Quotes About Psychotherapists

taught us to be aware of ourselves as isolated egos existing "inside" our bodies; it has led us to set a higher value on mental than manual work; it has enabled huge industries to sell products – especially to women – that would make us owners of the "ideal body"; it has kept doctors from seriously considering the psychological dimensions of illness, and psychotherapists from dealing with their patients' bodies.

In total, I was diagnosed with depression by eight psychotherapists and psychiatrists over a period of thirteen years. Diagnosed wrong. Absolutely wrong. My accurate diagnosis was manic depression, or what we call bipolar disorder today.

The sexual abuse of children is distressingly common.156 However, it's not as common as poorly trained psychotherapists think, and it also does not always produce terribly damaged adults.157 People vary in their resilience. An event that will wipe one person out can be shrugged off by another. But therapists with a little second-hand knowledge of Freud often axiomatically assume that a distressed adult in their practice must have been subject to childhood sexual abuse.

Writers are not psychotherapists. Their job is to give readers stress, strain, and pressure.

As with the psychotherapists we discussed in chapter 4, training does not increase accuracy; it increases people's confidence in their accuracy.