.

.

Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and how it effects behaviour

• Psychology: the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context. Oxford Dictionary
• The reflex is physiology below the collar button. Psychology is physiology above the collar button. Martin H. Fischer
• It’s all in the mind. George Harrison
• Like all Science, psychology is knowledge; and like Science again, it is knowledge of a definite thing, the mind. James Mark Baldwin
• Healing,  The mind,  The subconscious,  Self-knowledge,  Science,  Well-being,  Self-esteem

.

Psychology concerns itself with understanding human nature

• Psychology is a science that cannot be pursued with the sole purpose of developing occasional experts. Only the understanding of human nature by every human being can be its proper goal.  Alfred Adler, M.D.
• Understanding

.

Psychology concerns itself with making aspects of the subconscious conscious

• The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises. Sigmund Freud
• Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. Carl Jung
• To be too conscious is an illness — a real thoroughgoing illness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The subconscious

.

Psychology concerns itself with self-analysis as a way to develop self-awareness

• If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it. Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
• Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin. Tori Amos
• To understand one’s self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one’s self is the romantic. George Santayana
• Self-awareness

.

Psychology believes in people talking through their issues and problems

• Words are the physicians of a mind diseased. Aeschylus
• Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution. G.K. Chesterton
• Problem solving

.

Psychology concerns itself with changing thought patterns

• Cognitive psychotherapy boils down to learning the habit of looking for and uprooting self- disturbing thinking whenever you notice you are disturbed. Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has two advantages over medication: there are no side effects, and treatment can last for years. Dr Steve Ilardi
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has two advantages over medication: there are no side effects, and If you can change our unhealthy beliefs and thoughts and replace then with more healthy and realistic beliefs and thoughts, you can therefore change your emotions (anxiety) and hence your behaviour. Nancy Schimelpfening
• There’s a saying: “Don’t believe everything you think.” This is a core principle of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Instead of viewing your thoughts as absolute truths, see them as mental events to observe and evaluate. Be willing to challenge shame-based thoughts and replace them with more accurate thoughts. Hazelden
• Thinking,  Negativity

.

Psychology has traditionally concerned itself with the treatment of neuroses …

• The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy. Sigmund Freud, attributed
• A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
• A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent. Jerome Lawrence
• Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it’s made you a mess, but you won’t die from it. Mignon McLaughlin
• Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. Carl Jung
• As a whole part of psychological education it needs to be remembered that a neurosis can be valuable; also that adjustment to a sick and insane environment is of itself not health but sickness and insanity. James Agee

.

… with healing the traumas and scars of the mind …

• Anybody who is 25 or 30 years old has physical scars from all sorts of things, from tuberculosis to polio. It’s the same with the mind. Moses R. Kaufman
• According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else. K. Rowling

.

… but has recently started to focus also on the science of happiness and well- being

• Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. Martin E.P. Seligman
• Positive psychology is a discipline that utilizes evidence-based scientific methods to study factors that contribute to human happiness and strength. Martin E.P. Seligman
• Happiness,  Well-being

.

Mental health issues effect everyone to some extent and mental well-being can always be enhanced

• The presence of anxiety, of a depressive mood or of a conflict within the mind, does not stamp any individual as having a psychological problem because, as a matter of fact, these qualities are indigenous to the species. Charles Goodstein
• Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons but one out of one. William Menninger
• Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. Voltaire
• To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill. It is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time. A. Overstreet

.

Psychology tends to focus a lot on the past …

• To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness. Fritz Perls
• Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of ‘progress,’ but only by viewing history as a neurosis. Norman O. Brown
• Hindsight is a powerful tool for redressing the forgetfulness that so often characterizes the human condition. It’s a vehicle of recollection, where we are called back to ourselves, and it’s a key feature of living the examined life. Mark Freeman
• The past

.

… to help people find and let go of repressed past pain …

• Their pain is a blessing because ultimately it helps to bring back feeling, and can lead the way to the restoration of depth and soul. Marvin Westwood
• Pain

.

… to discover the story behind the stories …

• There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography. Thomas Szasz
• Studying psychology is fun because you’re always looking because you’re always looking for the same thing I think a writer should be looking for which is the story behind the story. Chris Cleave
• Stories,  Stories of self

.

… to correct the fallacies of the mind …

• Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics. Steven Pinker
• Illusion

.

… to allow the past to be re-interpreted in a healthier, more constructive way

• The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best. Paul Valéry
• Interpretation,  Perception

.

.

Some people assert psychology has its limitations

• There are cases where psychoanalysis works worse than anything else. But who said that psychoanalysis was to be applied always and everywhere. C.Carl Jung
• The first reason for psychology’s failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology’s failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context. Naomi Weisstein

.

Many have gripes with psychology, especially if it involves endless psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalysis is a technique we practice at our cost; psychoanalysis degrades our risks, our dangers, our depths; it strips us of our impurities, of all that made us curious about ourselves. E.M. Cioran
• The two main hazards of psychoanalysis: that it might fail, and that if it succeeds, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself for all those wasted years.  Mignon McLaughlin
• Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected the American society within the last fifty years. Thomas S. Szasz
• Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. Voltaire
• Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts. Vladimir Nabokov
• It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature. G.K. Chesterton
• If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology. D. H. Lawrence
• Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Could it be that psychology is — a vice? Friedrich Nietzsche
• Psychoanalysis will fade away just as mesmerism and phrenology did, and for the same reason – its exploded pretensions will deprive it of recruits. Frederick Crews
• Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy. Karl Kraus
• I don’t go for this auto-cannibalism. Very damaging. Peter O’Toole, on psychoanalysis
• Would there be any truth in saying that psychology was created by the sophists to sow distrust between man and his world? Rudolph Arnheim
• Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison. Karl Kraus
• Psychology is a bus that accompanies an airplane. Karl Kraus

.

A limitation of psychology is that it does not take you beyond the mind to the realms of the soul where the deepest healing is to be found

• Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity. Eckhart Tolle
• Psychology doesn’t address the soul; that’s something else. David Chase, The Sopranos
• Fascination with the psychic – or the psychological – can be a dangerous sidetrack on any spiritual path. Starhawk
• The soul

.

In fact, to study the contents of the mind is to sift through a great deal of nonsense that can actually obscure the soul

• Sure you can psychoanalyze! But as Baehr used to say, why bother to sort garbage? Martin H. Fischer
• The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. Carl Jung
• The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place. Jim Butcher

.

Some argue that psychology is a soft science – and maybe not a science at all

• Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throughout the world. Carl Jung
• It is still open to question whether psychology is a natural science, or whether it can be regarded as a science at all. Ivan Pavlov
• Science

.

Psychology has been greatly popularised

• The chief difficulty for those who begin the study of scientific psychology is that all men indulge in popular psychology. Karl Friedrich Munzinger
• Popular psychology is a mass of cant, of slush and of superstition worthy of the most flourishing days of the medicine man. John Dewey

.

Psychology has been used by some to blame outside forces and avoid taking personal responsibility

• In this day and age when everybody thinks psychology is God’s gift to the poor old anally fixated human race and even the president of the United States pops a trank before dinner, it’s really a good way to get rid of those Old Testament guilts that keep creeping up our throats like the aftertaste of a bad meal we overate. If you say your father hated you as a kid, you can go out and flash the neighborhood, commit rape, or burn down the Kinights of Pythias bingo parlor and still cop a plea… But it also means that no one will believe you if it’s true. Stephen King, Rage
• The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. Albert Ellis
• Responsibility

.

.

Psychology must be about action and behaviour change, not just endless self-analysis …

• To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.  Albert Camus
• Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
• Action,  Change

.

… for even a deep theoretical understanding of psychology doesn’t make one mentally healthy and sane

• Being an expert on insanity doesn’t make you sane.
• Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn’t mean that you can easily rebuild it. Dean Koontz
• To know psychology … is no guarantee that we shall manage our minds rightly. William Glover

.

Psychology must be humble about how much it truly understands …

• No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand… Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing. Anton Chekhov
• Psychology which explains everything explains nothing, and we are still in doubt. Marianne Moore
• Humility

.

… for the study of the human mind is hugely vast in its scope

• The world of psychology contains looks and tones and feelings; it is the world of dark and light, of noise and silence, of rough and smooth; its space is sometimes large and sometimes small, as everyone knows who in adult life has gone back to his childhood’s home; its time is sometimes short and sometimes long, it has no invariables. It contains all the thoughts, emotions, memories, imaginations, volitions that you naturally ascribe to mind. B. Titchener

.

Psychology must focus on what is relevant and practical

• Psychology should be the chief basic science upon which the practices of education depend. It should have supplied education with the information it needs concerning the processes of understanding, learning, and thinking, among other things. One of the difficulties has been that such theory as has been developed has been based primarily upon studies of behavior of rats and pigeons. As someone has said, some of the theory thus developed has been an insult even to the rat. P. Guilford

.

Psychology must see the mind and body as a connected whole

• Most psychologists treat the mind as disembodied, a phenomenon with little or no connection to the physical body. Conversely physicians treat the body with no regard to the mind or the emotions. But the body and mind are not separate, and we cannot treat one without the other. Candace Pert
• The separation of psychology from the premises of biology is purely artificial, because the human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body. Carl Jung
• Mind, body, soul connection

.

.

Life itself can be an excellent therapist

• Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist. Karen Horney
• To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist. Gail Sheehy

.

Writing can be excellent therapy

• Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation. Graham Greene
• Whatever it is that you write, putting words on the page is a form of therapy that doesn’t cost a dime and it is certainly a productive way to deal with the scars and dark places from our pasts. Self- expression is one way to lay a problem or demon to rest. It’s also a way to bring forth suppressed feelings and fears. It’s a way to bring a sense of resolution and a sense of satisfaction to our lives. Diana Raab
• Writing

.

Relaxation, meditation and rest can be excellent therapy

• The yoga mat is a good place to turn when talk therapy and antidepressants aren’t enough. Amy Weintraub
• If you integrate meditation with psychotherapy or cognitive- behavioral classes, you will find that you can maintain low degrees of depression and anxiety long after your therapy ends—but again, only if you continue the meditation practice of staying relaxed, alert and focused. Andrew Newberg
• It’s hard for me to put into words why I like the beach so much. Everything about it is renewing for me, almost like therapy… Beach Therapy. Amy Dykens
• Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. Dodie Smith
• Why do we pay for psychotherapy when massages cost half as much? Jason Love
• Often, we ignore the fact that our spiritual condition and psychological state of mind are highly affected by what is happening to us physically. Sometimes depression is simply the result of exhaustion. Tony Campolo
• Relaxation,  Meditation,  Rest and renewal

.

Music can be excellent therapy

• Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? Michael Torke
• Music

.

Work can be excellent therapy

• A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work. Geoffrey Norman
• Work cure is the best of all psychotherapy, in my opinion…. As well might we expect a patient to recover without food as to recover without work…. The sound man needs work to keep him sound, but the nervous invalid has an even greater need of work to draw him out of his isolation, and to stop the miseries of doubt and self-scrutiny, to win back self-respect and the support of fellowship. Richard C. Cabot
• Work

.

Love and human connection is excellent therapy

• Smile, it’s free therapy. Douglas Horton
• The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love. Hubert H. Humphrey
• There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. Ben Williams
• Money-giving is a very good criterion of a person’s mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people. Karl Menninger, Dr.
• Love,  Connection

.

Exercise can be excellent therapy

• I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline. Jack LaLanne
• Exercise itself makes for a ‘pretty good anti-depressant too, equal to drugs or psychotherapy in some studies. Michael Craig Miller, M.D.
• A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. Paul Dudley White
• Exercise

.

Gardening can be excellent therapy

• Gardening is the best therapy in the world. C. Z. Guest
• A garden is the best alternative therapy. Germaine Greer
• Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.
• Gardening

.

Finding meaning in life is the best therapy of all

• More often than people realize, psychological distress is caused by some combination of lack of meaning, lack of social engagement, and lack of spirituality. Jennifer Hamady
• I think it is possible that we may soon even define therapy as a search for values, because ultimately the search for identity is, in essence, the search for one’s own intrinsic, authentic values. Abraham Maslow
• Meaning

.

• I went to a therapy group to help me cope with loneliness but no one else turned up. Stewart Francis
• A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
• A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent. Jerome Lawrence
• A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. Joey Adams
• A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-Bergère and looks at the audience. Mervyn Stockwood
• A psychiatrist is the next man you start talking to after you start talking to yourself. Fred Allen
• A wonderful discovery, psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they’re complex. S.N. Behrman
• After 12 years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said “No hablo ingles.” Ronnie Shakes
• After a year in therapy my psychiatrist said to me “Maybe life isn’t for everyone. ” Larry Brown
• Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. Samuel Goldwyn
• Behavioral psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats. Douglas Busch
• Easiest job in the world of course: Australian psychiatrist, “Gday Gday how you doing… no worries… next.” Milton Jones
• Experimental psychologist: A scientist who pulls habits out of rats. Leonard L. Levinson
• Freud: If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. Robin Williams
• Half a psychiatrist’s patients see him because they are married – the other half because they’re not. Arnold Glasow
• I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist; then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers and a bartender.   Rodney Dangerfield
• I’m even in denial about the fact that I’m in therapy; I’ve just convinced myself there’s a friend that I see once a week and then I lend her $90 and she never pays me back. Caroline Rhea
• In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist. Truman Capote
• Last week I told my psychiatrist “I keep thinking about suicide and he told me from now on I have to pay in advance.” Rodney Dangerfield
• My psychiatrist and I are making real progress. He’s taken all my little fears and turned them into one big phobia.
• My psychiatrist is great. He lumped all my nagging worries into one big complex.
• My psychiatrist prescribed a game of golf as an antidote to the feelings of euphoria I experience from time to time. Bruce Lansky
• My psychiatrist said my wife and I should have sex every night; now we’ll never see each other! Rodney Dangerfield
• My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion; he said okay you’re ugly too. Rodney Dangerfield
• My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance; we’ll see about that. Stewart Francis
• My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far, I’ve finished two bags of M&Ms and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.
• Psychiatrist: a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.   Adams Joey
• Psychiatrist: A head coach.
• Psychiatrists: People with the same problems as anyone else but with an accent.
• Psychologist: A man who, when a beautiful woman enters the room, watches everyone else.   Bruce Patterson
• Psychologist: Someone who goes to a strip- tease show and watches the audience.
• Psychology: The care of the id by the odd.
• Psychology: The science that tells you what you already know in words you can’t understand.
• The psychiatrist’s office is where you say what you think and be told what you mean. Alfred E. Neuman
• The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women … merely adored. Oscar Wilde, The Ideal Husband
• Therapy is expensive. Popping bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
• There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. Ben Williams
• Well adjusted: Someone who’s pep-up pills just outweighs their intake of tranquilisers, leaving enough energy for a weekly trip to the psychiatrist.
• You go to a psychiatrist when you’re slightly cracked and keep going until you’re completely broke.

.

.