Psychotherapy Quotes

“The fact that a patient is classified as mentally or emotionally sick prevents the psychotherapist from enquiring into the possibility of whether, or to what extent, his patient may be cognitively right. It is perfectly possible that a person with 'existential frustration', 'ontological despair', or simply 'sub-clinical depression' may, because of his abnormal condition, be in a better position to look through the camouflage of life that still is deceiving the 'healthy' psychotherapists.”
― Herman Tønnessen, Happiness is for the Pigs: Philosophy vs Psychotherapy

“Sometimes you just need to be needed.”
― Shikha Patel

“The knowledge of Good and Evil, no matter how systematically or thoroughly consumed, will by no means make us gods. Rather, modern ethics, modern psychotherapy, and modern political ideologies all tend to produce not superhumans but pitiable slaves to the rationalizations generated by our distorted human desires. In order to gain control over the world, we have been too willing to renounce essential aspects of our own freedom.”
― Timothy G. Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty

“While irrational faith is rooted in submission to a power which is felt to be overwhelmingly strong, omniscient and omnipotent, and in the abdication of one's own power and strength, rational faith is based upon the opposite experience. We have this faith in a thought because it is the result of our own observation and thinking. We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and of love. The basis of rational faith is productiveness; to live by our faith means to live productively. It follows that the belief in power (in the sense of domination) and the use of power are the reverse of faith. To believe in power that exists is identical with disbelief in the growth of potentialities which are as yet unrealized. It is a prediction of the future based solely on the manifest present; but it turns out to be a grave miscalculation, profoundly irrational in its oversight of the human potentialities and human growth. There is no rational faith in power. There is submission to it or, on the part of those who have it, the wish to keep it. While to many power seems to be the most real of all things, the history of man has proved it to be the most unstable of all human achievements. Because of the fact that faith and power are mutually exclusive, all religions and political systems which originally are built on rational faith become corrupt and eventually lose what strength they have, if they rely on power or ally themselves with it.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and stake everything on these values.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“How is the existential vacuum to be explained? Unlike the animal, man is no longer told by his instincts as to what he must do. And in contrast to former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what it is that he basically wishes to do. Instead, he gets to wish to do what other people do (conformity) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).”
― Viktor E. Frankl, The Feeling of Meaninglessness: A Challenge to Psychotherapy and Philosophy

“The 'experts' will not change the world-- they will simply make a satisfactory living helping people to adjust to it; the world will only change when ordinary people realize what is making them unhappy, and do something about it.”
― David Smail, Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety

“The evils of the world hurt us because they impinge upon our embodied existence, and they can be changed only through our embodied intervention in an actual world (not by 'thinking' of them in a different way, or by the 'treatment' of their effects on us through interference either physical or mental-- with the way we perceive them).”
― David Smail, Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety

“Rather than going from where we are to where we want to be, we need to remember to be where we are, here, now. We don 't need to go anywhere else or do anything else. We don't need to go from here to there; we need to
return from there to here.”
― Cheri Huber, How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

“Therapy hasn’t “fixed” me, because I wasn’t broken. It has helped me access and make sense of my thoughts, feelings and actions.”
― Hannah Booth

“Sometimes I felt like I'd just drift off into oblivion if it weren't for your hand anchoring me to my life.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy

“Patience, I find, is highly correlated with love.”
― Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions

“The Bible warns about religious transformations that may appear good and therefore deceive many:

'For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.' (2 Corinthians 11:13-14)”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“Because Buddhism presents a spiritual argument for the transformation (not the medication) of suffering, as well as specific and systematic methods of analyzing subjective distress, it now assists me in being able to address audiences about the principles and uses of analytic psychotherapy.”
― Polly Young-Eisendrath, Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

“Religion allies itself with auto-suggestion and psychotherapy to help man in his business activities. In the twenties one had not yet called upon God for purposes of “improving one's personality.” The best-seller in the year 1938, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, remained on a strictly secular level. What was the function of Carnegie's book at that time is the function of our greatest bestseller today, The Power of Positive Thinking by the Reverend N. V. Peale. In this religious book it is not even questioned whether our dominant concern with success is in itself in accordance with the spirit of monotheistic religion. On the contrary, this supreme aim is never doubted, but belief in God and prayer is recommended as a means to increase one's ability to be successful. Just as modern psychiatrists recommend happiness of the employee, in order to be more appealing to the customers, some ministers recommend love of God in order to be more successful. “Make God your partner”, means to make God a partner in business, rather than to become one with Him in love, justice and truth. Just as brotherly love has been replaced by impersonal fairness, God has been transformed into a remote General Director of Universe, Inc.; you know that he is there, he runs the show (although it would probably run without him too), you never see him, but you acknowledge his leadership while you are “doing your part.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“When practicing mindfulness, we’re not trying to control, suppress, or stop our thoughts. We don’t want to push our thoughts away (it’s not
even possible to do so). Rather, mindfulness helps us pay attention to our experiences as they arise, without judging or evaluating them in any way.”
― Jennifer Wolkin, Quick Calm: Easy Meditations to Short-Circuit Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroscience

“For there would be no point in painful struggle, in heroic battle against injustice, in the painstaking achievements of culture and learning, in courageous stance against cruelty or adversity, in loving self-sacrifice for others, if in fact the experience gained by just one tortured and despairing individual could simply be 'adjusted' or 'modified' by the appropriate expert.”
― David Smail, Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety

“Once all the technical mystique has been stripped away from psychotherapy, it does seem that a likely explanation for its almost explosive expansion over the last few decades is that it provides something which is otherwise in very short supply in a world in which a kind of watchful defensiveness against our vulnerability has replaced any kind of spontaneous generosity which people may more often once have felt for each other.”
― David Smail, Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety

“If you want to know why you are unhappy, look to the world around you, and if you want to change how you feel, look to see if the world can be changed. As an individual, this is just about all you can do.”
― David Smail, How to Survive without Psychotherapy

“It happens all the time. People lie to themselves or their therapists because they’re ashamed or they don’t want to deal with the reality of their circumstances. Sometimes people are manipulative and twist the narrative to get something from the therapist: attention, empathy, love. Or the most likely reason: Sometimes the truth really hurts.”
― Jacqueline Simon Gunn, Let Love Rule

“We are still too much a part of the story of what is happening to religious consciousness to assess its meaning.”
― Polly Young-Eisendrath, Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

“The first and foremost task for the therapist is to create an accepting and empathic context, which in itself has great therapeutic value because for many people it is a novel and deeply gratifying experience to be accepted and listened to respectfully.”
― Hans Strupp

“Do not be afraid of anything that can kill you.”
― Benjamin Aubrey Myers

“There may still be people who think of Carl Gustav Jung only as a distinguished psychiatrist who enlarged our understanding of the mind and who also made important contributions to psychotherapy. He did both, but his variety of analysis is not simply concerned with the relief of neurotic symptoms; it promises a secular form of salvation. Jung was a spiritual teacher as well as a physician.”
― Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus

“At least 250 different systems of psychotherapy have been noted to exist, with possibly up to more than four hundred. Most psychotherapists do not adhere strictly to one single school of thought; instead they take an eclectic approach, in which they select from the variety of techniques those that are likely to be the most appropriate and effective for a particular client.”
― Aisha Utz, Psychology from the Islamic Perspective

“it should be noted that an essential variable within the psychotherapeutic process is the client's motivation or willingness to change. If this element is missing, it is difficult or impossible to make any progress, as most mental health professionals will attest. This requires that the client take responsibility for his or her behavior and choices, and exert effort to make the necessary changes.”
― Aisha Utz, Psychology from the Islamic Perspective

“Hamdan has also outlined several beneficial cognitions from the Islamic tradition that may be integrated into the psychotherapeutic process with religious patients. These include the following:

1. Understanding the temporal reality of this world,

2. Focusing on the hereafter,

3. Recalling the purpose and effects of distress and afflictions,

4. Trusting and relying upon Allah (سبحانه وتعالى), and

5. Focusing on the blessings of Allah (سبحانه وتعالى).”
― Aisha Utz, Psychology from the Islamic Perspective

“I wonder why there was an implicit expectation that if I like certain behaviours or features, that I would have to like the person. I don't. I can like this and not that and it does not need to lead to only one conclusion.”
― Anita Bentata, The Wolf in a Suit: The 7 Secrets Inside Relationship Abuse

“Whether the codependency/recovery people know it or not, parent bashing is a direct result of Freudian psychology.”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“A major problem with many codependency/recovery books is the belief that going back to childhood to find the why's of present feelings and behavior and even to find where patterns developed will bring relief and transformation.”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“Practical Mindfulness (The Sonnet)

When someone's world is crumbling down,
Reach out to lend a shoulder not analysis.
If the world had more carers and sharers,
We wouldn't need the services of therapists.
Most humans are raised to be selfish robots,
Then they spend their life on a therapist's sofa.
When someone's going through a period of grief,
Only the mindless comments, 'have you tried yoga!'
For the human mind to be whole and healthy,
You gotta empty it of all the unhealthy junk.
And there is no greater junk on the face of earth,
Than the traditions that make us self-centric drunk.
Elimination of coldness is the highest of all wisdom.
Treat the common cold, and you'll treat all descension.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None