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Famous David Smail Quotes

“On the whole, people deceive themselves through lack of courage rather than lack of clarity about the predicament in which they find themselves-- one may deceive oneself because one lacks the courage to face the implications of one's experience, or simply because that experience is so confused and puzzling that one opts for a relatively non-threatening interpretation of it.”

AnxietyExperienceConfusionUncertaintySelf Deception
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“In order satisfactorily to function, we depend, throughout our lives, on the presence of others who will accord us validity, identity, and reality. You cannot be anything if you are not recognized as something; in this way your being becomes dependent on the regard of somebody else. You may be confirmed, or you may be disconfirmed, and if the latter is the case, often enough and pervasively enough, you simply cease to exist as a person.”

AnxietyTraumaRejectionShynessValidationDepersonalizationDerealization
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“If, on the other hand, you insist on your knowledge of the emperor's nakedness, you may not find the ready assent from others which could confidently be expected only if you assume their good faith toward their own experience; In fact, their strenuous denial that they share your experience may leave you in such isolation that ultimately not only they but you yourself begin to question your sanity.”

RealityAnxietyIllusionExperienceConfusionUncertaintyPersonal Experience
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“To stand for something, whether in child-rearing or any other sphere, is of course to risk error; it is also to become conspicuous under the gaze of the Other, to give away one's position and to invite rejection. But it is also the only way through which social evolution can take a truly moral direction; it is the inescapable consequence of recognizing and taking seriously the fact that it is we who make the world, not 'it' or 'them'.”

SocialRiskMoralityAnxietyActivismSociology
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“For there would be no point in painful struggle, in heroic battle against injustice, in the painstaking achievements of culture and learning, in courageous stance against cruelty or adversity, in loving self-sacrifice for others, if in fact the experience gained by just one tortured and despairing individual could simply be 'adjusted' or 'modified' by the appropriate expert.”

DepressionAnxietyAdversityInjusticeTraumaActivismExpertsPsychiatryPsychotherapy
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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