Quotes from Erving Polster

The therapist, on the other hand, is commissioned to generate happy endings. This is made difficult by the complicated fact that while the therapist must try to save his patient from tragedy, he must also know the tragic factors in life and face them unflinchingly.

it is nevertheless worth noticing that there is a future to which we may look ahead. But whether we look or not, it will come, it will come!

though you can't actually run away from yourself, if you are to change you must transcend this ever present background, the influences of which have already affected your state of mind.

a sense, what is happy about a happy ending is that it says things will go on. Tragedy is the opposite. It ruptures continuity. The tragic event seems to bring the curtain down inexorably. That is perhaps tragedy's definitive condition.

Contact is the lifeblood of growth, means for changing oneself, and one's experience of the world.

what matters most is what is happening, with whom it is happening, how it is happening, when it is happening, how one feels about what is happening, and especially, what are the consequences of what is happening.

An acceptable proportion must be maintained whether in a novel, therapy or everyday life — between pain and other aspects of living. Humor, irony, diversity of interests, a sense of adventure, mystery, love — all are story elements passed over by those people who are most imprisoned within their pain. Such persons can be only temporarily interesting, either in a novel or in life itself.

tragedy is partly a matter of where a story ends.

A basic gestalt principle is to accentuate that which exists rather than merely attempting to change it. Nothing can change until it is first accepted.

To say what one wants to say is a magnificent act of creation, easily overlooked because people talk so much.

Shakespeare refers to thoughts which "in their currents turn awry and lose the name of action." Perlsian poetry calls this "mind-fucking".