Psychology Quotes

Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.

The deepest yearning of human beings seems to be a constellation in which the two poles (motherliness and fatherliness, female and male, mercy and justice, feeling and thought, nature and intellect) are united in a synthesis, in which both sides of the polarity lose their antagonism and, instead, color each other.

I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not.

I am the daughter of a psychologist. I know that the thing ostensibly being studied is rarely the thing being studied. (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p. 99)

People think you have only to ‘tell’ a person that he ‘ought’ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.

Without energy being invested in resisting the unwanted or dueling with fears, we have more energy and attention available for noticing not only the disturbing, but the wonderful...When we are not fixated on threat and defending ourselves, when we're not exhausted and burned out from chronic stress, we are able to see the daily evidence that we are in the midst of a mind-blowing miracle called Life....Then we will experience breathtaking, heart-rippling moments that counterbalance every trial and tribulation. When we're fully conscious of the universe's artistry and generosity, who needs psychodelics or Prozac?

We forget very easily what gives us pain.

That just seems to be the way we’re built.

What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Any methodology for developing patience requires a multi-tiered approach.

Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.

Your Success is defined not by what you did, but the gap between what you intended and what you finally achieved marks the relative degree of success. The more you meet your expectations, more successful you're as an individual. That's a sign of true marksmanship, not otherwise.

By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.

When it comes to most true bipolars, consider this thought: Genius by birth, bipolar by design.

Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of – and buried – the potential of our teens.

When you go into the psych ward, you can’t have anything with you except colored pencils. You can’t have any electronics. If you have a drawstring on your pants, a belt, shoelaces, a hood, or extra-long fabric, your very clothes are ripped off your back. They search you with a metal detector like you’re a criminal, doing everything short of putting their hand up your butt. Before you go through those cold, automatic, barred doors, you know your life is not your own. This is especially true during the first week, while you stare at florescent lighting and wait impatiently for your meds to kick in. I wish I had remembered the psych ward prison cell a week ago. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be wearing this hospital gown that they gave me until I can get more compliant clothes.

Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.

Figure out what you care about... and then care about it

All of material and All of any services can be purchased, with the exception of, Love, Peace and Joy, they are not for sale at any price

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history

Looking back, retrospectively on the events of that evening, I can see the irony — the shrink whose cat ate his own tail. At the time of the incident, however, humor was not in my emotional repertoire; it was the furthest thing from my mind.

You are never left out from the experience of love. You can always give and receive love right from where you're at. It's always up to you.

But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways (...). I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.

Up to this point, it was rare for the mad to be distinguished from the poor, the homeless, the indigent, beggars, vagabonds, petty criminals and others who were unable to fit into society or take care of themselves. It was rare, too, that they were locked up.

A delirious person would think there's only one way, and that way is simple, but the truth is no way of living is simple, and there are many ways like there are many roads, but one must think above the system, and the individual must work strong to avail enough to be satisfied.

An intelligent person can rationalize anything, a wise person doesn't try.

The world is your perception of it. Inside and outside always match - they're reflections of each other. The world is a mirror image of your mind.

Suicide may be a choice, but not as much as it is expected when everything else fails.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.

The female brain is engineered to avoid conflicts at all cost, whereas the male brain pleasures conflicts in the purpose of being the boss.

To spoil means to put no limit on caprice, to give one the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. The young child exposed to this regime has no experience of its own limits. By reason of the removal of all external restraint, all clashing with other things, he comes actually to believe that he is the only one that exists, and gets used to not considering others, especially not considering them as superior to himself. This feeling of another's superiority could only be instilled into him by someone who, being stronger than he is, should force him to give up some desire, to restrict himself, to restrain himself. He would then have learned this fundamental discipline: "Here I end and here begins another more powerful than I am. In the world, apparently, there are two people: I myself and another superior to me.

A lot of people pray for power, house, financial breakthrough, wealth etc. But only few ask God for wisdom. There are so many great power pack man and women of God who lack wisdom.

Follow the truth and you will never get lost.

Eventually, it boils down to two choices – do I wish to experience this physical reality primarily through joy or do I want to experience it through suffering? That’s all there is to it. And since each person eventually works their way toward the realization that conscious expansion can happen through joy rather than suffering – enlightenment is a natural byproduct.

Nothing will give you emotional laryngitis like living in close proximity to someone who refuses to listen. Having emotions but no voice chokes the life out of relationships.

All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.

Something in me whispered that I needed to stop thinking, that I should above all not go too farwith thinking. But that never worked; I always thought things through to the end, to their mostextreme consequence.

Need is what tears people apart. When you want someone, you never really need them. But as soon as you start need someone, they no longer want you.

...the higher the expectations about unselected alternatives, the lower the level of satisfaction with the chosen good.

Past and history are not the same. Past is what happened. It consists of events that affected the patient's self, some of which he can remember, but the most he is having trouble remembering. History is transforming the past to a story that the person tells himself. Sometimes, the story stems from the past, but even the most sincere patient's history is more like a myth.(Translated from the Hebrew edition).

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.

While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.

What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works.

Show me a culture where honesty is considered ridiculous, where nobody's ever accountable for anything, where anger gets admired as a sign of strength, and I'll show you a place where misery is permanent

Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.

There is a psychospiritual disease of the soul that originates within ourselves and that has the potential to destroy our species or to wake us up, depending on whether or not we recognize what it is revealing to us.

The individual psychotherapy patient comes to the therapist with an almost automatic deference, a sense of dependence and compliance. The role pattern is old and established: the dependent child seeking guidance from a parent figure. There is no such traditional image for the family, no established pattern in which an entire family submits to the guidance of an individual. And the family structure is simply too powerful and too crucial for the members to go trustingly into an experience that threatens to change the entire matrix of their relationships. If the family therapist is to acquire that initial "authority figure" or "parent" role that is so necessary if therapy is to be more powerful than an ordinary social experience, he has to earn it.

Healthy people have healthy boundaries. Unhealthy people, well, let’s not get into that. It’s like this: some people have walls which means they let no one in. This equals unhealthy. Some people let everyone in and let themselves be stepped all over. This equals unhealthy.

There is no crime in anyone’s blood any more than there is goodness in the blood of others. Criminals are not born. They are made by hunger, want and injustice.

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance

In spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which "only" profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend energy on?

[M]ental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental wellbeing.

What, then, was the new strategy he proposed? More troops and more money. For him, any other option was unthinkable. It would mean he had made a colossal mistake.

If you have no troubles – buy a goat.

The sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily.

Vertigo is something else than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which temps and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defense ourselves.

Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.