Quotes by Psychologists - Page 20

Because the victims are “only children,” their distress is trivialized. But in twenty years’ time these children will be adult who will feel compelled to pay it all back to their own children. They may consciously fight with vigor against cruelty in the world yet carry within themselves an experience of cruelty that they may unconsciously inflict on others. As long as it remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood, they will have not awareness of it and will therefore be unable to avoid passing it on.It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior. Someone who slaps or hits another adult or knowingly insults her is aware of hurting her. Even if he doesn’t know why he is doing this, he has some sense of what he is doing. But how often were our parents, and we ourselves toward our own children, unconscious of how painfully, deeply, and abidingly they and we injured a child’s tender, budding self?
Alice MIller
Abundant evidence exists to prove that we are continually creating excuses to explain why we do not reach our goals.
Andrea Goeglein
I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike.
William James
One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity—not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.
Terri Apter
We cannot safely assume that other people's minds work on the same principles as our own. All too often others with whom we come in contact do not reason as we reason or do not value the things we value or are not interested in what interests us.
Isabel Briggs Myers
When Islam swept out of the Arabian Peninsula, it became an invasive species to both the pagan and Christian areas it conquered. With it came the sexual practices of a very patriarchal, polygamist culture. While the religions it displaced were not particularly sex positive, Islamic sexual practices, on the whole, were uniformly sex negative.
Darrel Ray
Too often the survivor is seen by [himself or] herself and others as "nuts," "crazy," or "weird." Unless her responses are understood within the context of trauma. A traumatic stress reaction consists of *natural* emotions and behaviors in response to a catastrophe, its immediate aftermath, or memories of it. These reactions can occur anytime after the trauma, even decades later. The coping strategies that victims use can be understood only within the context of the abuse of a child. The importance of context was made very clear many years ago when I was visiting the home of a Holocaust survivor. The woman's home was within the city limits of a large metropolitan area. Every time a police or ambulance siren sounded, she became terrified and ran and hid in a closet or under the bed. To put yourself in a closet at the sound of a far-off siren is strange behavior indeed—outside of the context of possibly being sent to a death camp. Within that context, it makes perfect sense. Unless we as therapists have a good grasp of the context of trauma, we run the risk of misunderstanding the symptoms our clients present and, hence, responding inappropriately or in damaging ways.
Diane Mandt Langberg
Practise really seeing yourself in the mirror. This is NOT about examining yourself. This is about you looking beyond your external image to connect with your soul. Look upon yourself with complete appreciation and acceptance. You are so beautiful.
Miya Yamanouchi
Mohammed took his tribal customs and traditions and injected them into his new religion. Many of the ideas and traditions he implemented were already contained in the tribes he conquered, so in many cases, no major changes were required of his new followers. For example, most, if not all, of the tribes were polygamous. Women were seen primarily as chattel and under the complete control of their fathers or husbands. The communities of the new Islamic religion in the 600s CE often converted en masse. With minor modifications, they kept practicing their traditions. Mecca was already a major pagan religious shrine; Mohammed conveniently changed it into a place of worship and pilgrimage for Allah.Practically speaking, Mohammed unified a fracture region under a single religion and did it with a superior military. Conquest, war, and male predominance were the hallmarks of Islam. Despite political splits over the centuries, the tribal nature of Islam remains intact.
Darrel Ray
Nobody will ever tell you who praised you but everybody would like to be the first to tell you who criticized you.
Amit Abraham
Experiment participants asked to pick which politician looked more confident in a photograph picked the winner of the race two thirds of the time. This phenomenon held up even when they only glimpsed the photographs for a 10th of a second.
Jonathan Haidt
When we prefer to believe something, we may approach the relevant evidence by asking ourselves,"what evidence is there to support this belief?"...Note that this question is not unbiased: It directs our attention to supportive evidence and away from information that might contradict the desired conclusion. Because it is almost always possible to uncover some supportive evidence, the asymmetrical way we frame the question makes us overly likely to become convinced of what we hope to be true.
Thomas Gilovich
The day when on the cover of my books, my name will appear in bigger fond than the title of my book- I will stop writing because that would be the death of the writer in me.
Kirtida Gautam
Memories are what we cherish so lets make the present worth cherishing.
Amit Abraham
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being.
William James
To be able to listen -- really, wholly passively, self-effacingly listen -- without presupposing, classifying, improving, controverting, evaluating, approving or disapproving, without dueling with what is being said, without rehearsing the rebuttal in advance, without free-associating to portions of what is being said so that succeeding portions are not heard at all -- such listening is rare.
Abraham H. Maslow
Strait-jacket and chain-gang procedures had to be done away with if there was to a chance for growth of individuals in the intellectual springs of freedom without which there is no assurance of genuine and continued normal growth.
John Dewey
Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted.
Paul Pearsall
Lose your weightLose your mindBut don't lose heartIt's very expensive .
Amit Abraham
No one wants to be entrapped by his or her addictive habit...
Asa Don Brown
Whenever you come upon a free supply of high-quality corn, provided unexpectedly right there in the middle of the forest, be careful! The people who put it there are probably sitting nearby in a stand, just waiting to take a shot at you. Keep your eyes and ears open!
James C. Dobson
When Carl asked the Brices to bring their whole family to therapy, everyone in the family knew intuitively what that meant. Their whole world would be exposed: all its caring, its history, its anger, its anxiety. All in one place at once time, subject to the scrutiny and invasion of a stranger. And that was too much vulnerability. With its own unconscious wisdom, the family elected Don to stay home and test the therapists. Did we really mean everybody? Would we weaken and capitulate if they didn't bring Don?They had something to gain by the strategy. If we were hesitant and unconfident in our approach to their defiance, they would know that they could not trust us with the boiling cauldron of feeling which their family contained. If we were decisive and firm, they would guess that maybe we could handle the stresses which they intuitively knew had to be brought out into the open. One way or another, they had to find out how much power we had. In the meantime, they postponed facing that mysterious electricity, that critical mass, the whole family. Perhaps they thought they could be spared what Zorba called the full catastrophe.
Augustus Y. Napier
I have frequently thought to myself, 'If I can teach my daughter one thing, it will be the love of self unconditionally.' Unconditional love and peace are obtainable, but they are only obtainable if I can learn to move beyond the conditions that I placed on my life. When conditions are placed on my life and on the lives of others, they ensure that I will never experience the depths of love and happiness.
Asa Don Brown
No drugs here, no manipulation of neurotransmitters that leaves our worldly problems unattended. And no talking cures because explicit insight is not needed. All that is required is courage: the courage to encounter discomfort and stay with it long enough to be changed by it, strengthened.
Jason Dias
Dissociation gets you through a brutal experience, letting your basic survival skills operate unimpeded…Your ability to survive is enhanced as the ability to feel is diminished…All feeling are blocked; you ‘go away.’ You are disconnected from the act, the perpetrator & yourself…Viewing the scene from up above or some other out-of-body perspective is common among sexual abuse survivors.
Renee Fredrickson
Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.
John Dewey
Both of these attitudes -- unrelenting listlessness and dogged good cheer -- have to yield to the realities of prayer and life if the relationship with God is to grow and spiritual direction be helpful. Pointing repeatedly to discordant notes that sound in prayer will usually be the most valuable assistance directors can give. But sometimes people's defenses will be so entrenched that only a forthright confrontation will capture their attention. Such a confrontation would have to be focused clearly on the main issue: Are they willing to notice what is happening in prayer and in life, or are they screening out material that conflicts with a mood they feel they must maintain?" (Ch.5, p. 75)
William A. Barry
After all is said and done, it is the commitment of love that transcends time and space. So often, we seek answers in places where there is little light. It is when we choose to go within that we find all that we need.
Susan Barbara Apollon
Always remember to give yourself the kindness, compassion and consideration you give to others.
Miya Yamanouchi
Our Human thinking brain operates by way of prediction, comparing new experiences to and constructing its perception from what is already believed to be true due to past experience. Without a mature intuition – thinking and feeling balanced and united—even groups trying to work together will only be capable of experiencing what has been going on in this sensory brain since about the 8th Century to the present.
Martha Char Love
Personal growth will cause a ripple effect as the growth in consciousness of enough people, one by one, can create general change, and lasting social improvements.
Bud Harris
The most important gifts we can give our children are confidence in their ability to remake themselves again and again and the tools with which to do that job
Anders Ericsson
In yet another paradox, bulimia nervosa serves as both an expression of feelings and a defense against experiencing feelings, particularly shame, anger, loneliness, sadness, envy, and guilt. A person with bulimia nervosa fear, whether consciously or unconsciously, that painful feelings would be unbearable, even annihilating".
Sheila M. Reindl
Parents who daily read Robert Lewis Stevenson to their children and surrounds them with blocks, plastic animals, and some cardboard boxes or kitchen pots and pans are going to produce a qualitatively different child from those who spend that time on TV or videos, even if their choices ARE only Winnie the Pooh and Mr. Rogers.
Diane Medved
People think rape victims forget how to laugh. I have not forgotten how to laugh. It is beyond the capability of this person to make me forget how to laugh.~ Subhangi Tyagi
Kirtida Gautam
The best things occur when you challenge yourself and face your fears. If you think of your greatest achievements and take an inventory of the times you have demonstrated to yourself (and others) just how strong you are, you will notice it has never been while remaining within your comfort zone doing things that are easy and familiar to you.
Miya Yamanouchi
Communication can be sent or received through verbal or nonverbal cues.
Asa Don Brown
What are the messages that you are entertaining?
Asa Don Brown
Authenticity soothes the soul.
Arthur P. Ciaramicoli
Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths
Kay Redfield Jamison
To show how memory changes to fit our story, psychologists study how memories evolve over time: if your memories of the same people change, becoming positive or negative spending on what is happening in your life now, then it’s all about you, not them. This process happens so gradually that it can be a jolt to realize you ever felt differently.
Carol Tavris
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
H. Havelock Ellis
Moral deliberation has to be somewhere in the brain, after all. It’s not going to be in the foot or the stomach, and it’s certainly not going to reside in some mysterious immaterial realm. So who cares about precisely where?
Paul Bloom
The last thing he wanted was to see the bright, shining, happy faces of the other angels up there.
Joel Crofoot
At first, when a child meets something that scares him, the fear grows, like a wave. But when he goes into the water and swims - gets used to the water - the wave grows small. If we pull the child away when the wave is high, he never sees that, never learns how to swim and remains afraid. If he gets a chance to feel strong, in control, that's called coping. When he copes, he feels better.
Jonathan Kellerman
What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
Eugene T. Gendlin
It is no accident that narcissists and altruists often have a magnetic attraction to one another. Can you see how perfect the fit is? The altruistic feels the need to selflessly serve others and this is just what the narcissist wants. Narcissists want to be worshipped and gratified in every way possible, and this is just what altruists offer, thinking it demonstrates their moral virtue.
Ellen Kenner
Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
Rudolf Arnheim
When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean’s office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being’s age-old capacity to be insurgent.
Rollo May
People desire for spices in their life I want some sugar.
Amit Abraham
Just as a stressful life can make you depressed, continuing exposure to stressors maintains depression.
Jonathan Rottenberg
We all have struggle in our lives. We're all searching for personal freedom, whether we're in a bad place or trying to be true to ourselves.
Barbara Becker Holstein
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me.
Tara Brach
Psychology is the science of mental life
William James
The wish to gain complete possession of somebody is expressed most plainly by jealousy. Jealousy is never a sign of love. It only indicates fear of not being able to hold another person.
Rudolf Dreikurs
It is actually a good survival strategy to manipulate twist, and reorganize the truth in a way that is more consistent with what we can psychologically tolerate.
Cortney S. Warren
Loving someone is very different from the heady feeling of being "in love," which is, frankly, just temporary insanity.
Barton Goldsmith
Therefore, a search for God's will should begin on your knees. He will meet you there. Remember that Jesus promised, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7).
James C. Dobson
Spanking a child is about the parent not the child. The child will learn more from positive correction than physical manipulation.
Asa Don Brown