Top 9 Quotes & Sayings by Stanton Peele

When people can say to themselves - "What I'm doing is justified," there is little chance of their modifying a behavior.

Recovery is about purpose and meaning in life, not “sobriety” and meetings.

The addictive experience is the totality of effect produced by an involvement; it stems from pharmacological and physiological sources, but takes its ultimate form from cultural and individual constructions of experience.

When spectators and fans say about drunken brawls, violence, and dog fights, "Well, football players are prone to these things - that's why we admire them," they are encouraging terribly detrimental behavior. You might even say - a la Roman gladiators - they are egging on this behavior.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha have written the essential corrective to the evolutionary psychology literature.

People no longer know how to apologize, which is particularly noticeable among athletes, politicians, and entertainment figures.

Anger management (which is a part of both public displays of rage and spouse abuse) is about changing a person's internal reactions to events (how they see their behavior) by changing the support environment for the behavior (making them see the behavior is wrong).

Addiction is more malleable than you know. When people come to me for therapy, they often ask me whether their behavior constitutes a real addiction (or whether they are really alcoholic, etc.). My answer is that this is not the important question. The important questions are how many problems is the involvement causing you, how much do you want to change it, and how can we go about change?

We often say 'love' when we really mean, and are acting out, an addiction-a sterile, ingrown dependency relationship, with another person serving as the object of our need for security.