external enemies. It allows catharsis, but never introspection. It permits rage, but only outwardly.

> “Every ideology offers an outlet for forbidden emotions while camouflaging their source.”

— Alice Miller (paraphrased)

Alice Miller understood this well. She described how people who were never allowed to confront their caregivers often become highly obedient adults—or else rebels who obey new masters under the illusion of independence. They join crowds, movements, or ideologies, thinking they’ve found truth, when in reality they’ve simply found a socially acceptable vessel for their pain.

Manufactured Conflicts and Emotional Exploits

From my perspective, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not an organic, historic battle between two legitimate national causes—it’s a manufactured crisis, created in the late 1940s to serve long-term geopolitical and psychological agendas. The endless cycle of violence and emotional investment it generates feeds a system designed to keep people trapped in polarity, outrage, and moral confusion.

We need only look at the mindset behind its creation. In 1919, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote:

> “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

— Lord Balfour

This was not about justice. It was about shaping a strategic conflict—one that would last generations and distract the world with moral ambiguity and emotional chaos.

Then there’s Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and an early Palestinian nationalist figure, who aligned himself with Nazi Germany during WWII:

> “Germany has understood the importance of the Palestinian question and the efforts of the Arabs to gain their independence.”

— Amin al-Husseini, 1941, Berlin Radio Broadcast

These early alliances show that the Palestinian “cause” was not solely about freedom—it was manipulated from the start, politicized, radicalized, and used to stir mass identity trauma.

Events like the October 7, 2023 massacre—when Hamas brutally attacked Israeli civilians—reveal the moral corruption of the narrative. These were not actions of a people seeking peace, but of a terrorist group fueled by hatred. What is worse, many civilians in Gaza aided or celebrated them. And yet, in the West, thousands of emotionally disoriented individuals poured into the streets, chanting for Palestine, blinded to the facts.

This is not activism. It is displaced emotion disguised as virtue.

Antisemitism as Displaced Emotion

The dangerous resurgence of antisemitism is not born from thoughtful critique. It is erupting from emotional projection. Jews are cast not as human beings, but as archetypes—figures onto whom unresolved rage, envy, and resentment can be projected. This is not new; it is a well-worn psychological pattern.

> “The more we idealize the past, the more likely we are to lie to ourselves in the present.”

— Alice Miller

For many, the Jew becomes the symbolic parent—wealthy, powerful, controlling, always to blame. In reality, these accusations mirror the inner dynamic of the wounded child: the child who once felt powerless and now seeks a symbolic figure to destroy.

The enemy must be an authority figure because deep down, the true enemy—the emotionally cold mother, the violent father—is still too terrifying to name.

Emotional Awareness Is the Only Way Out

Alice Miller's work teaches us that until we become aware of our emotional history—our childhood wounds, our repressed grief, our forbidden rage—we are easily manipulated. We project our pain outward. We join causes not out of clarity, but from confusion. We mistake rage for justice. We mistake ideology for healing.

> “It is only the awareness of our past that gives us power in the present.”

— Alice Miller (paraphrased)

True activism must be rooted in emotional honesty. Otherwise, we’re just playing out old scripts—fighting our parents in disguise, screaming for validation, mistaking the crowd for family.

Conclusion: Are You Fighting for Truth—or Just to Feel?

There is no shortage of real injustice in the world. But if we don’t first deal with our inner world, we become part of the chaos. The emotionally wounded child does not disappear—they grow up and, if left unhealed, find themselves yelling in crowds, parroting slogans, convinced they’ve found moral purpose.

But their purpose was stolen long ago—when they were taught not to feel.

Alice Miller’s message is clear: Only emotional truth can set us free. That freedom begins not in the crowd, not in ideology, but in the mirror.