Psychiatry Quotes - Page 3

• To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

  William James

  Philosophical, Understanding, Abnormal

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• Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches.

  Sigmund Freud

  Art, Teaching, Feet

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• Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help.

  Ken Livingstone

  House, Needs, Helping

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• Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

  Samuel Goldwyn

  Funny, Science, Men

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• Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

  Thomas Szasz

  Medicine, Experts, Mendacity

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.162, Transaction Publishers

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• One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

  Muriel Spark

  Inspirational, Women, Memorable

  Muriel Spark (2012). “Doctors of Philosophy: A Play”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• Psychoanalysts seem to be long on information and short on application.

  Gene Fowler

  Long, Information, Application

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• Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.

  Thomas Szasz

  Vocabulary, Expectations, Political

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.27, Syracuse University Press

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• The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.

  Karl Kraus

  Differences, People, Madness

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years.

  Thomas Szasz

  Years, Medicine, Fifty

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• There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

  Harry Stack Sullivan

  Fun, Optimism, Trying

  Harry Stack Sullivan (1953). “The collected works”

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• Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.

  Janet Frame

  Morning, Mean, Hands

  Janet Frame (1980). “Faces in the water”

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• The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence.

  Michel Foucault

  Madness, Language, Reason

  "History of Madness".

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• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

  Sigmund Freud

  Strength, Death, Spiritual

  Sigmund Freud (1952). “Major Works”

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• I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read.

  Raymond Chandler

  Years, Common Sense, Fifty

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• Psychiatrists are usually very well imbued with the clinical role, where helping the sick person is the goal. And that's quite incompatible with the truthseeking role. That's probably true of the other fields, too, but maybe more so of the personalities that gravitate toward psychiatry. They tend to care about people and wish to be helpful.

  Park Dietz

  Sick, Goal, People

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• ...Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern psychiatric treatments.

  William Sargant

  Jesus, Religion, Use

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• Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA, not to mention the courts.

  Peter Breggin

  Presidential, Decision, Disease

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• A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.

  Antonin Artaud

  Would Be, Investigation, Faculty

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.483, Univ of California Press

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• Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Psychology, Tools

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Sane Society”, p.189, Open Road Media

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• Where I come from these days, anybody who isn't seeing a therapist needs to.

  Edna Buchanan

  Needs, Therapists, These Days

  Edna Buchanan (2014). “The Britt Montero Series (Omnibus Edition)”, p.1443, Diversion Books

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• Through the miracles of modern medicine George Burns still chases pretty girls, and through the miracle of modern psychiatry he intends to find out why!

  Frank Welker

  Girl, Medicine, Miracle

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• I hope what I do when I draw from other people's lives is pay tribute. To try to understand what it means in our society to be silenced. To try to understand how class and gender intersect with that. To try to understand how being named and classified within the context of psychiatry can intersect with all that, as well.

  Kate Zambreno

  Mean, Class, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• [Jean-Paul] Sartre was a throwback to the existential period. I'm not really so much into that these days. I went through a period of going over things and looking at them again to see what they were. But I'm into psychiatry type things. I'm into philosophy. I'm into that sort of thing.

  Van Morrison

  Philosophy, Existential, Type

  Source: ritchieyorke.com

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• Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.

  Gordon Allport

  Focus, Agents, Release

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