20th-century Psychiatrist Quotes

Viktor Frankl

Frantz Fanon

Eric Kandel

R. D. Laing

Sergei Lukyanenko

Nawal El Saadawi

Rollo May

I do my thing, and you do your thing...
You are you and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful; If not, it can't be helped.

Indeed, it is the perennial (and almost always unverbalized) premise of creativity, to show that the tangible, visible, and audible universe is infinitesimal in comparison to the one that awaits discovery through exploration of the external world and of the human psyche.

The less harshly we judge ourselves, the more accepting we become of others.

Harold H. Bloomfield

Through systematic oppression, the black American has been effectively castrated by white America.

Alvin Francis Poussaint

The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.

The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious.

Fredric Wertham

Sustenance for the infant and child is more than alimentary nourishment. The child needs love, security, narcissistic supplies -- however one may describe it.

Alexander Lowen

"Abductees," Eva said, "are souls that have, for their individual purposes and reasons, chosen the probability of physical form." But through their experiences they are "regaining their memory of source... The process of abduction is one form of such, of regaining memory." The abduction "experience itself," Eva said, "is a mechanism to remove" the "structures that impede the reconnection with source," and to purify the physical vehicle in such a way to serve to regain better memory and to bring knowledge to others."

The highest love a person can have for you is to wish for you to evolve into the best person you can be.

The psychopath... is a rebel, a religious disobeyer of prevailing codes and standards. Moreover, clinical experience with such individuals makes it appear that the psychopath is a rebel without a cause, an agitator without a slogan, a revolutionary without a program.

Robert M. Lindner

Whatever is true about the nature of the unconscious itself, it might be said that since the time of Freud it has been shrinking. Less is buried there.

The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.

Colin Murray Parkes

Understanding a person's hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you'll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.

It is impossible to win a contest with a helpless opponent since if you win you have won nothing.

Asylums are nothing more than gardens of human cabbages, of miserable, grotesque, repugnant human beings watered with the fertilizer of injections.

António Lobo Antunes

Insights from myth, dreams, and intuitions, from glimpses of an invisible reality, and from perennial human wisdom provide us with hints and guesses about the meaning of life and what we are here for. Prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action are the means through which we grow and find meaning.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact—pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous…the genie in the bottle.

Griffith Edwards

His comment about a book whose author claimed was channeled from the spirit of William James, the great American psychologist and philosopher: "If the vapid writings... did indeed emanate from him, I can only say that this implies a terrible post-mortem reduction of personal capacities. (Survival of death with such an appalling decay of personality makes it, at least to me, a rather unattractive prospect.)"

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

We tend to think of dangers and uncertainties as anomalies in the continuum of life, or irruptions of unpredictable forces into a largely predictable world. I suggest the contrary: that dangers and uncertainties are an inescapable dimension of life. In fact, as we shall come to understand, they make life matter. They define what it means to be human.

Arthur Kleinman

Society is a kind of parent to its members. If it, and they, are to thrive, its values must be clear, coherent and generally acceptable.

Milton Sapirstein

Science has authority not because of white coats or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.

In my experience with EEG Biofeedback and ADD, many people are able to improve their reading skills and decrease their need for medication. Also, EEG biofeedback has helped to decrease impulsivity and aggressiveness. It is a powerful tool, in part, because the patient becomes part of the treatment process by taking more control over his own physiological processes.

I receive death threats on a daily basis. I'm a well-known writer in the Arab world. My writings expose me to millions of devout Muslims who have nothing positive to prove but the sheer cruelty of their teachings. Islam has deprived them of their intellectual ability to face criticism with an effective and acceptable way.

Marriage is going to be that happy state in which we get all of the nurturance and care and love and empathy and even good advice that we didn't receive from our families.