Psychology Quotes - Page 17

Toxic relationships are like a good pasta that has been overcooked.

In a relativistic universe you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And you know what swimming is - it's kind of a relaxed attitude with the water. In which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a certain giving to it.

There are many afterlife ideas and little agreement on what it may be.

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.

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.

One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy.

Obsessions don't subside. They evolve.

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.

There are few things ever dreamed of, smoked or injected that have as addictive an effect on our brains as technology. This is how our devices keep us captive and always coming back for more. The definitive Internet act of our times is a perfect metaphor for the promise of reward: we search. And we search. And we search some more, clicking that mouse like – well, like a rat in a cage seeking another “hit”, looking for the elusive reward that will finally feel like enough.

Kelly McGonigal

Humility has to precede instruction.

I stare past her at the inspirational kitten posters. There's one of a soaking-wet kitten climbing out of a toilet with the caption "it could be worse!""Just tell me whatever it is you're thinking," Mrs. Paulsen says. "Whatever is going through your mind right now.""I hope they didn't actually drop a cat in the toilet to get that picture," I choke out. "...Pardon?""Nothing. Sorry.

Robin Stevenson

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.

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.

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.

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.

...it's a mistake to think that happiness is the goal. I'm not sure I understand." "I was referring to the goals which you in your civilization are so good at setting yourselves, and which incidentally allow you to achieve many interesting things. But happiness is a different thing altogether. If you try to achieve it, you have every chance of failing. And besides, how would you ever know that you achieved it? Of course one can't blame people, especially unhappy people, for wanting to be happier and setting themselves goals in order to try to escape from their unhappiness.

François Lelord

They have their big, ever-changing egos, but none has a self, a core, a sense of identity.

The supremacy of cerebral, manipulative thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life.

The three most powerful seasonings are hunger, variety, and gratitude.

Having needs is not evidence of weakness – it is human.

Danielle Bernock

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

The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep).Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?

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.

Ambiguity begets participation.

Daniel J. Levitin

By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.

The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that the same neural mechanisms mediate the fear response in all sorts of animals, from pigeons and rats to cats and humans. The idea that other animals experience similar emotions to us is not anthropomorphism: it is based on sound scientific evidence.

The ramifications of workplace violence can have a lingering effect on the organization for generations.

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.

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.

Kraus asks the question of Freudian analysis: What would be enough? At what point would talking about one’s problems for x hours a week, be sufficient to bring one to a state of “normalcy”?The genius of Freudianism, Kraus writes, is not the creation of a cure, but of a disease—the universal, if intermittent, human sentiment that “something is not right,” elaborated into a state whose parameters, definitions, and prescriptions are controlled by a self-selecting group of “experts,” who can never be proved wrong.It was said that the genius of the Listerine campaign was attributable to the creation not of mouthwash, but of halitosis. Kraus indicts Freud for the creation of the nondisease of dissatisfaction. (See also the famous “malaise” of Jimmy Carter, which, like Oscar Wilde’s Pea Soup Fogs, didn’t exist ’til someone began describing it.) To consider a general dissatisfaction with one’s life, or with life in general as a political rather than a personal, moral problem, is to exercise or invite manipulation. The fortune teller, the “life coach,” the Spiritual Advisor, these earn their living from applying nonspecific, nonspecifiable “remedies” to nonspecifiable discomforts.The sufferers of such, in medicine, are called “the worried well,” and provide the bulk of income and consume the bulk of time of most physicians. It was the genius of the Obama campaign to exploit them politically. The antecedent of his campaign has been called Roosevelt’s New Deal, but it could, more accurately, be identified as The Music Man.

Open, fact-based sex education is among the biggest threats to religion. Knowing the facts about sex reveals the myths that religions preach.

The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.

In childhood we inhabit a world of wonderful contrasts that later we often come to see as bizarre and do our best to rearrange, with everything in its 'proper' place. Unusual juxtapositions we label surrealistic. Yet what is surrealism but a second childhood with Freudian overtones which we have to be re-educated to enjoy? -- part of the tragedy of growing up

Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?

Judith Lewis Herman

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.

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.

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.

Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way.

All the whackjob psychologists out there will tell you that grief is a process. Some say it has five stages. Others say that grief should only last two years at the lost, otherwise it's "abnormal". Putting an expiration date of grief though is like putting out the flame on a burning candle. It might stop the candle from melting down and falling apart, but in the long run the candle goes solid, freezes in a catatonic state. Take away a person's grief and guaranteed they'll only be a frozen shell of a human being afterwards. Grief is only love, it's nothing to hide or send away with happy pills and mother's little helpers. Grief is a lifeline connecting two people who are in different realms together, and it's a sign of loyalty and hope.

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.

There is a dead space between most people and those afflicted with Mental Illness and it's called Understanding

Stanley Victor Paskavich

I have come to the conclusion that there are three aspects of life that can give our existence the joy, purpose and meaning that we may seek.1) To find a work that gives us such pleasure that it does not feel like work2) To make a significant positive contribution to civilization3) To find true romantic love in ones lifeFinding ones purpose in life, making a contribution to mankind or findingtrue romantic love, would be the epitome of true happinessI. Alan Appt“The Strength in Knowing

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.

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.

It is that we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.

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

humans have an evolved capacity to engage in self-deception in order to navigate through life in a delusional state of blissful ignorance.

Gad Saad

There is only one state- admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological- in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that 'I' and 'you' are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

the desperate need to belong is perhaps never as great as during adolescence. Advertisers seek to communicate with teenagers by frequently using that powerful appeal.

Gad Saad

The basic urge toward mysticism is never, in the unaltered man, clear enough to be recognized for what it is.

What are the differences between computer and humanity??If computer get hot, there is a fan for the computer. If a man get hot, which will mean to much information in head, the humanity start to masturbate!But the question is why computer have one fan and humanity have two hands??It's simple as that!Fan can be replaced, but one hand can't be replaced if it's broken, so it's gave one more if you have problem with the one to use the other. Take it as a gift!

Hope is an elixir of life. It is the engine that propels us forward in our pursuit of countless goals, all of which might otherwise be impossible to undertake if we were bereft of hope.

Gad Saad

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.

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.

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.

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.

Psychiatry is NOT Science, it is just a game like Gematria. It is induced and applied by man and only exists in his domain while he remains alive. Since man is NO god, he possesses NOT the power over his mechanics – including Psychology, and hence, his Biology is subjugated to the Laws of Science as an exterior influence whether he likes it or not.

Ibrahim Ibrahim

It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.

I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not.

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