Quotes About Psychotherapy

If, like me, you have many reasons to be less than secure and self-assured, and like me, you are far from stable even on your best days, don't for a moment imagine a psychotherapist will be of more help than a physiotherapist.

In psychotherapy it's common to think that problems begin at a certain point in life as a result of certain situations, and that the particular time and situation must be dealt with in order to remove the problems. This may be so for particular problems, but suffering begins long before childhood, long before birth. No matter how perfect the childhood, everyone will still have problems.

"The most prevalent and destructive fear is not of sickness or death itself. It is the fear of being human. All of our neurotic symptoms are retaliation against ourselves for daring to be human, this is less than godlike martyrs or masters. This is what psychotherapy is all about: getting over the fear of being human.

I've always been fascinated with knowing the self. This fascination led me to submerge myself in art, study neuroscience, and later to become a psychotherapist.

there is a danger inherent in the teaching...that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy.

Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence.

His approach to psychotherapy stressed the importance of helping people to reach new heights of personal meaning through self-transcendence: the application of positive effort, technique, acceptance of limitations, and wise decisions. His goal was to provoke people into realizing that they could and should exercise their capacity for choice to achieve their own goals.

there is something in it, inasmuch as logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses.

I doubt that, in this case, I was dealing with a neurotic condition at all, and that is why I thought that he did not need any psychotherapy, nor even logotherapy, for the simple reason that he was not actually a patient. [...] A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness; therefore, it must leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible. That is why a logotherapist is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to impose value judgments on his patients, for he will never permit the patient to pass to the doctor the responsibility of judging.

would say, reification has become the original sin of psychotherapy. But a human being is no thing. This no-thingness, rather than nothingness, is the lesson to learn from existentialism.

Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness; therefore, it must leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible. That is why a logotherapist is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to impose value judgments on his patients, for he will

A statement once made by Edith Weisskopf-Joelson: Although traditional psychotherapy has insisted that therapeutic practices have to be based on findings on etiology, it is possible that certain factors might cause neuroses during early childhood and that entirely different factors might relieve neuroses during adulthood.

centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.

Psychotherapy would not only reflect a nihilistic philosophy but also, even though unwillingly and unwittingly, transmit to the patient what is actually a caricature rather than a true picture of man. First

there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man's nothingbutness, the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free.

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning.

All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor's artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality.

Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning.

any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.

at the lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall. I was about to give a lecture to an interested audience on, "Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp" (the actual title I later used at that congress41

Psychotherapy is more than technique in that it is art, and goes beyond pure science in that it is wisdom. [...] Wisdom requires the human touch.