Quotes by Psychiatrists - Page 8

If we regard the state as the father, and the citizens as children, there are three alternatives. First, the father may be bad and despotic:this, most people will agree, was the case in Czarist Russia. Second, the father may be good, but somewhat tyrannical; this is the way the Communist governments in Russia and China picture themselves. Third, the father may not act as a father at all, for the children have grown up, and there is mutual respect among them. All are now governed by the same rules of behavior (laws): this is the Anglo-American concept of nonpaternalistic humanism and liberty under law.
Thomas Szasz
Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation from others, and thus affords them the possibility of dignity. They loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, and thus confronts them with the possibility of insignificance.
Thomas Szasz
The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree, and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man, who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven - the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible. It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own “existence” and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.
C.G. Jung
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
David Viscott
If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition.
C.G. Jung
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
He who spends too long regretting his ruined crop will be neglect to plant next year's harvest.
François Lelord
Students would be assessed on effort rather than skill. You didn't have to be a natural athlete to do well in gym.
John J. Ratey
The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.
M. Scott Peck
Just as we use speech and gestures to communicate, so we use touch. Words can say, ‘I love you’, but touch can also say how and how much, and, at the same time, ‘I respect you’, ‘I need you’, and ‘thank you’. For a long time, scientists somehow thought that touch served merely to emphasize a verbal message. But now it is clear even to them that touch can be the message, and that it can be more nuanced and sophisticated than either speech or gestures, and more economical to boot. What’s more, touch is a two-way street; and a person’s reaction to our touch can tell us much more than their words ever could. Finally, while words can lie, or be taken for granted, primal touch is difficult to either ignore or discount.
Neel Burton
When is the last time you got angry at someone treating you with respect?
Joseph Shrand MD
Heaven is no permanent abode of morons even though they may gain entry by sheer virtuosity of their deeds."Ashoka Prasad(Hegelian Lecture)
Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad
And since he was seeing more and more people who were unhappy for no apparent reason, he was becoming more and more tired, and even a little unhappy himself. He began to wonder if he was in the right profession, whether he was happy with life, whether he wasn't missing out on something. And then he felt very afraid because he wondered whether these unhappy people were contagious.
François Lelord
He looked at Hector's list and told him that, thanks to a lot of studies and calculations, they'd shown that if you compared yourself to others and didn't find yourself wanting, if you had no money or health problems, if you had friends, a close-knit family, a job you liked, if you were religious and practised your religion, if you felt useful, if you went for a little stroll from time to time, and all of this in a country that was run by not very bad people, where you were taken care of when things went wrong, your chances of bring happy were greatly increased.
François Lelord
If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you I would let you know.
R.D. Laing
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
IRVIN D.YALOM
We have senses we don't know we have-until we lose them; balance is one that normally works so well, so seamlessly, that is not listed among the five that Aristotle described and was overlooked for centuries afterward.
Norman Doidge
Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.
Eric Berne
Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.
Thomas Szasz
Reason is the inextinguishable impulse to philosophize with whose destruction reason itself is destroyed.
Karl Jaspers
He who knows the 'Why' for his existence is able to bear almost any 'How'.
Viktor E. Frankl
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D.YALOM
The ideas of the moral order and of God belong to the ineradicable substrate of the human soul.
C.G. Jung
Master the power of attitude and you'll live a powerful life.
Gerald G. Jampolsky
There are two kinds of 'disabled' persons: Those who dwell on what they have lost and those who concentrate on what they have left.
Thomas Szasz
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great potential for providing medical insights? One reason is surely the pervasive neglect of this branch of science at all educational levels. Religious and other sorts of opposition have minimized the impact in general education of Darwin's contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
Randolph M. Nesse
Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always terrible-people want to know why. In a pantheistic world, the explanation was simple-one god had caused the problem, another could cure it. In the time since people have been trying to get along with only one God, explaining disease and evil has become more difficult. Generations of theologians have wrestled with the problem of theodicy-how can a good God allow such bad things to happen to good people? Darwinian medicine can't offer a substitute for such explanations. It can't provide a universe in which events are part of a divine plan, much less one in which individual illness reflects individual sins. It can only show us why we are the way we are, why we are vulnerable to certain diseases. A Darwinian view of medicine simultaneously makes disease less and more meaningful. Diseases do not result from random or malevolent forces, they arise ultimately from past natural selection. Paradoxically, the same capacities that make us vulnerable to disease often confer benefits. The capacity for suffering is a useful defense. Autoimmune disease is a price of our remarkable ability to attack invaders. Cancer is the price of tissues that can repair themselves. Menopause may protect the interests of our genes in existing children. Even senescence and death are not random, but compromises struck by natural selection as it inexorably shaped out bodies to maximize the transmission of our genes. In such paradoxical benefits, some may find a gentle satisfaction, even a bit of meaning-at least the sort of meaning Dobzhansky recognized. After all, nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution.
Randolph M. Nesse
The conditions necessary for devastating epidemics or pandemics just didn't exist until the agricultural revolution. The claim that modern medicine and sanitation save us from infectious diseases that ravaged pre-agricultural people (something we hear often) is like arguing that seat belts and air bags protect us from car crashes that were fatal to our prehistoric ancestors.
Cacilda Jethá
The very word, “sin,” which seems to have disappeared, was once a proud word. It was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. … But the word went away. It has almost disappeared — the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?
Karl Menninger
[P]erhaps this was how you knew a good deed was truly good: you didn't necessarily feel better afterwards.
François Lelord
After all, inside every woman, no matter how grown up she is, there is still a frightened little girl.
Sergei Lukyanenko
More than three fourths of all Americans are vitamin D-deficient.
John Cannell
The essence of physical education in Naperville 203 is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What's being taught, really is a lifestyle. The students are developing healthy habits, skills, and a sense of fun, along with a knowledge of how their bodies work. Naperville's gym teachers are opening up new vistas for their students by exposing them to such a wide range of activities that they can't help but find something they enjoy. They're getting kids hooked on moving instead of sitting in front of the television.
John J. Ratey
After a stressful event, we often crave comfort food. Our body is calling for more glucose and simple carbohydrates and fat... And in modern life, people tend to have fewer friends and less support, because there's no tribe. Being alone is not good for the brain.
John J. Ratey
Modern medicine is not scientific, it is full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising. Doctors are not taught to reason, they are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them. Over the past 20 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public.
Abram Hoffer
It is your brain that decides to get you out of bed in the morning to exercise, togive you a stronger, leaner body, or to cause you to hit the snooze button andprocrastinate your workout. It is your brain that pushes you away from the table tellingyou that you have had enough, or that gives you permission to have the second bowl ofRocky Road ice cream, making you look and feel like a blob. It is your brain thatmanages the stress in your life and relaxes you so that you look vibrant, or, when leftunchecked, sends stress signals to the rest of your body and wrinkles your skin. And it isyour brain that turns away cigarettes, too much caffeine, and alcohol, helping you lookand feel healthy, or that gives you permission to smoke, to have that third cup of coffee,or to drink that third glass of wine, thus making every system in your body look and feelolder.Your brain is the command and control center of your body. If you want a betterbody, the first place to ALWAYS start is by having a better brain.
Daniel G. Amen
The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.
Thomas Szasz
Most people throughout the world, not just inNewport Beach, care more about their faces, their boobs, their bellies, their butts, andtheir abs than they do their brains. But it is your brain that is the key to having the face,the breasts, the belly, the butt, the abs, and the overall health you have always wanted;and it is brain dysfunction, in large part, that ruins our bodies and causes prematureaging.
Daniel G. Amen
Everything of value, doesn't come with a price tag
Shefali Batra
Everything of value doesn't come with a price tag.
Shefali Batra
I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.
C.G. Jung
The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.
Sergei Lukyanenko
Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together.
Sergei Lukyanenko
Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will.
Brian L. Weiss
Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.
Neel Burton
To believe that man’s aggressiveness or territoriality is in the nature of the beast is to mistake some men for all men, contemporary society for all possible societies, and, by a remarkable transformation, to justify what is as what needs must be; social repression becomes a response to, rather than a cause of, human violence. Pessimism about man serves to maintain the status quo. It is a luxury for the affluent, a sop to the guilt of the politically inactive, a comfort to those who continue to enjoy the amenities of privilege.
Leon Eisenberg
Facts are much more malleable than prejudices.
Theodore Dalrymple
In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And wehave no right to do that—we never have had, not since the creation of the world.
Sergei Lukyanenko
Our sense of the full range of human nature, like our diet, has been steadily reduced. No matter how nourishing it might be, anything wild gets pulled - though as we'll see, some of the weeds growing in us have roots reaching deep into our shared past. Pull them if you want, but they'll just keep coming back again and again.
Cacilda Jethá
Choice Theory explains that, for all practical purposes, we choose everything we do.
William Glasser
The choice is yours: trust the government or trust Mother Nature.
John Cannell
In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force
Frantz Fanon
The good guys had to operate on a higher level than the killers--just for society to keep track of who was who.
Keith Ablow
Be a good listener in the special way a story requires: note the manner of presentation; the development of plot, character; the addition of new dramatic sequences; the emphasis accorded to one figure or another in the recital; and the degree of enthusiam, of coherence, the narrator gives to his or her account.
Robert Coles
When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.
Bessel A. van der Kolk
A life of Wisdom must be a life of contemplation and action
M. Scott Peck
If top performer are imbued with the belief that their excellence isn’t a personal accomplishment, but a gift belonging to all of mankind as a demonstration of man’s potential, they’ll go strong and remain so through any event....We celebrate the champion because we recognize that he has overcome personal ambition through sacrifice and dedication to higher principles. The great become legendary when they teach by example. It isn’t what they have, nor what they do, but what they have become that inspires all of mankind, and that’s what we honor in them....The Olympic spirit resides within the hearth of every man and woman. Great athletes can, by example, awaken awareness of that principle in all people.These heroes and their spokesmen have a potentially powerful influence on all of mankind, literally the power to lift the world on their shoulders. The nurturing of excellence and recognition of its value is the responsibility of all men, because the quest for excellence in any area of human endeavor inspires us all toward the actualization of every form of man’s yet unrealized greatness.
David R. Hawkins
The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Viktor E. Frankl
I just realized that I don't have to have an opinion about everything--what a relief!
David R. Hawkins