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Psychiatry Quotes

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Psychiatry Quotes

“How does your patient, doctor? Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest. Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart. Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.”

SorrowDepressionHeartbreakMental HealthPsychiatryPsychotherapyAntidepressants
Book:Macbeth
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“But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. They're all in rather uneasy truce with one another in what's actually a mortal battle. Like all self-reinforcing systems. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups. You know: religion and art are both forms of madness and madness is the realm of psychiatry. Or, art is the study and praise of man and man's ideals, so therefore a religious experience just becomes a brutalized aesthetic response and psychiatry is just another tool for the artist to observe man and render his portraits more accurately. And the religious attitude I guess is that the other two are only useful as long as they promote the good life. At worst, they all try to destroy one another. Which is what my psychiatrist, whether he knew it or not, was trying, quite effectively, to do to my painting. I gave up psychiatry too, pretty soon. I just didn't want to get all wound up in any systems at all.”

ArtPhilosophyReligionThoughtBehaviourPsychiatry
Book:Dhalgren
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“You understand psychiatry?" Tracy said. "Psychiatry, no," Dr. Pingitzer said. "People - little bit. Little, little, little bit. very year, every day - less, less, less. Why? People is difficult. People is people. People is fun, play, imagination, magic. Ah ha. People is pain, people is sick, people is mad, people is hurt, people is hurt people, is kill, is kill self. Where is fun, where is play, where is imagination, where is magic? Psychiatry I hate. People I love. Mad people, beautiful people, hurt people, sick people, broke people, in pieces people, I love, I love. Why? Why is lost from people fun, play, imagination, magic? What for? Ah ha. Money?" He smiled. "I think so. Money. Is love, this money. Is beauty, this money. Is fun, this money. Where is money? I do not know. No more fun. Work, now. Work, Tiger, Tiger.”

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Book:Tracy's Tiger
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“I can't see the logic in medicating a grieving person like there was something wrong with her, and yet it happens all the time... you go to the doctor with symptoms of profound grief and they push an antidepressant at you. We need to walk through our grief, not medicate it and shove it under the carpet like it wasn't there.”

DeathLossGriefDyingDrugDepressionMedicineMedicalMourningDeath Of A Loved OneCarpetPsychiatryDoctorWalkHideAnti PsychiatryAntidepressantShove
Book:The Amateur's Guide to Death and Dying: Enhancing the End of Life
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“Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of – and buried – the potential of our teens.”

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Author:Robert Epstein
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“[One way] researchers sometimes evaluate people's judgments is to compare those judgments with those of more mature or experienced individuals. This method has its limitations too, because mature or experienced individuals are sometimes so set in their ways that they can't properly evaluate new or unique conditions or adopt new approaches to solving problems.”

ProblemWisdomSchoolScienceCreativityStudyPsychologyChildhoodYouthJudgmentResearchAdultsLogicExperienceInnovationIntelligenceMaturityArroganceLife ExperienceAdulthoodProblem SolvingNeurosciencePsychiatryTeenagersAdultLogical ThinkingSchool SystemEducation ReformYoung PeopleSchool Reform
Book:Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence
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“I remember a study that was done in the seventies (a study I've been trying to find unsuccessfully since the advent of the internet). It was a study of psychologists and psychiatrists, not of patients. They filled out three questionnaires, true or false questions. One was for the traits of a healthy man, next was for traits of a healthy woman, the third for traits of a healthy human being. The traits of a healthy man and human were the same, but a healthy woman was very different. Completely different. You know--softer, sweeter, more empathetic, less self-centered, less ambitious, more dependent. And these were the people who were treating people who were trying to live healthy lives.”

MenWomenKnowledgePowerPsychologyHumanPsychiatryThe Virtue Of Ignorance
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“Visions and voices and fear and despair cannot be captured by CT scan or measured in the amplitude of EKG waves. Try as we might, we simply cannot predict which of our patients will kill themselves, which will murder their children, and which will leave the hospital healed, never to return.”

FearDespairPsychiatry
Book:Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
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“Para poder desenvolverse socialmente, la gente necesita desarrollar lo que se conoce como "teoría de la mente". Dicho de otro modo, necesitan saber que las demás personas son distintas a ellos, que tienen un conocimiento distinto del mundo, así como deseos e intereses diferentes a los suyos.”

PeoplePsychologyPsychiatryMente
Book:The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
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“It was Freud's ambition to discover the cause of hysteria, the archetypal female neurosis of his time. In his early investigations, he gained the trust and confidence of many women, who revealed their troubles to him.Time after time, Freud's patients, women from prosperous, conventional families, unburdened painful memories of childhood sexual encounters with men they had trusted: family friends, relatives, and fathers. Freud initially believed his patients and recognized the significance of their confessions. In 1896, with the publication of two works, The Aetiology of Hysteria and Studies on Hysteria, he announced that he had solved the mystery of the female neurosis. At the origin of every case of hysteria, Freud asserted, was a childhood sexual trauma. But Freud was never comfortable with this discovery, because of what it implied about the behavior of respectable family men. If his patients' reports were true, incest was not a rare abuse, confined to the poor and the mentally defective, but was endemic to the patriarchal family. Recognizing the implicit challenge to patriarchal values, Freud refused to identify fathers publicly as sexual aggressors. Though in his private correspondence he cited "seduction by the father" as the "essential point" in hysteria, he was never able to bring himself to make this statement in public. Scrupulously honest and courageous in other respects, Freud falsified his incest cases. In The Aetiology of Hysteria, Freud implausibly identified governessss, nurses, maids, and children of both sexes as the offenders. In Studies in Hysteria, he managed to name an uncle as the seducer in two cases. Many years later, Freud acknowledged that the "uncles" who had molested Rosaslia and Katharina were in fact their fathers. Though he had shown little reluctance to shock prudish sensibilities in other matters, Freud claimed that "discretion" had led him to suppress this essential information. Even though Freud had gone to such lengths to avoid publicly inculpating fathers, he remained so distressed by his seduction theory that within a year he repudiated it entirely. He concluded that his patients' numerous reports of sexual abuse were untrue. This conclusion was based not on any new evidence from patients, but rather on Freud's own growing unwillingness to believe that licentious behavior on the part of fathers could be so widespread. His correspondence of the period revealed that he was particularly troubled by awareness of his own incestuous wishes toward his daughter, and by suspicions of his father, who had died recently. p9-10”

LiesMental HealthSexismSexual AbusePsychiatryChild Sexual AbuseNeurosisHysteriaFathersSexistIncestNeuronsSociety DenialFreudFamous PeopleCover UpChildhood Sexual AbuseSigmund FreudFather DaughterHysterical DissociationHistory Of PsychologySeduction TheoryAeitologyFamous PsychiatristsHistory Of HysteriaHistory Of IncestHistory Of PsychiatryStudies On HysteriaThe Aetiology Of Hysteria
Book:Father-Daughter Incest
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“There have been extensive human rights violations by American psychiatrists over the last 70 years. These doctors were pad by the American taxpayer through CIA and military contracts. It is past time for these abuses to stop, it is past time for a reckoning, and it is past time for individual doctors to be held accountable. The Manchurian Candidate Programs are of much more than "historical" interest. ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, MKULTRA and MKSEARCH are precursors of mind control programs that are operational in the twenty first century. Human rights violations by psychiatrists must be ongoing in programs like COPPER GREEN, the interrogation program at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Such programs must be carried out within CIA units like Task Force 121 (The Dallas Morning News, December 1, 2004, p. 1A). Information pointing to ongoing human rights violations by psychiatrists is available in publications like The New Yorker (see article by Seymour M. Hersh, May 24, 2004). Yes the indifference, silence, denial, and disinformation of organized medicine and psychiatry continue. One purpose of The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists is to break that silence.”

SilenceDoctorsAbuseHuman RightsDenialTorturePsychiatryCiaMind ControlRitual AbuseCriminalSociety DenialDisinformationBluebirdHuman Rights ViolationsAbu GhraibMkultraPsychiatristsArtichokeHuman ExperimentationManchurian CandidateDoctors Who KillCopper Green
Book:The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists
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“It is only water as long as its internal realm of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, remains intact. If you break that structure which we call H20, it ceases to be water. Likewise, a soul remains a soul, as long as its neural structures remain intact. If you mess with those structures, then the entire personality of the soul may get radically altered. So, to think even further, if those neural structures inside your head stop working, then the soul ceases to exist forever.”

MindSoulBrainConsciousnessPsychologyNeuroscienceMind Body SpiritPsychiatryNeurologyNeurobiology
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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“My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss.”

PsychologySadnessIdentityPersonalityDepressionHumanMedicineMental HealthMental IllnessMelancholyPsychiatryMoodyAntidepressantsMood Disorders
Author:Ashly Lorenzana
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“Professions of psychiatry, therapy and mindfulness are bound to boom in parallel with unmoderated consumerism, for unmoderated consumerism facilitates self-absorption which in turn breeds anxiety, and the more anxious you are, the more you need expert help to deal with that anxiety.”

PsychologyHuman NatureAnxietySelfishnessTherapyConsumerismPsychiatrySelf AbsorbedSelf ObsessionShopaholic
Book:Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society
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“Ultimately, confinement did seek to suppress madness, to eliminate from the social order a figure which did not find its place within it; the essence of confinement was not the exorcism of a danger. Confinement merely manifested what madness, in its essence, was: a manifestation of non-being; and by providing this manifestation, confinement thereby suppressed it, since it restored it to its truth as nothingness. Confinement is the practice which corresponds most exactly to madness experienced as unreason, that is, as the empty negativity of reason; by confinement, madness is acknowledged to be nothing.”

ReasonHistoryCivilizationMadnessMedicinePrisonPsychiatrySystemConfinementUnreason
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“Dr. R. observed that we should talk a great deal with deranged patients; and we should always in the early & violent stages of mania, seem to agree with their notions. We should admit their premises, but draw a different inference; which may generally be done. To oppose them at first would be like opposing a northeast storm.”

BeliefDoctorsMadnessMedicineInsanityTherapyPsychiatryCounselingBenjamin Rush
Book:William Darlington notes on the lectures of Philip Syng Physick 1802 [Leather Bound]
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“One of the most studied ideas as to what causes schizophrenia is the 'chemical imbalance theory,' which derives psychiatric pharmaceuticals themselves. Though the 'mechanism of action' of drugs marketed for their 'antipsychotic' properties isn't understood--plainly, drug companies believe these drugs are effective in lessening psychiatric symptoms, but they don't actually know why--what is known is that they affect chemical levels in the brain. It's therefore supposed that abnormal chemical levels might somehow be crucial to understanding what's different about the brains of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Testing chemical levels inside brains remains impossible. Despite billions of dollars of investigation, the chemical imbalance theory has never been confirmed.”

MadnessMental HealthPsychiatrySchizophrenia
Book:A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia
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“A more fundamental problem with labelling human distress and deviance as mental disorder is that it reduces a complex, important, and distinct part of human life to nothing more than a biological illness or defect, not to be processed or understood, or in some cases even embraced, but to be ‘treated’ and ‘cured’ by any means possible—often with drugs that may be doing much more harm than good. This biological reductiveness, along with the stigma that it attracts, shapes the person’s interpretation and experience of his distress or deviance, and, ultimately, his relation to himself, to others, and to the world. Moreover, to call out every difference and deviance as mental disorder is also to circumscribe normality and define sanity, not as tranquillity or possibility, which are the products of the wisdom that is being denied, but as conformity, placidity, and a kind of mediocrity.”

WisdomMadnessMental HealthMental IllnessMeaningConformitySanityPsychiatryStigmaMental DisorderDevianceBiological Reductiveness
Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board. What’s more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person’s disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress.”

ResearchMadnessMental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryDiagnosisSchizophreniaMental Disorders
Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“In psychoanalysis, when approaching the unconscious—that is, what we do not know—we, patient and analyst alike, are certain to be disturbed. In every consulting-room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.”

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Book:The Tavistock Seminars
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