Quotes by Psychologists - Page 35

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.
James Hillman
We want to hear the story first and let the meaning unfold, rather than to be present with expectations of a certain significance into which all behavior is then fitted.
Erving Polster
Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but moving, growing, working together; even when there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.
Erich Fromm
By focusing on possibilities, you can see more than a potential light at the end of the tunnel. The light doesn't have to be at the end of the tunnel; it can illuminate an opportunity wherever you are.
John B. Arden
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
Henry Havelock Ellis
Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.
Carl Rogers
The greatest fear of those who rule is not the opposition but not to be taken seriously.
Gündüz Vassaf
The perspective is more important than the perception
Amit Abraham
But because humans are intensely social animals, they also faced a recurring set of crucial social evolutionary challenges. These evolutionary challenges include (1) evading physical harm, (2) avoiding disease, (3) making friends, (4) gaining status, (5) attracting a mate, (6) keeping that mate, and (7) caring for family.
Vladas Griskevicius
You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.
Tara Brach
Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is it the absence of pain. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one's singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe.
Jeanne Achterberg
So much of personal development and growth comes down to the decisions you make when you hit a wall. Do you spend your time feeling bad for yourself, or do you invest your time in continuing to build toward your dreams?
Andrea Goeglein
The strongest force in our universe is not overriding power, but love.
Carl R. Rogers
Real change will come when you focus on yourself - not on changing him, Real change comes when you are willing and able to state your claim on what you are and are not willing to live with. Just remember to let him in on it
Dory Hollander
A problem well-defined is a problem half solved.
John Dewey
Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own
Rollo May
It takes courage to be creative. Just as soon as you have an idea, you become a minority of one.
E. Paul Torrance
Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn't really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their 'dirty little secret'.
Irving Kirsch
Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
Erich Fromm
As we’ve already mentioned, the main premise of the worrier is that things are uniformly dangerous. No risks can be tolerated. It is here, in the mind of the worrier, that the four rules of anxiety come into play: detect danger, catastrophize danger, control all the circumstances, and avoid discomfort. Sticking to this set of rules greatly interferes with one’s ability to assess risks in a balanced and rational way.
Robert L. Leahy
Go through the proper motions each day and you'll soon begin to feel the corresponding emotions!
George W. Crane
Speaking and listening are a form of psychic breathing.
Carol Gilligan
38. “A wet bird never flies at night.” (My grandfather said that to me when I was a child and warned me not to forget it. I remember his words but never did figure out what he meant!)
James C. Dobson
What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make him seek answers in certain directions. Any kind of though, true or false, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it.
Erich Fromm
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
Havelock Ellis
Happiness is a choice and a state of mind.
Asa Don Brown
The depressed and the suicidal are often lonely and inhibited. Discussions of inhibition in this context usually emphasize fear of rejection.
David L. Conroy
We do not perceive what is "out there," rather we perceive what is "in here." Our senses can only inform us of their own status. They can inform us of the electrical status of neurons or the physical or the chemical status of the receptors. The outside world is never taken into our consciousness. The outside world is rather our own creation, psychologically synthesized from the mass of sensations that envelope us. In many respects, the ultimate question that perception must ask was stated by John Stuart Mill in 1865. He asked, "What is it we mean, or what is it which leads us to say, that the objects we perceive are external to us, and not a part of our own thoughts?" That remains, perhaps, the ultimate, unresolved perceptual puzzle.
Stanley Coren
If a stranger saying we are "dependable" activates the reward system, imagine what praise from a boss, a parent, or even an unaccomplished slightly older graduate student will do. Of course, we all know that praise is a good thing, as long as it isn't too unconditional, but until very recently, we had no idea that praise taps into the same reinforcement system in the brain that enables cheese to help rats learn to solve mazes. And positive social regard is a renewable resource. Rather than having less of something after using it, when we let others know we value them, both parties have more.
Matthew D Lieberman
Our intuition is always operating for us.
Susan Jeffers
Adelina knew perfectly well who the father was, but she worked hard to forget it, and by the end of her life she would insist that Jesús was her child and hers only.
Olga Núñez Miret
I think this point is so important, I'm going to repeat it: You should never listen to criticism that is primarily intended to wound, even if it contains more than a grain of truth.
Robin Stern
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
William James
Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Anger cannot be dishonest.
George R. Bach
Living through difficult life circumstances in not an excuse for passing trauma onto someone else.
Cortney S. Warren
Security is not having things, it’s handling things.
Susan Jeffers
The human brain is a cultural artifact. We don't load culture into a virgin brain like software loading into a computer; rather, culture helps to wire the brain. Brains then become carriers of culture, helping to create and perpetuate it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett
The secret to happiness is low expectations.
Barry Schwartz
Treatment for DID should adhere to the basic principles of psychotherapy and psychiatric medical management, and therapists should use specialized techniques only as needed to address specific dissociative symptomatology.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision
James A. Chu
Muhammad is the greatest man that history ever knew
Gustave Le Bon
One does not have the right to criticize until he can do the same work without being criticized
Amit Abraham
There is a need for promoting women's sexual agency in today's society, because if it wasn't an issue, terms such as 'female sexual empowerment' would be made redundant. The fact that we merely have this vocabulary is indicative of that.
Miya Yamanouchi
For people who are depressed, and especially for those who do not receive enough benefit from medication of for whom the side effects of antidepressants are troubling, the fact that placebos can duplicate much of the effects of antidepressants should be taken as good news. It means that there are other ways of alleviating depression. As we have seen, treatments like psychotherapy and physical exercise are at least as effective as antidepressant drugs and more effective than placebos. In particular, CBT has been shown to lower the risk of relapsing into depression for years after treatment has ended, making it particularly cost effective.
Irving Kirsch
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.
Rollo May
We are creatures whose behavior cannot be simply explained as a striving for survival and happiness, for release of tension and contentment.
Adolf Guggenbhuhl-Craig
Just continue to "walk in the light" you have been given, and leave the future in God's hands. If He is calling you to do a job, He will make it possible for you to care for your family and overcome any other barriers to that responsibility.
James C. Dobson
Religious training and indoctrination creates internal states that are in conflict with natural urges and drives.
Darrel Ray
Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.
Larry Crabb
Whatever else you set out to do, begin by getting to know God and seeking His will in your life. If you do that, you will find Him. He will lead you. He will bless you. What a wonderful promise! But it is conditional. If you turn your back on the Lord, He will cast you off forever.
James C. Dobson
The process of grieving any loss is dependent upon your relationship to the person.
Asa Don Brown
Don't go overboard in praising required behavior: 'We have only done our duty' (Luke 17:10). But do go overboard when your child confesses the truth, repents honestly, takes chances, and loves openly. Praise the developing character in your child as it emerges in active, loving, responsible behavior.
Henry Cloud
Understand indigenous healing will also heal other nations and peoples. We've all been living on broken ugly systems built on genocide and slavery. Strengthening and empowering others, in whatever capacity, also helps the self.
Red Haircrow
Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Its a mathematical fact that two negatives make a positive so even under adverse circumstances think positively.
Amit Abraham
Psychologically, our reality derives from the stories we tell ourselves, at least the ones we believe.
Matthew D Lieberman
Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of identity. We develop a clearer sense of ourselves by firming up the boundaries between ourselves and others. I am who I am because of how I am different from those around me. There is a point to my life because it cannot be carried out in exactly the same way by any other person. Differentness is part of what makes us who we are. It gives our lives meaning.
Meg Jay
Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to stand or fall by the results. The sceptic with his whole nature adopts the doubting attitude; but which of us is the wiser, Omniscience only knows.
William James
You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.
Albert Ellis
Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There’s less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what’s happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.
Tara Brach