Psychotherapy Quotes

“The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected.”
― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Neuro-linguistic programming is to Neuroscience what Astrology is to Astronomy.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Emotional literacy is a prerequisite for empathy and psychological resilience.”
― Gina Senarighi, Love More, Fight Less: Communication Skills Every Couple Needs: A Relationship Workbook for Couples

“Societal pressures work to pull you up to the line of psychological adequacy, and psychotherapy can be used when society falls short. But these aims are far too low. Falling within the current normal range of psychological health is nothing to aspire to. We are interested in far exceeding this line - in psychological greatness.”
― Designing the Mind, Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture

“If there is a medical analogy which applies to psychiatric problems, it is not illness but weakness.While illness can be cured by removing the causative agent, weakness can be cured only by strengthening the existing body to cope with the stress of the world, large or small as this stress may be,”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“When a man acts in such a way that he gives and receives love, and feels worthwhile to himself and others, his behavior is right or moral.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“We accept no excuses for irresponsible acts. Students are held responsible for their behavior and cannot escape responsibility on the plea of being emotionally upset, mistreated by mother, neglected by father, or discriminated against by society.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Finding out how bad the past was does not help unless the person can learn better and more responsible ways to behave now and in the future.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“A surprisingly large number or people try to live the second half of life as if it were the first half. This perverts the normal grace of aging. Hating wrinkles, bemoaning physical deterioration, sexual changes, aches and pains, and illnesses, they hide or deny aging, clown their way through life, playing perennial youths, seeking the thrills and action of being young. They are robbing themselves of the treasures of growing old which compensate for its frailties and infirmities.”
― Harry A. Wilmer, Practical Jung: Nuts and Bolts of Jungian Psychotherapy

“Psychotherapy is about an internal process of transformation. Gender therapy is not simply about surgery or hormones or even transition. It is not really about 'becoming' something as much as it is about allowing the false parts of the self to recede so that an authentic self can emerge.”
― Arlene Istar Lev, Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families

“Woman's nature and man's knowledge matters in Samsara.”
― Neet B

“In essence, we gain self-respect through discipline and closeness to others through love. Discipline must always have within it the element of love. "I care enough about you to force you to act in a better way, in a way you will learn through experience to know, and I already know, is the right way." Similarly, love must always have an element of discipline. "I love you because you are a worthwhile person, because I respect you and feel you respect me as well as yourself.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“[P]atients, no matter what their psychiatric complaint, suffer from a universal defect: they are unable to fulfill their needs in a realistic way and have taken some less realistic way in their unsuccessful attempts to do so.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Therapy is a special kind of teaching or training which attempts to accomplish in a relatively short, intense period what should have established during normal growing up.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“[W]aiting for attitudes to change stalls therapy whereas changing behavior leads quickly to a change in attitude, which in turn can lead to fulfilling needs and further better behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“The patient rather than the therapist must decide whether or not his behavior is irresponsible and whether he should change it. [...] If a man thinks it is all right to overeat and be fat, no obesity treatment will work.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“The skill of therapy is to put the responsibility upon the patient, and after involvement is established, to ask him why he remains in therapy if he is not dissatisfied with his behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Happiness occurs most often when we are willing to take responsibility for our behavior. Irresponsible people, always seeking to gain happiness without assuming responsibility, find only brief periods of joy, but not the deep-seated satisfaction which accompanies responsible behavior.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“As part of becoming involved the therapist must become interested in and discuss all aspects of the patient's present life. [...] We are interested in him as a person with a wide potential, not just as a patient with problems. In fact, one of the best ways not to become involved is to discuss his problems over and over.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Sessions which do not bear directly on the patient's problems are not as wasted as long as they relate to his growing awareness that he is a part of the world and that perhaps he can cope with it. When values, standards, and responsibility are in the background, all discussion is relevant to therapy.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Because the patient must gain responsibility right now, we always focus on the present.
[...] The present, the right now, is the critical task, not the easy job of recounting his historical irresponsibility and looking for excuses. Why become involved with the irresponsible person he was? We want to become involved with the responsible person we know he can be.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“In Reality Therapy emotions and happiness are never divorced from behavior. Gaining insight into the unconscious thinking which accompanies aberrant behavior is not an objective; excuses for deviant behavior are not accepted and one's history is not made more important than one's present life.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“In Reality Therapy, therefore, we rarely ask why. Our usual question is What? What are you doing - not, why are you doing it? Why implies that the reasons for the patient's behavior make a difference in therapy, but they do not. The patient will himself search for reasons; but until he has become more responsible he will not be able to act differently, even when he knows why. All the reasons in the world for why he drinks will not lead an alcoholic to stop.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“All aberrant behavior is either an attempt to evade or an inability to take the responsibility of doing right, of fulfilling our basic needs.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Regardless of past circumstances, the psychiatric patient must develop the strength to take the responsibility to fulfill his needs satisfactorily. Treatment, therefore, is not to give him understanding of past misfortunes which caused his "illness," but to help him to function in a better way right now.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“Our job is not to lessen the pain of irresponsible actions, but to increase the patient's strength so that he can bear the necessary pain of a full life as well as enjoy the rewards of a deeply responsible existence.”
― William Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry

“It is quite obvious from dreams that when one faces a shadow which one has denied or run from it diminishes in power, and size, and ultimately becomes a positive force.

Our Friends show us what we can do,
our enemies teach us what we must do. (Goethe)

The first view of any monster is apt to be the most unnerving. When we finally bring ourselves to see the shadow we project as our own, we are literally appalled and overwhelmed by the shadow, the evil out there so plain to see. At the moment of taking it back within ourselves we are apt to be filled with self-recrimination, guilt, and depression. Little wonder we want to leave it out there hanging on someone or something or some other whatever. We perceive the shadow as if it belongs to the other. We withdraw our projection and our own shadow becomes enormous. After prolonged negotiation we are able to befriend the shadow. But even then it is not over because the shadow will always be there, always be a part of our psyche. We had best make a truce with it, for the shadow alerts us to particular kinds of danger or evil.”
― Harry A. Wilmer, Practical Jung: Nuts and Bolts of Jungian Psychotherapy

“Where there are problems, it is implied that there are solutions; sometimes the solution is to endure the problem, and one problem passes and another appears. But there are some insoluble predicaments which we must transcend.”
― Harry A. Wilmer, Practical Jung: Nuts and Bolts of Jungian Psychotherapy

“Psychoterapie není "povídání si o tom, co dělá pacientčin kocour", jak někdy hlásají její odpůrci, ale systematická práce vedoucí jak ke změně chování v nejširším smyslu (tedy i jak se chová organismus), ale také k přestavbě mozkových struktur, jak dokazují současné poznatky neurověd.”
― Radkin Honzák, Psychosomatická prvouka

“Psychotherapy is not a method of repairing problems or fostering personal happiness. That is psychotechnique. On the contrary ... it is fundamentally an ethical and a political task.”
― Peter F. Schmid, Relational Depth: New Perspectives and Developments