Quotes About Psychology

Forever after men sense the forbidding shadow of the primitive, preoedipal mother behind every woman to whom they are attracted. To escape this (..) they are usually attracted to women younger than they.

Many patients are so terrified of emotional intimacy that they are driven over and over again to provoke crises that allow them to distance with impunity (see Hedges, 2000).

Powerful logical or metaphysical reasons for supposing we can't have strong free will keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we can't help believing that we do have it.… It seems that we cannot live or experience our choices as determined, even if determinism is true.

Well," he said with a sigh, "psychology for years used to counsel to forgive. But we are beginning to recognize that it isn't always possible or even healthy to do that. I believe that sometimes it is important not to forgive, and to hang onto a healthy sort of rage at what happened,

you can write about sociopaths, you can read all about them, and chances are you will not recognize one when he is taking you in.

Hysterical. That word had unfortunate ramifications.

I think anger is often a kind of recycled fear.

It's impossible for humans to forget their emotions. — Wolfgang Grimmer

Have you thought about the evolutionary psychology of it? Men have evolved to be strong worker homestead-keepers, while women—with babies to protect from harm—have had to become aggressive and violent.

because, honestly, which of us really understands why we do the things we do?

Have you thought about the evolutionary psychology of it? Men have evolved to be strong worker homestead-keepers, while women—with babies to protect from harm—have had to become aggressive and violent. The few partial patriarchies that have ever existed in human society have been very peaceful places.

Ah, my dear," Aunt Jane smiles kindly, "the problem with that, you see, is that no one is ever the murdering sort until they are.

Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue... and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness.

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

Men are Moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.

Aggression and depression sound like two different, even polarized phenomena, but they're not. Depression is aggression turned inward, directed against the self, or the imagined, threatening self. A seriously depressed person may look anesthetized to an observer, but the depressed person is never anesthetized to herself. She may wish to be, and she may seek to be with chemical aid, but she cannot truly placate her sneering, jabbering, nested aggressor.

Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that compound the suffering and assure their continuation.

An emotion is both a mental and a physical event.

There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.

The greater a child's terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.

Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.

You never know whether this is a form of instinctive blackmail, and therefore, to be resisted, or whether it is real illness brought on in the other person by what you live by and believe in.

Denis Waitley, the author of The Psychology of Winning and The Joy of Working, who defines procrastination as "a neurotic form of self-defensive behavior" aimed at protecting one's self-worth.