Quotes About Psychology

I prefer neurotic people.  I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

— Stephen Sondheim

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

— Carl Jung

Work and love—these are the basics.  Without them, there is neurosis.

— Theodor Reik

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.

— William Styron

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

— Carl Jung

When depression is stigmatized as illness and weakness, a double bind is created: if we admit to depression, we will be stigmatized by others; if we feel it but do not admit it, we stigmatize ourselves, internalizing the social judgment. . . . The only remaining choice may be truly sick behavior: to experience no emotion at all.

— Lesley Hazelton

Neurosis seems to be a human privilege.

— Sigmund Freud

Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in.  And so easy to build as well.

— Henrik Ibsen

Behavioral psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats.

— Douglas Busch

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

— John Milton

The object of all psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best.

— Paul Valery

Many of the quests for status symbols—the hot automobile, the best table in a restaurant or a private chat with the boss—are shadowy reprises of infant anxieties. . . . The larger office, the corner space, the extra window are the teddy bears and tricycles of adult office life.

— Willard Gaylin

We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.  Persons who are secure with a transcendental system of values and a deep sense of moral duties are possessors of values which no man and no catastrophe can take from them.

— Francis J. Braceland

Psychoanalysis . . . shows the human infant as the passive recipient of love, unable to bear hostility.  Development is the learning to love actively and to bear rejection.

— Karl Stern