Quotes by Psychologists - Page 34

Today, Islam effectively resists secularization primarily because of its use of shame. Within the community, each person's sexuality is tied to his or her family and to the community. To violate the sexual rules of Allah violates both the family and the community. This powerful distortion allows Islam to remain isolated from secular sexual influences. The terror of social sanction or violence keeps young people from following their heart. It prevents healthy sexual exploration and development in men and women.
Darrel Ray
Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.
Julian Jaynes
Survivors of trauma may have difficulty initiating relationships ...
Asa Don Brown
Growing up in a religious environment, children learn what not to do sexually. They learn that some practices or ideas, such as homosexuality, lust, masturbation, and pornography are sinful. These ideas are embedded in the minds of children years before they are ready for marriage, so it's no surprise that many religious people have little or no experience with sex and know little about their sexuality.The guilt cycle that results from this training creates a form of self-censorship. Because so many sex acts and ideas are liable to lead to eternal damnation, people have a strong incentive to avoid expressing or discussing secretly held ideas and interests. Fear leads to hidden thoughts and activities and prevents normal, appropriately channeled sexual expression.
Darrel Ray
Trauma may be endured through a physiological or psychological threat to life or overall wellbeing.
Asa Don Brown
My traumatic experience was life changing
Asa Don Brown
In the Christian view, sex was an unclean act. Ask Christians, "Did Jesus have sex?" and watch their nonverbal response. Or ask, "Did Peter enjoy sex with his wife?" or "Did Mary and Martha, 'whom Jesus loved,' ever enjoy a good orgasm?" Such questions do not compute in the Christian mind. The Christian founders are seen as asexual.
Darrel Ray
Real happiness provides you the confidence that you never thought was obtainable.
Asa Don Brown
Abuse may consist of physical maltreatment or language that is belittling, discriminatory...
Asa Don Brown
But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life.
Erich Fromm
People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don't need religion to know this.Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong.
Darrel Ray
Happiness is a choice and a state of mind.
Asa Don Brown
Once one is convinced of the idea of eternal life or death, the person may do almost anything to achieve the reward or avoid punishment. He may fly an airplane into a building or become a missionary to another county. She may become a celibate nun or vow to raise a quiver full of children and homeschool them according to her religion. At the very least, the person will attend church regularly, give money, pray and do other things to ensure good standing with the deity. The root of this action is the hope for a reward and avoidance of punishment.
Darrel Ray
Toxic relationships are like a good pasta that has been overcooked.
Asa Don Brown
There are many afterlife ideas and little agreement on what it may be.
Darrel Ray
With the concept of an afterlife, religion creates a portal to infect people by means of terror and fear of death. If one has no concept of an afterlife, then fear of eternal punishment becomes an effective way to convince people of the need to perform specific rituals and live a certain way.
Darrel Ray
As conscious beings, we are capable of understanding that we will die some day. We also have the ability to imagine a world after we die. Religion hijacks this ability and injects fear of eternal torture and abandonment as well as the promise of eternal bliss. A perfect carrot and stick approach. The ability to imagine what is beyond the horizon of death is what allows religion to take control and make us do unnatural things.
Darrel Ray
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
Those who unconsciously despair yet put on the mask of optimism are not necessarily wise. But those who have not given up hope can succeed only if they are hardheaded realists, shed all illusions, and fully appreciate the difficulties.
Erich Fromm
The deepest yearning of human beings seems to be a constellation in which the two poles (motherliness and fatherliness, female and male, mercy and justice, feeling and thought, nature and intellect) are united in a synthesis, in which both sides of the polarity lose their antagonism and, instead, color each other.
Erich Fromm
Wherever sexually restrictive religions invade, they bring the tools of repression with them - fear of punishment, shame if caught, guilt that the deity watches and terror of punishment. Islam, Christianity and Judaism, with their patriarchal, asexual god, have systemically overcome local sexual ideas throughout the world and infected cultures with sex-negative practices.
Darrel Ray
They have their big, ever-changing egos, but none has a self, a core, a sense of identity.
Erich Fromm
If the religious system does not correspond to the prevalent social character, if it conflicts with the social practice of life, it is only an ideology.
Erich Fromm
The supremacy of cerebral, manipulative thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life.
Erich Fromm
When our grandparents failed, they had comfortable spiritual furniture to rest in. They had, for the most part, their relationship to God, their relationship to a nation they loved, their relationship to a community and a large extended family. Faith in God, community, nation, and the large extended family have all eroded in the last forty years, and the spiritual furniture that we used to sit in has become threadbare.
Martin E.P. Seligman
If you ask an introvert a question, wait until she thinks about it. Introverts think before speaking, not through speaking. If you want to get to the good stuff, you need to slow down.
Laurie Helgoe
The ramifications of workplace violence can have a lingering effect on the organization for generations.
Asa Don Brown
Celibacy is nothing if not abnormal. The human body and brain are not made for such programming. Whatever normal is, it does not include celibacy.
Darrel Ray
From fear of death to sexualizing the normal and marking children, religion is hell bent on creating an environment that is sexually negative –an environment that systematically and arbitrarily restricts options for people. Regardless of the biological map of an individual, religion will do its best to impose its map. The map is almost always focused on what not to do. Since humans can rarely, if ever, live up to such a restrictive standard, it gives religion a huge opportunity to develop guilt and shame, leading the person back to the religion for relief. The map bears no resemblance to human sexuality. It is an artificial and arbitrary set of rules imposed by the religion on its adherents. The result is oppression of women, sexual misinformation, fear of death, repression of homosexuals and much more.
Darrel Ray
Open, fact-based sex education is among the biggest threats to religion. Knowing the facts about sex reveals the myths that religions preach.
Darrel Ray
The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.
Darrel Ray
While [female genital mutilation] may have not originated with Islam, it has become an integral part of the religious practice in many regions tied to notions of male dominance and control of female sexuality.
Darrel Ray
Rikki looked over at me.“Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?""Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.
Cameron West
Humans love sex. Both men and women are wired to be sexually responsive. Sex is the social glue of the human species. It takes heavy-handed training or trauma to kill a human's sex drive.Religion has that power. Sexual training in guilt, shame, and fear begins virtually at birth by sexualizing nudity. The religious signal is that nudity is always sexual and the body must be covered for modesty. The Adam and Eve story is taught to young children even though they have no way to know what it means.
Darrel Ray
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
Many religions start with the notion that the deity is male and that, therefore, males are superior to women. This irrational idea informs boys' sexual map as they grow into men and breeds ideas such as the following: women are subservient to men; men have control over women's bodies; and men are more intelligent and closer to their god.
Darrel Ray
The notion that a woman's sexuality belongs only to the husband is a central tenet tied to the idea that a woman is the property of the father first, then the property of the husband.
Darrel Ray
We must love those close to us, all the time, every day. Moments only happen once. Make them matter.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Life is ephemeral; each moment passes quickly, a blur of color on a fast moving subway car. There and gone and all we are left with is the imprint of what once was.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
In light of religious teachings on sex, unrestricted people often feel they are fundamentally flawed. They are sinful and rebellious against god for having strong urges that go against the church's teachings. If the religious belief is deep enough, a person will not be able to look at his behavior rationally. The result can be a destructive cycle beginning with some religiously prohibited sexual behavior followed by repentance and prayer for a few weeks. Soon biological urges surface again, and he goes back to the behavior, followed by repentance once more. The process keeps him focused on guilt, not on rational ways to enjoy and express sexuality. Every time he goes through the cycle, it makes him feel less worthwhile. At the same time, the only way he can get relief is by going back to his religion.
Darrel Ray
The religious guilt cycle interferes with learning and change. Rather than learning who he is as a sexual being, he measures himself against an impossible religious sexual standard and always comes up short. Absent religion, many unrestricted people can deal with their behavior in a rational manner.
Darrel Ray
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery of our truth about the unique history of our childhood.
Alice MIller
Control Master Theory suggests that our psychological problems come about in much the same way: our decision to make ourselves unhappy because one or both of our parents were unhappy is just as altruistic as our friend's decision to run through flames to save his daughter.
Lewis Engel
We must accept the fact that we have distorted and constricted our lives as adults in accordance with our unconscious beliefs.
Lewis Engel
Control Master Theory proposes that most psychological problems are the result of our altruistic impulses run amok.
Lewis Engel
The best you can do as a parent is to expose your children to a wide range of religions. Rather than trying to "program them" to dislike religion, give them the tools to analyze it themselves. With the conceptual tools of critical thinking and skepticism, and adequate exposure to many religions, children are very likely eventually to conclude that all religion is crazy.
Darrel Ray
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality[,] consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than an abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.“Psychoanalysis and sociology.” Pp. 37-39 inCritical theory and society: A reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. New York: Routledge.
Erich Fromm
Taking guilt out of the equation allows a person to see how he is hurting himself and others and what he can do about it. Eliminating guilt about sex allows a person to talk about needs and desires more honestly and negotiate with possible partners. If a person feels shame about his desires, he is unlikely to talk about it with anyone. As long as the cycle of guilt persists, harmful behavior will likely continue.
Darrel Ray
Any relationship involves a power exchange. A free flow of power allows everybody involved to contribute and get their respective needs met. In a patriarchal religious marriage, power is hierarchical: men are dominant, and women are subservient, causing a serious disruption in the natural flow of power between the mates.
Darrel Ray
Normal people redirect their sexual energy all the time, but religion takes that skill and hijacks it. Religion says, "No, you cannot do that, that is sinful. Direct energy toward god."Sexual desire does not disappear with increased religiosity and activity. Instead, it gets redirected but the thoughts and incoming stimulation continue.
Darrel Ray
[U]sing religion to treat depression often makes the problem worse. It's like treating the disease with more of the disease. It is effective in getting people to give time and money to the church, but it does not help the victim.
Darrel Ray
A society whose members are helpless need idols.
Erich Fromm
Treating depression often requires that a patient identifies and changes self-defeating thinking. Identifying religion as the problem is especially difficult, since people often retreat to religion to deal with their depression. In reality, however, while religion promises peace and fulfillment, it often creates more of what caused the depression in the first place.
Darrel Ray
...we are a narrative, storytelling species. Revealing our own histories, and understanding those of others can really help us appreciate the humanity in all of our fellow individuals.
Stephen P. Hinshaw
Acknowledgement of the prevalence and impact of trauma challenges psychological theories that localize dysfunction within the individual while ignoring the contribution of social forces on adjustment (Brett, 1996; Ross, 2000).
Rachel E. Goldsmith
Religious persons are generally very interested in sex just like any normal person - and have an imagination and the energy for it. When constrained by the guilt cycle, however, they keep it under wraps. When guilt is temporarily removed, they can go to the other extreme. Many can remain in the uninhibited phase for weeks - months at most - then a wave of guilt overtakes them.
Darrel Ray
Jealousy is the opposite of maintaining and growing in a relationship. Jealousy includes elements of fear, anger, suspicion, and control that have no place in a mature relationship.
Darrel Ray
Regardless the options you have, the most important thing is to choose consciously. Don't let ancient religious programming dictate your emotional and intellectual responses. You are a biological and social creature living in a biological and social world. Recognizing this gives you the power to make more rational decisions about how you want to enjoy the only life you have.
Darrel Ray
Asking children to grow virtues hydroponically, looking only within themselves for guidance, is like asking each one to invent a personal language―a pointless and isolating task if there is no community with whom to speak.
Jonathan Haidt
Human nature, though being the product of historical evolution, has certain inherent mechanisms and laws, to discover which is the task of psychology.
Erich Fromm