Quotes About Psychology

She has told me that what she found most destructive about minority-group psychology "is that one comes to share the conviction of the majority: that one is less able, less intelligent, less educable, less worthy of responsibility." My sentiments, exactly.

How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

lunatics are created deliberately by those who wish to be presided over.

She accused me of having a thwarted sense of superiority. Said that was the cause of all my present unhappiness. I had a high degree, she said, of linguistic mastery, as well as an intuitive understanding—nuts and bolts, nontheoretical—of psychology.

I couldn't argue. For years, that was how I did my work at R.H. Macy's: If I understood better than you did yourself why you thought or did or wanted something, then I could control you.

There's some speculation that the mind of a serial killer is so abnormal that their thoughts literally 'misfire' so that the electromagnetic energy spills into the brain and causes changes at the molecular level. Just the way a head injury can trigger latent psychic abilities by jolting the brain, so can these misfires.

I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.

he slowly put down the hamburger he was eating, stared straight into my eyes, and, without missing a beat, said rather dryly, "That explains a lot.

Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.

There were, however, definite advantages to studying invertebrate zoology. For starters, unlike in psychology, you could eat your subjects. The lobsters—fresh from the sea and delicious—were especially popular.

For as long as I can remember, I was frighteningly, although often wonderfully, beholden to moods.

Decreased sleep is both a symptom of mania and a cause, but I didn't know that at the time, and it probably would not have made any difference to me if I had.

for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy.

Language, on the other hand, newer to the brain, may be more linked to those parts that regulate dopamine and thereby connected to pleasure.

Mood disorders , in addition to exhibiting seasonal patterns, frequently show pronounced diurnal rhythms as well.

the usual limits of understanding another's mind are compounded when trying to understand Lowell, a man who thought in metaphor, lived in history, and whose mind was engaged in a restless, stupendously elaborate game of three-dimensional chess. Lowell's mind was of a lurching, revising originality.

and increased energy)

In one study carried out in Australia, for instance, 40 percent of those who acknowledged thinking about suicide at one point in their lives, when asked the same questions four years later denied ever having had such thoughts.

Of course, a human heart is bound to be complex. But it must be limited.

They fear loneliness and that's why they behave as they do. Perhaps Josie too.

But on further observation, I saw that even if the danger topics were avoided – topics like Josie's education assignments, or her social interaction scores – the uncomfortable feeling could still be there because it really had to do with something beneath these topics; that the danger topics were themselves ways the Mother had devised to make certain emotions appear inside Josie's mind.

Also, the killing of small animals is the entrance ramp onto the serial killer superhighway. Damn. I bet the cat knows that. He picked me because I can't hurt him, or I'd be fulfilling my biological destiny. So I'm screwed. The cat stays. Unless you'll kill him...How does fifty bucks sound?

I'm not a shrink. Never been to one. Shot a couple. Don't think that counts.

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.