« As a child, I had to learn to suppress my most natural reactions to wounds (e.g. rage, anger, pain or fear) for fear of punishment. Later, at school, I was even proud of my ability to self-control and restraint. I took this ability for a virtue, and expected so much from my first child. It was only after I had succeeded in abandoning this view of the mind that I was able to understand the suffering of a child who was forbidden to react appropriately to an injury. In this way, he is prevented from experimenting, in a benevolent environment, with the way he behaves towards his emotions, so that later, instead of fearing his feelings, he can rely on them to better orient himself in life. »

« This faculty of the human body never ceases to amaze me. He rises against lying with astounding tenacity and intelligence. Moral and religious prescriptions fail to deceive or disorient him. (p.105) »

« So we have once again ... the picture of correct and harmless parents to whom, for incomprehensible reasons, the Good God or the devil have sent a monster into their cradle. But monsters don't fall from heaven or hell in bourgeois dining rooms. Once one knows the mechanisms of identification with the aggressor, of splitting the self, of projecting and transferring one's own childhood problems onto one's child, which make education a real persecution, one can no longer be content with medieval explanations. »