Quotes About Psychology

mothers drove the fathers' cortisol changes, while, in a dismaying trickle-down effect, fathers drove changes in their kids' cortisol.

I really think that writing about sex is writing about the mind.

K]nowing how primitive in many aspects, now little abstract, how uncontaminated by logic and logical structure Hebrew is, it would surely have occured to me to ask, is not aspect wherever and whenever it occurs a thing more primitive, more psychologically fundamental than time order, than tense? Was there not a time in the development of language when primitive man focussed his attention not on time order but on something else expressed by aspect, and what is that something?

first, the repeated experience of the trauma itself; second, the effects of the trauma on personality development; and third, the need to re-experience the feelings and/or memories of the original trauma in order to integrate it and work it through.

Wounded, narcissistic parents may need a grateful child. A father who was unpopular or clumsy as a child may need an athlete. A parent afraid of his or her own anger may need an acting-out child. The real child, the child who was meant to grow and develop into a self in his or her own right, is often never seen. Even if Joan's interest had been in science or math, her mother needed a dancer—and children will make every effort to be what is expected of them.

As educational psychologist Jane M. Healy puts it, "Brains shape behavior, and behavior shapes brains.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

Our ability to delude ourselves may be an important survival tool.

At first her prose may seem a luxuriant unpruned Eden. But soon the reader sees the careful gardening, the astute nurture of what nature provides. Frame's inner geography is complex, her psyche contains elaborate structures. She had the artist's ability to make strange associations and imaginative leaps;

What does it mean when individuals can no longer be embarrassed or shamed?

This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test

If the child's unique qualities are not mirrored or supported, they are not available for her as a foundation. Instead of becoming grounded in her own nature, she adapts to what she thinks she is supposed to be, taking on a false self. For some people, this false self (which we all have to some degree) so obscures everything else that it's all they know.

Studies in Sweden found that even when a mother works outside the home and the father is the primary caretaker, babies still strongly prefer being with the mother.1

From an evolutionary perspective, we first developed a survival brain (called the reptilian system), then an emotional brain (the limbic system), and finally a thinking brain (the neocortex).

Although the number of these alters varies widely, the average is about ten, and research suggests that the average age at which alters begin developing is just under six years old.30 The transition from one personality to another (called switching) is most often sudden and triggered by some environmental cue.

Traumatic experiences are so powerful that they often affect your entire worldview. It's like wearing glasses that distort your vision.

The age at which a man begins using drugs or alcohol to deal with life's problems is the emotional age at which he remains.

MAGIC secret. It was a prime example of the brutal choices that codebreakers must live with. Do you take risks to keep a secret that may save hundreds of thousands of future lives, or do you expose the secret to save a small number of lives right now? William once referred to this broad dilemma as "cryptologic schizophrenia," adding, "What to do? Thus far, no real psychiatric or psychoanalytic cure has been found for the illness.

Smart people in white coats have extensively studied commuting—this supposedly necessary part of our days—and the verdict is in: long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable. Even short commutes stab at your happiness.

Can you design a Rorschach test that's going to make everyone feel something every time - and that looks like a Rorschach test? It's easy to show a picture of a kitten or a car accident. The question is, how abstract can you get and still get the audience to feel something when they don't know what's happening to them?

as corrie was about to hang up, stacy said, i hope he shoots at my car. i've got a couple of black talon rounds just itching to explore his inner psyche.

The third possible explanation for the sex difference in actual homicides is linked to a surprising motive for much violent behavior: the tendency to act aggressively to impress others.

Your feelings result entirely from how you're thinking right now. It is your thoughts, and not the circumstances of your life, that create all your feelings. You feel the way you think.