Psychologist Quotes

I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.

Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.

People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.

I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.

I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.

By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

We now recognize that abuse and neglect may be as frequent in nuclear families as love, protection, and commitment are in nonnuclear families.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

These syllables, about 2,300 in number, were mixed together and then drawn out by chance and used to construct series of different lengths, several of which each time formed the material for a test.

The school-boy doesn't force himself to learn his vocabularies and rules altogether at night, but knows that be must impress them again in the morning.

The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.

The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them.

The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions.