Quotes about Psychology

Inherent within the dilemma is a solution.

It is not freedom from, but rather freedom within, freedom to.

Gradual awakening means that change and healing happen gradually as a result of the accumulation of causes. This is more the common way that healing is understood to occur. As a result of doing this and that a person gradually gets better.

attend to experience simply without giving it meaning, feel it, and receive it

"Looking at why people treat each other so violently. We've always known that this violence comes from the urge humans fell to control and dominate one another, but only recently have we studied this phenomenon from the inside, from the point of view of the individual's consciousness. We have asked what happens inside a human being that makes him want to control someone else. We have found that when and individual walks up to another person and engages in a conversation, which happens billions of times each day in the world, one of two things can happen. That individual can come away felling string or feeling weak depending on what occurs in the interaction."

"We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, or our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost."

"In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we're trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and the level of nations."

"The consensus in this matter is now emerging into public consciousness. We humans are realizing how much we manipulate each other and consequently we're reevaluating our motivations. We're looking for another way to interact. I think this reevaluation will be part of the new world view."

Eventually, as we become more fully aware of our problems, another critical point is reached, when insights really have occurred and we try to act upon them. We then discover to our dismay that our attempts to solve them by an effort of will avails us nothing, that our good intentions, as the saying goes, merely pave the way to hell. Good intentions all too readily can foster the illusion that we have settled an issue, when actually it is far from settled and seems to have not the slightest intention of ever being settled. This leads to a deadlock in which we see we need to change but cannot, try as we may. We know we need to renounce our egoistic controlling attempts but we cannot even make ourselves do that. We are up against the paradox that discipline and conscious effort are indispensable but do not get us far enough in our really critical areas. We reach the point where we are tempted to give up in despair because after all, what's the use? We begin to feel that analysis is like deliberate, organized torture; the most problematic things are rubbed in again and again and no matter how we exert ourselves there is no way to change them.

This state has its meaning too. As Dante puts it, the entrance to purgatory is at the deepest point of hell. A resolution of this seemingly hopeless impasse eventually occurs by virtue of the awareness that the ego's claim of a capacity to control rests on an illusion. Without the actual experience of this sort of impasse the ego cannot renounce its claim to the central position. It is only when we have come to our wits' end, and this in the face of our most sincere and extreme efforts, only when we realize that we are hopelessly incapable of changing ourselves, can we begin to accept our real existential position in the life drama. When we are able to say. "this is I, this is my being, and nothing can save me from or free me from being this sort of person," then we have come to the point of acceptance that initiates a fundamental transformation of which we are the object, not the subject. Transformation of our personality occurs in us, upon us but not by us. The unconscious changes itself and us in response to our awareness and acceptance of our station, of our cross.

Our ego freedom lies not in the choice of the cards but in discovering or developing the best possible tactics, in terms of the cards we happen to hold, against our formidable antagonist, the Self, our real hidden and basic being, of which our "I" seems but a temporary and passing structure but is nevertheless a structure which is required and impelled to make the most of itself, to play for keeps, indeed for its very life. Playing for keeps is, interestingly enough, a motif found in primitive rites, for instance in Aztec games, in which the team losing the game was sacrificed, or in the rites of the contest and the sacrificial death of the Year Kings.

Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics-a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effect from the other person. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others. Negative qualities which do not bother us so excessively, which we find relatively easy to forgive-if we have to forgive them at all-are not likely to pertain to our shadow.

Repression will always call forth a compensatory counteractivity of the unconscious which will, through the back door, force upon us the very thing we are trying to repress. On the other hand, conscious discipline-deliberately planning, curbing or directing our acts in awareness of their effects, or renouncing action if that should be required-can be borne and is eminently human.

Until we consciously set out to separate what is typical and what is individual in ourselves, we are constantly mixing up the two in inappropriate ways: trying to solve individual problems in collective terms and to deal with nonpersonal collective impulses as if they were individual reactions.

When one has learned to live with manifestations of the "not-I" in an attitude of concrete acceptance, bearing one's seemingly inferior personal characteristics as a burden rather than identifying with them and at the same time humbly remaining open to the demands of hitherto unrealized transpersonal powers, a new phase of psychological transformation is initiated. The instinctual drives themselves may change character and consequently the needs for suppressive discipline or sublimation can be lessened. Much of what formerly seemed evil, or at least compulsively disturbing, reveals itself as merely primitive and therefore capable of constructive growth. The instinctual drives thus transformed and matured cease to be sources of moral danger, temptation or sin; instead they become the originators of new creative impulses and possibilities of expression which eventually widen the scope of the personality and with it the whole life.

If we want to know the next step along the path toward what we are "meant to be," we can look for the thing that attracts and frightens at the same time. That which merely attracts or merely repels is also something to be dealt with, but in a slightly more peripheral way.

This activity of consciousness-the establishment of control in the world of things through conceptualization, rational thought, and the development of discipline and the abstractive repression of emotions-is an utterly vital and indispensable phase of psychic development. It leads from psychic primitive infancy to adulthood. Mythological tradition likens this development to the creation of the world from the original chaos to the establishment of a foothold on dry land away from the threat of drowning in the flood waters. Yet it is not the "dry land" of rational consciousness that contains and supports the ocean but conversely: the waters of the ocean contain the dry continents, and life upon them depends upon the waters. Similarly, it it the unconscious psyche, that gives rise to and maintains the world of consciousness. Consciousness with its concepts is a relatively minor part of the total psychic functioning, and in terms of dynamics certainly not the most powerful one. It establishes fixed points of rational reference-but at the price of a loss of emotional connection. Images, on the other hand, constellate emotional and imaginative qualities and thus reconstitute a connection which the abstractive process has severed.

Indisputably we live in a shaped reality, an artificialism.  Most people who grasp this are thinking only at a consumer-level, of the "things" they like and need and feel impelled to acquire.  But our societal and political arrangements are just as much manipulations of game-pieces and rules as is any Atari or Sega product.  The subliminal psychology that drives people to become addicted to games, not to be able to see over the edges of their labyrinths, is transferable to any field whatsoever.

"The way out is the way in."

I am sure I have heard this several times from places I can't recall, but it's not already in the Z Quotes database, so I add this profound insight from the fields of psychological healing and spiritual evolution. It sure has helped me.

Language is virtually always pathological; hence the solution is to move as fast and far as possible from language to experience, from linguistic to experimental or psychological philosophy. In order to know that we are not in the linguistic maze, we need to determine, according to Berkeley, whether the things we are talking about exist; hence we need to look for the relevant perceptions. For him, this usually means retiring into himself and trying to imagine whether x exists, having formed the best definition possible of x.

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

If aspects of the person remain undigested--cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated--they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.

Don't "should" on me, don't "should" on yourself and don't "should" on anyone else. 

William James, a pioneer in philosophy and psychology, said, "All of life is but a mass of small choices--practical, emotional and intellectual--systematically organized for our greatness or grief." When asked if these choices could be altered, he replied, "Yes, one at a time. But we must never forget that it's not only our big dreams that shape reality...the small choices bear us irresistibly toward our destiny."           

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.

Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved.

Let no youth have nay anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.

 But the most important lesson I have learned in my twenty years or research on morality is that nearly all people are morally motivated.  Selfishness is a powerful force, particularly in the decisions of individuals, but whenever groups of people come together to make a sustained effort to change the world, you can bet that they are pursuing a vision of virtue, justice, or sacredness.

I find that God by any name can be reduced to this sense of the eternal Presence. It defines being, and I see it as a sphere of intense light that marks the point of my origin. It is the permanent part of me, of which I am very aware, and the point to which I will return at the conclusion of this life.

People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well.

"At last, psychology gets serious about glee, fun, and happiness. Martin Seligman has given us a gift--a practical map for the perennial quest for a flourishing life."

~ Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence," commenting on "Authentic Happiness" by Martin Seligman

I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.

A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.