Dr. Alice Miller is a Swiss pyschotherapist that has written several
books on the causes and effects of childhood trauma
since the late 70s.
If you are a parent or thinking of becoming a parent and the
sentence, "I want to raise my child to be a good person" has come out
of your mouth, it might do you and your children some good for you to
read Dr. Miller.
I'd start with her book The Drama of the Gifted Child. If you
see yourself described in Drama, you might get a lot out of
talking to a psychotherapist.
Dr. Miller describes how a child's development and
sense of self is affected by abuse and neglect. She leads people to
see in themselves the
origins of why they feel what they feel and do
what they do.
She describes how traditionally accepted means of child rearing
serves the needs of parents and not children.
She stresses the importance of respect for the child's feelings and
the associated emotional caretaking a parent is responsible for.
She explains the process of self-repression, self-loathing and
splitting off from the self that a child instinctively uses to survive
and to cope with abuse and neglect. She explains how the use of this
survival instinct can manifest itself in neuroses,
physical illnesses (e.g. migraines), and self-destructive behavior.
She warns that if a child doesn't discover the truth about how they
were raised and attempt to reclaim their true self, they are very
likely to pass on their neuroses to their own children via the same
child-rearing techniques they were subjected
to. They may also project this contempt of their
repressed selves onto society.