Quotes About Psychology

Though they could be affectionate to other monkeys, few were able to mate as adults, and those who did have offspring were not able to take care of them properly. Clearly, the lack of normal response from their fake mothers, and their isolation from other monkeys, had made them socially backward. They

Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence.

Ever more patients complain of a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness, which seems to derive from two facts. Unlike an animal, man is not told by instincts what he must do. And unlike man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions what he should do. Often he does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism), or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

What psychology failed to appreciate, Frankl believed, is the multidimensional nature of human beings. He did not deny that biology or conditioning shapes us, but he also insisted that there is room for free will—to choose to develop certain values or a particular course in life, or to retain our dignity in difficult situations.

William James defined psychology as the science of mental life, but it could equally be defined as the science of human nature.

we still have a long way to go in terms of creating a rock-solid science that could match the certainty of, say, physics and biology. In the meantime, we all need a personal theory of what makes people tick.

Before turning his mind to creativity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick-sent-me-hi) wrote a celebrated book called Flow. Its insight was that it is a mistake to pursue happiness itself. Rather, we should recognize when we are genuinely happy—what we are doing when we feel powerful and "true"—and do more of those things. Flow

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

When I was very small, I was obsessed with 'Sybil' and Sally Field's performance in 'Sybil.' I was like, 'Oh, my God, I want to do that!'

A doctor once told me that with crying you aren't sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don't cry: you scream, you try to run. When it's over and you're OK, that's when you cry.

I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy.

The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy.

Being an only child is a disease in itself.

Only medical hypnosis is capable of opening up amnesia.

For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all.  Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.  That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view.  They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.  They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. 

Cada impulso que intentamos aniquilar germina en la mente y nos envenena

strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us.  Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored.

He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable , and one of essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of though and passion, and whose very fleshwas tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

The great events of the world take place in the Brain. It is in the Brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

Psychology is in its infancy, as a science. I hope, in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.

Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks that other people have none either is the secret of the failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of Life.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil, cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

As we've said many times before, Introverts get ulcers; Extroverts give ulcers.