PSYCHOLOGY Copy.Pages
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QUOTES ON PSYCHOLOGY ! ! Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons but one out of one. ! --Dr. William Menninger Human beings are not perfectible. They are improvable. ! --Eric Sevareid When you look directly at an insane man, all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw. ! --Robert Pirsig We can escape from the level of society, but not from the level of intelligence to which we were born. ! --Randall Jarrell All human activity is prompted by desire. ! --Bertrand Russell Psychology is the science of mental life. ! —William James We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. ! —Stephen R. Covey The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day. ! --John Milton Woman’s basic fear is that she will lose love. ! --Sigmund Freud Men are what their mother made them. --Ralph Waldo Emerson ! - !1 - Man is a wanting animal--as soon as one of his needs is satisfied, another appears in its place. This process is unending. It continues from birth to death. ! --Douglas McGregor There is no one on this earth who is not twisted by fear and insecurity. ! --Doris Lessing Depression is the inability to construct a future. ! --Rollo May Schizophrenic behaviour is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation. ! --R. D. Laing I believe that this neglected, wounded inner child of the past is the major source of human misery. ! --John Bradshaw To cease to be loved is for the child practically synonymous with ceasing to live. ! --Dr. Karl Menninger A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel be- wildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - peo- ple who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book. ! —E. B. White We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war. ! —Keith Ablow The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. ! —William Styron I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. —Stephen R. Covey ! - !2 - ! The world is full of terrible suffering, compared to which the small inconveniences of my childhood are as a drop of rain in the sea. ! —Richard Rhodes Mental Health is measured through motivation to live; the more plans you have and the more significant they are, the more healthy you are. ! —Mark Brightlife The hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a child can shrink so that forever af- terward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things. ! --Carson McCullers Look into any man’s heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. ! --Henrik Ibsen Irrational expectations are at the root of most human suffering. ! —Stefan Molyneux What people don’t understand about depression is how much it hurts. It’s like your brain is convinced that it’s dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that’s less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced that your friends secretly hate you, you’re worth- less, and then there’s no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I understand how that can happen to some people. Depression simply hurts too much. ! —Tyler Hamilton The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they needed for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, ne- glected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity. ! —Gabor Maté - !3 - ! I hold the hands of people I never touch. I provide comfort to people I never embrace. I watch people walk into brick walls, the same ones over and over again, and I coax them to turn around and try to walk in a different direction. People rarely see me gladly. As a rule, I catch the residue of their despair. I see people who are broken, and people who only think they are broken. I see people who have had their faces rubbed in their failures. I see weak people wanting anesthesia and strong people who wonder what they have done to make such an enemy of fate. I am often the final pit stop people take before they crawl across the finish line that is marked: I give up. Some people beg me to help. Some people dare me to help. Sometimes the beggars and the dare-ers look the same. Absolutely the same. I’m supposed to know how to tell them apart. Some people who visit me need scar tissue to cover their wounds. Some people who visit me need their wounds opened further, explored for signs of infection and contamination. I make those calls, too. Some days I’m invigorated by it all. Some days I’m numbed. Always, I’m humbled by the role of helper. And, occasionally, I’m ambushed. ! —Stephen White There’s one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to them- selves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn’t work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained. ! —Michael Crichton My head is a prison I’ve been locked in from the start, So if I’m treated like a criminal I might as well play the part. ! —Dan Garfat-Pratt The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity. ! --Eric Hoffer A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society’s ! - !4 - gates open to welcome him; he comes into contact with his fellows. For the first time he is scrutinized and the seeds of the vices and virtues of his maturity are thought !to be observed forming in him. !This is, if I am not mistaken, a singular error. Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his under- standing; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first word which arouse with him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of the preju- dices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. ! —Alexis de Tocqueville When you’re a kid, you don’t think about big stuff that could change your life. You think about small things that might terrify you –like a bad report card or missing a goal in front of all your friends or your friends no longer wanting to play with you. Because that’s the biggest stuff you know. The biggest disappointments are all tied to this small little universe of yours, because bigger things cannot fit into a small universe. If you wanted bigger things in there you needed to have more room –or make more room. Perhaps you thought about your parents or your pets dying, which was rare. But all you knew was you would be terribly sad and lonely. And on those occasions when people or pets actually died, someone usually came along and distracted you from feeling too much of your actual feelings. Grownups did that – they never left you alone to feel alone or think alone too much. They tended to think you are too small to know how to think and feel in big heaps, so they took parts of your heap onto themselves.