“Those who chose to stay on in the military, or young professionals who spent their entire careers in the new defense-oriented research organizations that proliferated in the postwar era, were fond of pointing out that nothing much distinguished psychology on campus from psychology administered, directly or indirectly, by the Pentagon; virtually all psychological research had military applications.”
Source: The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
“She'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened--apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. Food, weapons, happiness.
With hope that the weapons could in time vanish from the picture.”
Source: Dreams of Gods & Monsters
“A tiger can never understand the view of a sparrow.”
“The exploration and construction of a personal history with another person is a powerful, transformative intrapersonal experience. Without memory, there is no self. Meaning is personal experience composed into narratives. However, the narratives brought forth by the patient are generally stereotypes and closed. A central part of what the analyst adds is imagination, a facility with reorganizing and reframing, a capacity to envision different endings, and different futures. If the storylines suggested by the analyst himself are rigid and stereotypes, the analytic process degenerates into sterility and conversion.”
Source: Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis
“Still, take away such physically charged images of identity, take away the wisdom of elders, take away the community of men, and one has the modern world.”
Source: Under Saturn's Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men
“If someone thinks you’re a fucking problem, an addict, a fuck-up, and broken, they’re going to treat you differently despite all their best intentions otherwise, which can foster a slow, steady reduction, stripping away confidence
and self-love until it all becomes a repeated, entrenched story. The irony is that this contraction often occurs in the care of those
who are genuinely trying to help.”
Source: The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
“I am the snow collapsing on itself and I feel myself breaking into a thousand pieces. Maybe a picture can hold them together. The world is small around me as I kneel in the snow on the edge of my own death and cry tears of shock, pain, and relief.”
“Psychology is an invitation out of victimhood, not into it.”
Source: The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
“The nervous system dictates what that soul attracts into her life. If your neurons are destroyed, you won't know where you are, what you want or where you want to go.”
Source: Outsmarting the Ego: The Physics of Evil