Psychotherapy

“Things have to be done fast in America, and therefore therapy has to be brief.”

“Therapy is not to "talk about" things, but to change the person's life, and to relieve suffering, such as depression, anxiety, or relationship problems. Of course, empathy and skillful listening are important at the start of each session, but they are simply not sufficient to change the patient's life.”

“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question "Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?" should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”

“The re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of the old people, these are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy.”

“...the human potential and psychotherapy movements, as well as the more 'life-affirming' New Religious Movements and religions of the self. This was the complex world of the Californian 'psychobabble', of Scientology and est (Erhard Seminars Training, later called Forums Network), of Encounter Groups, meditation techniques and self-help manuals designed to assist individuals 'realise their potential'.”

“Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind.”

“If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past.”

“For art to be art it has to cure.”

“The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."”

“There are three things needed to eliminate human misery. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”

“The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising.”

“Despite the burgeoning technologies in the field of "helping", on many levels psychotherapy is still a crapshoot. Some of the goal of training, I think, is to help students accept that fact. The work is part science, part art, and part luck. Learning to tolerate the anxiety inherent in that recipe is critical for any clinician.”

“Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. It just increases our “stuckness” in the old world. As does a lot of poor psychotherapy. Cheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system.”

“She listened for the pain in my words, not to the narrative itself. She was intuiting what it meant to me, what was most important, what, in that confused mass of experience and yearning she heard in my voice, she could single out to give back.”