Famous Therapists Quotes

I’ve always felt I had to do things because they were expected of me, or more important, to make people like me. The hell with it! I think from now on I’m going to just be me—rich or poor, good or bad, rational or irrational, logical or illogical, famous or infamous.

As the family therapist Virginia Satir famously said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” Hug your child first thing every morning, every time you say good-bye or hello, and as often as you can in between.

The responses of traumatized children are often misinterpreted...Because new situations are inherently stressful, and because youth who have been through trauma often come from homes in which chaos and unpredictability appear "normal" to them, they may respond with fear to what is actually a calm and safe situation. Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to " provoke" it in order to make things feel more comfortable and predictable. Thus, the "honeymoon" period in foster care will end as the child behaves defiantly and destructively in order to prompt familiar screaming and harsh discipline. Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is "familiar". As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty".

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they’re free to generate change. Often, though, people carry around the belief that the majority of their problems are circumstantial or situational—which is to say, external. And if the problems are caused by everyone and everything else, by stuff out there, why should they bother to change themselves? Even if they decide to do things differently, won’t the rest of the world still be the same? It’s a reasonable argument. But that’s not how life generally works. Remember Sartre’s famous line “Hell is other people”? It’s true—the world is filled with difficult people (or, as John would have it, “idiots”). I’ll bet you could name five truly difficult people off the top of your head right now—some you assiduously avoid, others you would assiduously avoid if they didn’t share your last name. But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us. That’s right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the “certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.

His maternal deprivation had caused what John Bowlby, a famous British psychiatrist, called an “attachment disorder.” Maternal attachment is more important than anything else to a baby—even more important than food. A baby will give up anything to have it. Without it, the child is anxious and unable to explore or deal with the world in any normal way. And attachment disorder doesn’t just affect the relationship with the mother; it affects all social, emotional, and cognitive development. If the child doesn’t experience attachment, that child can’t move forward to step two—trusting and emotionally attaching to others and, eventually, sexually attaching to others. In other words, you can’t grow emotionally if you didn’t have infant attachment.

Virtually every version of CBT for anxiety disorders involves working through what’s called an exposure hierarchy. The concept is simple. You make a list of all the situations and behaviors you avoid due to anxiety. You then assign a number to each item on your list based on how anxiety provoking you expect doing the avoided behavior would be. Use numbers from 0 (= not anxiety provoking at all) to 100 (= you would fear having an instant panic attack). For example, attempting to talk to a famous person in your field at a conference might be an 80 on the 0-100 scale. Sort your list in order, from least to most anxiety provoking. Aim to construct a list that has several avoided actions in each 10-point range. For example, several that fall between 20 and 30, between 30 and 40, and so on, on your anxiety scale. That way, you won’t have any jumps that are too big. Omit things that are anxiety-provoking but wouldn’t actually benefit you (such as eating a fried insect). Make a plan for how you can work through your hierarchy, starting at the bottom of the list. Where possible, repeat an avoided behavior several times before you move up to the next level. For example, if one of your items is talking to a colleague you find intimidating, do this several times (with the same or different colleagues) before moving on. When you start doing things you’d usually avoid that are low on your hierarchy, you’ll gain the confidence you need to do the things that are higher up on your list. It’s important you don’t use what are called safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are things people do as an anxiety crutch—for example, wearing their lucky undies when they approach that famous person or excessively rehearsing what they plan to say. There is a general consensus within psychology that exposure techniques like the one just described are among the most effective ways to reduce problems with anxiety. In clinical settings, people who do exposures get the most out of treatment. Some studies have even shown that just doing exposure can be as effective as therapies that also include extensive work on thoughts. If you want to turbocharge your results, try exposure. If you find it too difficult to do alone, consider working with a therapist.

therapy wasn’t about truth; as Jack Nicholson famously shouted in A Few Good Men, sometimes people “can’t handle the truth.” Rather, it’s a matter of getting your unconscious to stop controlling your conscious mind. Effective therapy is about lowering your defences so that you can deal with the issues that arise in your life.

Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to “provoke” it in order to make things feel more comfortable and predictable. Thus, the “honeymoon” period in foster care will end as the child behaves defiantly and destructively in order to prompt familiar screaming and harsh discipline. Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is “familiar.” As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the “certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” This response to trauma can often cause serious problems for children when it is misunderstood by their caretakers.

comfortable and predictable. Thus, the “honeymoon” period in foster care will end as the child behaves defiantly and destructively in order to prompt familiar screaming and harsh discipline. Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is “familiar.” As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the “certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” This response to trauma can often cause serious problems for children when it is misunderstood by their caretakers.

think that therapists of all persuasions have an aversion to expressing anger toward their patients or even feeling it, because it stimulates this irrational fear of not only failing to soothe but also to harm. This is the conundrum that we need to break free from. Accepting our inevitable ambivalence toward both the work itself (Kravis, 2013), and often toward our patients as individuals, could provide the necessary momentum to advance both our theoretical formulations and our clinical interventions. Even more important is the acceptance that we are not without memory or desire. As poetic and appealing as Bion's famous line is, I think it is not a realistic approach to doing treatment. I appreciate that his prescription was meant to encourage receptivity rather than deny our personal biases and needs. Nonetheless, his words are often taken more literally, denying the considerable

Whereas Freud believed that people are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain (his famous pleasure principle), Frankl maintained that people’s primary drive isn’t toward pleasure but toward finding meaning in their lives.

There’s a magnet that somebody stuck on the refrigerator in our office’s kitchen: PEACE. IT DOES NOT MEAN TO BE IN A PLACE WHERE THERE IS NO NOISE, TROUBLE, OR HARD WORK. IT MEANS TO BE IN THE MIDST OF THOSE THINGS AND STILL BE CALM IN YOUR HEART. We can help patients find peace, but maybe a different kind than they imagined they’d find when they started treatment. As the late psychotherapist John Weakland famously said, “Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it’s one damn thing after another.

As the late psychotherapist John Weakland famously said, “Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it’s one damn thing after another.

I am the second someone. Not the first mentioned when an acquaintance says, 'Well actually, I do kind of know someone famous--well someone who knows someone famous.' I am what comes after the part that matters. I'm more than just that, of course. I know that. I can still name the qualities I know to be true about myself in the way that a former therapist suggested: I am a good friend. A truly top-notch giver of gifts. A person who asks 'How are you?' and means it, who can physically feel when there's an undercurrent of shame or sadness moving through someone I love. I am a hard worker. A problem solver. More likely to get shit done than to complain about it. I am a seeker of beauty. I can see loveliness and humor in almost anything or anyone that isn't me. I do it automatically, unconsciously. I am always pointing and laughing. Isn't it funny? Isn't it gorgeous? But then there's everything else, the things I know to be just as true, that would make my former therapist slowly nod and close her eyes, as if she's heard all of this before (she has) and say, 'Remember how we talked about being nicer to ourselves, Hazel?

sex therapist and a famous rock star raised you and this somehow qualifies you to take care of my kid?

I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.” He pauses, allowing the image to sink in. “All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But still, he frantically shakes the bars. That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there’s a way out—as long as we’re willing to see it

For many writers the hardest part of writing is the opening line. I wish. I have hundreds of opening lines. I have a file on my laptop dedicated to nothing but opening lines. I have enough opening lines to fill two complete volumes, if only I could find a way of joining them all together. Nor is my problem the famous 'Writer's Block'. Tania always said I suffered the exact opposite, she used to call it 'Writer's Diarrhoea'. No, for me it's the voices. The incessant voices that clamour for my attention, jabbering, making demands. To which ones do I listen? Do I listen to the characters in my comics who all seem to have their own opinion as to how they see my plots unfolding? Or do I listen to the ones that tell me to take all my clothes off in the Bluewater Shopping Centre and sing Bohemian Rhapsody from the upper balcony? In retrospect it seems such a simple choice but at the time I was slightly confused. Or mildly bewildered as I prefer to call it and not the alcohol induced borderline schizophrenic the therapist insisted on labelling me. Such an unfriendly label I feel.

Virginia Satir, one of our most famous family therapists, said, “Families are people factories.

Virginia Satir, one of our most famous family therapists, said, “Families are people factories.” She meant that we learn how to relate to others during our early experiences of our families. The patterns of interacting that we use today were set up early on in our lives and were reinforced over and over again until they became automatic and part of our unconscious. Our peers and others influence us as well, but the basics are learned very early on and inform much of how we think about ourselves and others later on in life.

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John Weakland famously said, “Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it’s one damn thing after another.

In the words of Esther Perel, a famous couples’ therapist, “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” Oxytocin is the common denominator.[*]

I was forced to realize how culturally laden, to the point of inadequacy, psychotherapy was for Danny. I now know how the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung felt in 1925 after spending time with an Indigenous man: Jung was made aware, he said, of his “imprisonment in the cultural consciousness of the white man.” Freud, along with all the other European founding fathers of psychotherapy, knew nearly nothing of Indigenous culture, and neither did I. But as my father used to say,

I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.” He pauses, allowing the image to sink in. “All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But still, he frantically shakes the bars. That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there’s a way out—as long as we’re willing to see it.

I see my therapist every day, and she makes me focus.

During a belated New Year’s cleaning, I come across my grad-school coursework on the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Scanning my notes, I begin to remember his story. Frankl was born in 1905, and as a boy, he became intensely interested in psychology. By high school, he began an active correspondence with Freud. He went on to study medicine and lecture on the intersection of psychology and philosophy, or what he called logotherapy, from the Greek word logos, or “meaning.” Whereas Freud believed that people are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain (his famous pleasure principle), Frankl maintained that people’s primary drive isn’t toward pleasure but toward finding meaning in their lives. He was in his thirties when World War II broke out, putting him, a Jew, in jeopardy. Offered immigration to the United States, he turned it down so as not to abandon his parents, and a year later, the Nazis forced Frankl and his wife to have her pregnancy terminated. In a matter of months, he and other family members were deported to concentration camps, and when Frankl was finally freed, three years later, he learned that the Nazis had killed his wife, his brother, and both of his parents. Freedom under these circumstances might have led to despair. After all, the hope of what awaited Frankl and his fellow prisoners upon their release was now gone—the people they cared about were dead, their families and friends wiped out. But Frankl wrote what became an extraordinary treatise on resilience and spiritual salvation, known in English as Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he shares his theory of logotherapy as it relates not just to the horrors of concentration camps but also to more mundane struggles. He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Indeed, Frankl remarried, had a daughter, published prolifically, and spoke around the world until his death at age ninety-two. Rereading these notes, I thought of my conversations with Wendell. Scribbled in my grad-school spiral were the words Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose our response, Frankl was saying, even under the specter of death. The same was true of John’s loss of his mother and son, Julie’s illness, Rita’s regrettable past, and Charlotte’s upbringing. I couldn’t think of a single patient to whom Frankl’s ideas didn’t apply, whether it was about extreme trauma or an interaction with a difficult family member. More than sixty years later, Wendell was saying I could choose too—that the jail cell was open on both sides. I particularly liked this line from Frankl’s book: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

As the late psychotherapist John Weakland famously said, “Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After

I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.

the famous stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.” He pauses, allowing the image to sink in. “All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But still, he frantically shakes the bars. That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there’s a way out—as long as we’re willing to see it.” He lets that last part linger between us. As long as we’re willing to see it. He gestures to an imaginary prison cell with his hand, inviting me to see it.

Ian watches, shaking his head. “You’re all going to jump down my throat over this”—Ian’s famous in our group for making generalizations about men and women—“but here’s the thing. Women put up with more crap than men do. If a girlfriend’s not treating a guy well, he has an easier time leaving. If a patient isn’t benefiting from what I have to offer, and I’ve made sure I’m doing my very best but nothing’s working, I’ll break it off.” We give him our familiar stare-down: Women are just as good at letting go as men are. But we also know there might be a grain of truth here.

PIERRE JANET, a famous French psychologist, said of the human psyche, “Every life is a piece of art put together with all means available.