Quotes About Psychology

Some people have heard of The Method, which originally goes back to Stanislavski... he gave you six major pointers whereby you became that character and tried to fool your mind psychologically. That's it in a nutshell. Daniel Day Lewis is an example of somebody like that who stays in character between takes.

I could not be one of those actors who stays in character all day long. I'd go mad.

I said we are in a mental recession. We keep getting the steady drumbeat of bad news... it's become a mental recession. We don't have measured negative growth. That's a fact, that's not a commentary.

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.

The interest in character-driven content over narrative-driven ditto is increasing; that's why television steps in. Personally, I love it, since psychology and character, really, are my beacons.

Regression effects teach us specious lessons about the relative effectiveness of reward and punishment.

By carefully scrutinizing and explaining away their losses, while accepting their successes at face value, gamblers do indeed rewrite their personal histories of success and failure. Losses are often counted, not as losses, but as "near wins.

We may be particularly inclined to acquire and retain beliefs that make us feel good.

There are mysteries in science, and mysteries in art, but the greatest mystery has always been another person's deepest motivation.

God is available through many sources besides the religious quest. I don't mean to imply that psychology replaces the work of religion, but it seems to me that it greatly supports religion and brings a certain clarity to areas of the human condition, especially the discovery of the unconscious.

How should we handle these afflictive emotions? By facing them, by feeling them. Feelings that have been repressed have to be allowed to pass through our awareness once again in order to be left behind for good. Most of the time, they don't need psychotherapy; they just need to be evacuated. We might say that we are suffering from acute psychic indigestion, a nausea of a psychological character that is interfering with our mental health and all our relationships.

Is there really anything behind our smiles and tears but an evolutionary slip-up?

reason is merely the mouthpiece of emotion.

I realize that psychology has charted some awfully weird areas in its maps of the mind, but you've gone so far into the ultra-mentational hinterlands of metaphysics that I fear you will not return (at least not with your reputation intact).

people who shut off Facebook, even for a month, reported a general improvement in their mood and happiness.32

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives

The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.

But it is also becoming evident that psychological evolution never optimized us for lasting happiness; on the contrary, it placed us on the hedonic treadmill. We are driven to seek pleasure and joy, to avoid pain and depression. The hedonic treadmill is the motor that nature invented to keep the organism running.

Converging empirical data show that when we observe other human beings expressing emotions, we simulate them with the help of the same neural networks that are active when we feel or express these emotions ourselves.

Social psychologist argued that even severe mental illness was the result of society labeling unusual behavior rather than of biochemical processes.

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.

There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.

It would take me thirty years to learn the psychological advantages of letting people use a mildly embarrassing nickname. It lets them think they own a piece of you, and that binds them to you.

what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper