Quotes About Psychiatry

[Psychiatric] drugs have so many side effects because using them to treat a complex psychiatric disorder is a bit like trying to change your engine oil by opening a can and pouring it all over the engine block. Some of it will dribble into the right place, but a lot of it will do more harm than good.

The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.

Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists tell us, consists of the ability to adapt to the inevitable stresses and misfortunes of life. It does not mean freedom from anxiety and depression, but only the ability to cope with these afflictions in a healthy way. "An outstanding feature of successful adaptation," writes George Vaillant, "is that it leaves the way open for future growth.

Psychiatrists are supposed to help their patients get in touch with things they are trying to avoid.

First, the rest of medicine recognizes symptoms, such as pain and cough, as protective defenses and carefully distinguishes them from the disorders that arouse them. In psychiatry, by contrast, extremes of emotions, such as anxiety and low mood, are categorized as disorders, irrespective of any situation that might be arousing them. This error is so basic and pervasive that it deserves a name: Viewing Symptoms As Diseases (VSAD).

Internal medicine doctors know the functions of the kidneys. They don't confuse protective defenses such as cough and pain with diseases such as pneumonia and cancer. Psychiatrists lack a similar framework for the utility of stress, sleep, anxiety, and mood, so psychiatric diagnostic categories remain confusing and crude.

Everybody believes in psychiatry; it's supposed to be for our own good. Let psychiatry prove that anybody has an illness, and I'd concede, but there is no physical proof.

They have this big book called the 'DSM-IV,' you know, that is supposedly written about crazy people, but I think it is a book that is written by crazy people!

As the feminist psychiatrist Judith Herman puts it in her book Trauma and Recovery: "His correspondence makes clear that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications of his hypothesis. . . . Faced with this dilemma, Freud stopped listening to his female patients." If they were telling the truth, he would have to challenge the whole edifice of patriarchal authority to support them.

The few psychiatrists I respect always talk about people being mad. Use the short, simple, true words... Mad has the right sound to it. It's an ordinary word, a word which tells us how lunacy might come and call like a delivery van.

Not all people are ready to accept psychiatry as a normal branch of medicine. The general impression, as I believe, is that a man who needs a psychiatrist must be crazy.

Beware of the man who denounces psychiatrists; / he is afraid.

Deep scientific psychoanalysis reveals that excessive beliefs and dependence on religion is a superstition and fear induced psychiatric disease.

I'm afraid I possess an unfortunate gap in my medical education of never having believed in much of that stuff. I've often wondered which, psychiatry or religion, has done more damage. Between them, they about owned it all.

His psychiatrist told him that he had triumphed back then by adopting mental strategies that professional athletes used routinely—setting clearly defined goals, visualizing themselves performing flawlessly, and repeating affirmations that crowded out all doubts and fears until they were replaced with unshakable self-belief.

It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meanings of behavior can easily be misunderstood. The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment-the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labeling-seem undoubtedly countertherapeutic.

This is how psychiatry has functioned-as a kind of property arm of the government, who can put you away if your husband doesn't like you.

[Our children] have been taken away from us by the psychiatric mental-health system. They've been taken away by the educational system, by the government, and by many different forces.

Psychiatry is a pseudoscience.... You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do...Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, you don't even -you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is.

Freud was not entirely honest with himself when he said, "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise".

Last week I told my psychiatrist, 'I keep thinking about suicide', and he told me from now I have to pay in advance.

Since when did psychiatry become one big, fat Myspace survey?

Does psychiatrists' ability to prescribe drugs give them an advantage over psychologists in places where psychologists cannot prescribe them? Not always. Drugs can be useful, but relying entirely on them can be a mistake. Whereas a typical visit to a clinical psychologist includes an extensive discussion of the issues troubling the client, many visits to a psychiatrist are briefer sessions that focus on checking the effectiveness of a drug and evaluating its side effects.

Psychiatrists do not nag. We're licensed to tell you the best way to live your life. You people just refuse to listen.