The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring

For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) - ISBN: 9781466806764