Quotes by Psychologists - Page 29

Ritual abuse diagnosis research – excerpt from a chapter in: Lacter, E. & Lehman, K. (2008).Guidelines to Differential Diagnosis between Schizophrenia and Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress. In J.R. Noblitt & P. Perskin(Eds.), Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations, pp. 85-154. Bandon, Oregon: Robert D. Reed Publishers. quotes: A second study revealed that these results were unrelated to patients’ degree of media and hospital milieu exposure to the subject of Satanic ritual abuse. “In fact, less media exposure was associated with production of more Satanic content in patients reporting ritual abuse, evidence that reports of ritual abuse are not primarily the product of exposure contagion.” Responses are consistent with the devastating and pervasive abuse these victims have experienced, so often including immediate family members.
Randy Noblitt
Boundaries are, in simple terms, the recognition of personal space.
Asa Don Brown
Although most of the women I interviewed felt that their sexualattractions paralleled their emotional attachments, this was not alwaysthe case. In fact, women reported that on average, the percentageof physical same-sex attractions they experienced differedfrom their emotional same-sex attractions by about 15 percentagepoints in either direction (in other words, some women were moreemotionally than physically drawn to women, whereas others weremore physically than emotionally drawn). A small number ofwomen reported discrepancies of up to 40 percentage points.Like women with nonexclusive attractions, women with significantgaps between their emotional and physical feelings oftenfaced challenges in selecting a comfortable identity label. They hadto decide whether their sexual identity was better categorized bypatterns of “love” or patterns of “lust,” and they had to forecastwhat sort of relationships they might desire in the future. Manyof these women found it difficult to make these determinations.Sue, for example, felt that her attractions were riddled withcontradictions: “I prefer to make out with men, but the idea of havingsex with a man utterly repulses me. I would, however, like tomarry a woman, and that’s who I want to make a long-term commitmentto.
Lisa Diamond
You have the power to feel good—or not—just by being conscious of what you choose to think. Choose to focus on hope and healing.
Susan Barbara Apollon
Goodness makes our world a better place because human beings are kinder to each other when we feel safe and secure.
Arthur P. Ciaramicoli
The public forum is not, of course, the most helpful place to conduct a profitable confrontation with one's parents. If we are to allow the feelings of childhood to be revived, we need an enlightened witness and not the pent-up, undigested hatred of formerly abused children who, as adults, totally identify with the perpetrators. To expose oneself defenselessly to public view while harboring such feelings from childhood can amount to a kind of self-inflicted punishment, something one seeks when, in spite of everything, one still feels guilty at having expressed the criticism and is prepared to accept hate reactions as a well deserved punishment.
Alice MIller
Each time you teach, you learn something else you needed to know.
Andrea Goeglein
Setting boundaries isn't an alternative to loving your child. It is a means of loving her.
Henry Cloud
Recovery is the urge, the wrestle, and the resurrection.
Patricia E. Deegan
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
B.F. Skinner
One means of allaying anxiety is frantic activity. The anxiety arising out of the dilemma of powerlessness in the face of suprapersonal economic forces on one hand, but theoretical belief in the efficacy of individual effort on the other, was symptomized partly by excessive activism.
Rollo May
the mangrove killfish, lives in South American and southern US coastal swamps that can either dry up or become so toxic that the fish has to find refuge in the mud or by flipping and jumping across land. Amazingly, its skin and gills change so the killfish can breathe air and survive out of the water for as long as ten weeks.
Karen Shanor
Work with "what is" rather than "what if" and you will move towards "what can be.
Melanie Greenberg
...The world's benefactor has no choice; he is the surgeon who wields the healing scalpel. He does not want the violence, but the reality (which he has invented) drives him to use violence, in a way, against his will. Throwing a bomb into a crowded department store thus becomes an act of revolutionary love for mankind (and, in general, to quote Lübbe again, 'his primary intention is not to throw bombs into department stores or police stations, but rather into public consciousness.')
Paul Watzlawick
One can't live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.
Philip G. Zimbardo
Any human act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him.
Lev S. Vygotsky
Create history and write your own.
Amit Abraham
If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you 'do' boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.
Henry Cloud
The difference between "active" and "busy" is that the former includes reflection and is directed, whereas the busy life feels out of control and does not seem purposeful or meaningful.
Robert J. Wicks
There's no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You're either present with what is--right here, right now--or you're someplace else.
Gay Hendricks
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
Kurt Lewin
As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they inevitably face an increasingly nagging question: Is this all there is? Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing; most people, expect that in adulthood things will get better. During the early years of adulthood the future still looks promising. But inevitably the mirror' shows the first white hairs and confirms the fact that those few extra pounds are not about to leave; eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains begin to shoot through the body...' Where's all that money I was to have made? Where are all of the good times I was going to have?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Obviously the most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.
Abraham H. Maslow
the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise.
Robert B. Cialdini
Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.
William James
The damaging part of learning to live your life in two parts , whether in reality or fantasy, cannot be underestimated. It is an infectious skill that you learned, one that would eventually spread beyond the bedroom of your life. Life wasn't ever what it seemed on the surface. Nothing could be trusted for what it appeared to be. After all, you weren't what you appeared to be. In learning to hide part of yourself, you lost the ability to trust anything or anyone fully. Without knowing it, you traded humane innocence for dry cynicism.
Alan Downs
fruit of passive-aggressive people. These people resist demands by indirect tactics. They will not take responsibility for their own choices; instead, they turn around and blame someone else for making them do it. Or they will agree to do things that they don’t really want to do, and then gripe about the person behind her back.
Henry Cloud
I knew why earlier generations once believed that the sun circled the earth. Because, in our limited imaginations, that is how we lived our lives. -Mrs. Tuesday's Departure
Suzanne Anderson
It is evident, therefore, that one of the most fundamental problems of psychology is that of investigating the laws of mental growth. When these laws are known, the door of the future will in a measure be opened; determination of the child's present status will enable us to forecast what manner of adult he will become.
Lewis Terman
Freedom flourishes upon the bedrock of ethics and integrity.
Mollie Marti
What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay.
Erich Fromm
You are at my side, dear friends, and God is everywhere. Yet ultimately we are alone, making our way home by the candle of the heart. The light is steady and sure but extends only far enough to see the next step.Many times the light seems to go out. But another light, one held by a stranger or friend, a book or a song, a blackbird or a wild flower, comes close enough so that we can see our path by its light. And in time we realize that the light we have borrowed was always our own.
Joan Borysenko
No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable
Kay Redfield Jamison
It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.
Rollo May
Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.
Tara Brach
Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.
Daniel Goleman
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
The features of character are carved out of adversity.
Rick Barnett
Islam began as a tribal religion, whereas Christianity began more as an individual or family religion. Christianity struck out from Palestine, converting one person or one family at a time. After the initial successes and conquests by Mohammed and his tribe, conversions were as much military as spiritual. Mohammed was both a political and military genius and used his success and charisma to convince the superstitious tribes around him that he had Allah on his side. As such, the sword was the instrument of persuasion.
Darrel Ray
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.
Albert Ellis
To be psychologically healthy, we have to believe that what we do has some effect on what happens to us. Even if the perception of control is delusional, it usually leads to more productive action than believing that what we do makes no difference.
Albert J. Bernstein
The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia. He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware that he is, as Polanyi has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to figure out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove.
A.H. Maslow
Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.
Carl R. Rogers
Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.
William James
See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.
William James
Everyday ... life confronts us with new problems to be solved which force us to adjust our old programs accordingly.
Dr. Ann Faraday
A single course of studies for all progressive schools is out of the question it would mean abandoning the fundamental principle of connection with life-experiences.
John Dewey
It is incumbent upon us to do what we can, even if we cannot do much.
David Smail
Inside accounts of Presidential advisory groups make it clear that the failure to express dissent can have direct, immediate, and severe consequences...Because so much disagreement remains hidden, our beliefs are not properly shaped by healthy scrutiny and debate. The absence of such argument also leads us to exaggerate the extent to which other people believe the way we do. Bolstered by such a false sense of social support, our beliefs strike us as more resistant to subsequent logical and empirical challenge.
Thomas Gilovich
Give yourself permission to see and feel the extraordinary events in your own life. In internalizing them, you also will find your perspective about life and its meaning will change, resulting in growth and expansion of your soul.
Susan Barbara Apollon
The problem with growing up fearing and expecting rejection is that you cannot enter into adult relationship in the expectation of happiness.
Dorothy Rowe
Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset.
Carol S. Dweck
The evidence suggests that you would be more likely to select the tempting chocolate cake when your mind is loaded with digits. System 1 has more influence on behavoir when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.
Kahneman Daniel
Depressed people don't end up lying in bed because they are undercommitted to goals. They end up lying in bed because they are overcommitted to goals that are failing.
Jonathan Rottenberg
Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
Philip G. Zimbardo
If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life.
Erich Fromm
Empathy plays a crucial role in the reduction of stress from the moment of birth.
Arthur P. Ciaramicoli
Sometimes, we miss the truth when it's right in front of us, she thought. Sometimes the closer we are, the harder it is to see.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
While we may continue to use the wordssmart and stupid, and while IQ tests may persist for certain purposes, the monopolyof those who believe in a single general intelligence has come to an end. Brain scientists and geneticists are documentingthe incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses.
Howard Gardner