Top 444 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Psychiatrists

I don't care how intelligent or attractive someone is, if he zaps your energy, he isn't for you. True chemistry is more than intellectual compatibility. Beyond surfaces, you must be intuitively at ease.

Life isn't something you can give an answer to today. You should enjoy the process of waiting, the process of becoming what you are. There is nothing more delightful than planting flower seeds and not knowing what kind of flowers are going to come up.

Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem. When you're three or seven years old, it's less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you're living with a monster.

A savant, by definition, is somebody who has a disability and, along with that disability, has some remarkable ability. Prodigies and geniuses have the remarkable abilities that the savant shows, but they do not have a disability. So, by definition, a savant includes someone with a disability, and a prodigy or genius are people who have these remarkable skills but they do not have a disability.

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.

Going to a psychiatrist has become one of the most dangerous things a person can do.

Don't believe everything you hear - even in your own mind.

The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.

In order to do what really matters to you, you have to, first of all, know what really matters to you.

Grief is neither a disorder nor a healing process; it is a sign of health itself, a whole and natural gesture of love. Nor must we see grief as a step toward something better. No matter how much it hurts-and it may be the greatest pain in life-grief can be an end in itself, a pure expression of love.

We've had 20 years of mass murders throughout which I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media, if you don't want to propagate more mass murders, don't start the story with sirens blaring. Don't have photographs of the killer. Don't make this 24/7 coverage. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero. Do localize the story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market. Because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.

Conflict is inevitable, the source of all growth, and an absolute necessity if one is to be alive.

The problem with Christians is they aren't as good as Jesus. But thank God most Muslims are better than Muhammad.

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts.

All our theories of improving the world, while we are still asleep, merely intensify the sleep of humanity.

Suffering brings the patient to us...the patient needs to feel heard and seen-that is, met, by another person.

Purely sensual love is never true and lasting, for which reason first love is, as a rule, but a passing infatuation, a fleeting passion.

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

The creative person finds himself in a state of turmoil, restlessness, emptiness, and unbearable frustration unless he expresses his inner life in some creative way.

The success of Prozac says that today's high-tech capitalism values a very different temperament. Confidence, flexibility, quickness, and energy - the positive aspects of hyperthymia - are at a premium.

Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.

Very few politicians in Washington really represent the interests of many people.

We are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do.

Often men believe women are the same, and once they figure what works for one woman they apply that same method to all the other women they are intimate with, and that's one of the major problems.

The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.

Mental health courts exist because the system has failed. If these people were being treated, they wouldn't end up with misdemeanor charges or felony charges against them in the first place. The very existence of mental health courts is really an indication of the system's failure.

Mental disorders don't really live 'out there' waiting to be explained. They are constructs we have made up - and often not very compelling ones.

People should not judge failed love affairs as failed experiences, but as part of the growth process. Something does not have to end well for it to have been one of the most valuable experiences of a lifetime.

The patients often try to starve themselves, to hang themselves, to cut their arteries; they beg that they may be burned, buried alive, driven out into the woods and there allowed to die. One of my patients struck his neck so often on the edge of a chisel fixed on the ground that all the soft parts were cut through to the vertebrae.

The stress that they're under is absolutely extreme. Indefinite detention. Not knowing when you're going to get out. The threat of being sent back to a country that you fear you're going to be murdered or tortured upon return. I mean, this is the most extreme form of stress you can possibly conjure up. And our country is doing this to these people.

Quantum Leap Thinking [is] an opportunity to get our energy out and target it in the direction of great productivity, leaving us with a feeling of accomplishment.

The brain, to be sure, is indeed the physical embodiment of the mind, the organ through which the mind finds expression and through which it acts in the world.

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.

He soon recognized the fact that the stimulus proceeded from the idea to be in the power of a woman rather than from the act of violence itself.

5% of women have true multiple orgasms only through intercourse and these women typically find oral sex uncomfortable.

A lot of people don't know the brain is 85% water, so anything that dehydrates you like caffeine or alcohol is bad for the brain.

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.

Surrendered people understand that they can’t always change a situation, especially when the door is shut. They don’t try to force it open. Instead, they pay attention to their own behavior, look at the situation at hand, and find a new, different, and creative way to get beyond the obstacles. They are comfortable with uncertainty.

There are some cases that have come to my attention where there's been a head injury, or getting struck by lightning and surviving, with really no disability or residual. So there are cases that I'm aware of where there's been some incident which triggered the acquired savant ability, but is not associated with long term disability, so that can occur. But I think that's probably the exception rather than the rule in that I think many of the acquired savants do end up with some residual disability.

Shame is not your friend. It depletes your power. Let go of shame and embrace your magnificence.

Now I realize, and I acknowledge, that the right brain/left brain distinction is a tremendous oversimplification. We don't come neatly divided into right and left hemispheres, but the fact is that the two hemispheres of the brain do specialize in certain functions.

With rare exceptions, people are responsible for what they do.

There does seem to be a higher educational level in parents of autistic youngsters, and I guess that's something that we need to look into.

Human empathy, while not found on any chart of human anatomy, is the reason we instinctively hurt for our children... it is the reason that one human being's intensely personal tests and triumphs can be harnessed to the good of countless others.

Peace is not something you can force on anything or anyone... much less upon one's own mind. It is like trying to quiet the ocean by pressing upon the waves. Sanity lies in somehow opening to the chaos, allowing anxiety, moving deeply into the tumult, diving into the waves, where underneath, within, peace simply is.

I feel that one must deliberate then act, must scan every life choice with rational thinking but then base the decision on whether one's heart will be in it.

The relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you’ll ever have.

I come from a liberal tradition. I'm Jewish. My dad was a liberal. What I've found is that people who see themselves as thoughtful, caring, educated and informed have swallowed psychiatry as the way.

Fear shuts people down. When you feel safe, your brain is free to soar. When you feel in danger, your brain goes into survival mode, not peak performance mode. Too many people feel unsafe at work, under toxic pressures, and stretched too thin. They are literally about to snap. Within an atmosphere of trust and what I call connection, a supervisor can create conditions under which people's brains can set aside fear and fly high.

Caffeine dehydrates the brain and body.

To some extent, we all have quirks or idiosyncrasies, and some geniuses, because of how bright they are and how focused they are, may have liberal eccentricities, but they're not at a disabling level.

To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.

If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins.

To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness.

I think that one of the things that has happened is that psychiatry has become the religion of liberalism.

Passionate living is the soul of success.

Addiction is not something we can simply take care of by applying the proper remedy. For it is in the very nature of addiction to feed on our attempts to master it.

The Structure of Magic I by Richard Bandler and John Grinder is a delightful simplification of the infinite complexities of the language I use with patients. In reading this book, I learned a great deal about the things that I've done without knowing about them.

Words ride on the energy of tone, its warmth or coldness; think of tone as the music of how words are expressed. You want this music to be soulful, whether you're giving sweet talk or tough love.