Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society . . . .Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, trans. Ruth Ward (NY: Basic Books, 1981), p. 69.
