Today's generation is a generation of loose cats. When faced with a problem, they say: let's analyze the bully's behavior from a psychological point of view. And we were just kicking bullies' ass.
Clint Eastwood
We will not only say - I think, therefore I exist, but also - the world exists as we establish and define it.
Oswald Külpe
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Abraham Maslow
Everyone should do at least two things every day that they hate doing, just for practice.
William James
Every person is a creator, for he creates something from various innate factors and capabilities.
Alfred Adler
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide that your problems are your own. You don't blame them on mom, the environment, or the president. You realize that you are in control of your own destiny.
Albert Ellis
If psychology is to become scientific, its statements must have universal validity.
Oswald Külpe
Do not offend children with ready-made formulas; formulas are empty; enrich them with images and paintings that show connecting threads. Don't burden your children with the dead weight of facts; teach them techniques and methods that will help them comprehend them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Life tries and tests the will of people in different ways: it will either make sure nothing happens at all, or it will bring everything down on you at once and at the same time.
Paulo Coelho
Although this is not new, I will remind you again: In the face of both friend and enemy, You are the master of the unspoken word, And of the spoken word, you are the servant.
Omar Khayyam
Two people were looking out the same window. One saw rain and mud. The other is green foliage, spring and blue skies. Two people were looking out the same window...
Omar Khayyam
People sometimes say about a person, “He hasn’t found himself yet.” But they don’t find themselves, they create them.
Carl Whitaker
Most of what is real within us is not realized, and most of what is realized is unreal.
Thomas Szasz
Every normal person is actually only partly normal.
Eric Bern
The essence of the world is not comprehended from the first onslaught, as naive realism thinks; Only through endless work do we get closer to this goal.
Oswald Külpe
I very seriously object to the desire for perfection that some doctors and psychologists adhere to when working with people. I have never met a perfect human being and I do not expect to ever meet one. Perhaps it is precisely the imperfection that you are trying to take away from a person that gives him the charm that makes it possible to distinguish this individual and remember him.
Abraham Maslow
A person who feels loneliness experiences a unique experience of wandering and at the same time realizes his own inner essence with which he can enter into dialogue. Thanks to such dialogue, the individuation process begins.
Milton Erickson
The art of being wise is knowing what to ignore.
Carl Gustav Jung
The power of words is enormous. A well-chosen word often stopped fleeing troops, turned defeat into victory and saved the empire.
Emile de Girardin
Fantasy is not at all a special mental ability, a force that joins other mental forces, but that it acts everywhere within them.
Wilhelm Wundt
Brilliant thinkers are even rarer than somnambulists.
Franz Brentano
If a person begins to philosophize, things smell like delirium tremens.
Jaroslav Hasek
Things in themselves are not what they should be, but become such only in the spirit.
Rudolf Lotze
Quotes from Carl Rogers, an outstanding American psychotherapist
“Numerous problems arise when we try to meet others' expectations instead of defining our own.”
“Being yourself does not solve problems. It simply opens up a new way of existence, in which there is more depth and strength of emotional experiences, more breadth and variety.”
“Words and symbols relate to the world in the same way to reality as a map does to the territory it represents. We live according to a perceived “map” that is never reality itself.”
“A person “knows” that he is on the right path long before he “knows” what the decision actually is.”
“Man is a flowing process, not a frozen, static entity; it is a flowing river of change, not a piece of solid metal; it is an ever-changing inflorescence of possibilities, not a frozen sum of characteristics.”
“A curious paradox arises - when I accept myself as I am, I change. I think this is what many clients' experiences, as well as my own, have taught me, and that is that we don't change until we unconditionally accept ourselves for who we really are. And then the change happens as if imperceptibly.”
“In psychotherapy, life itself is examined.” “If I say that I “accept” you, but I don’t know anything about you, then in reality this is a superficial acceptance, and you understand that this may change if I really get to know you.”
“If I want to contribute to the personal growth of others in their relationships with me, then I must grow myself; and although it is often painful, it is very enriching.”
“When we reach a fork in the road and don’t know which direction to take to get to the right place, that’s when we start to analyze the situation. Thinking begins precisely at this moment.”
“The farmer cannot force a sprout to develop and sprout from a seed, he can only create such conditions for its growth that will allow the seed to express its own hidden capabilities. The same is true with creativity.”
“I think in our culture everyone is subject to the following cliche: “Everyone should feel, think and believe the same way as I do.” “Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand who has done more damage to me - my “friends” or my enemies.”
“If a scientist, to some extent, is trying to prove something not to himself, but to someone else (and I have made this mistake more than once), it means that he is using science to protect himself from a threat to his personality.”
“When a person lives with a mask, his unexpressed feelings accumulate until they reach some critical point; then they usually burst out for some very insignificant reason.”
Bert Hellinger, founder of the Family Constellations course
- After some time, all past events should truly remain in the past.
- A crisis is most easily resolved when its extreme point is reached.
- Not focusing on a problem means continuing your journey as a new person.
- It is easier to suffer than to solve a problem.
- The solution lies only in a person's own actions.
Amazingly smart quotes from Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist
I am a scientist by necessity, not by vocation. In fact, I am a born artist... and there is irrefutable proof of this, which is that in all the countries where psychoanalysis has spread, writers and artists have understood and applied psychoanalysis better than scientists.
Love is, rather, a form of existence: not so much attraction as dedication, an attitude not so much towards one person, but towards the world as a whole.
Wish someone lucky to meet you and you will be lucky to meet someone.
...the artists themselves love to reduce the difference between their originality and the nature of an ordinary person; they so often assure us that there is a poet hidden in everyone, and that the last poet will die only with the last man.
And yet works of art have a strong influence on me, especially literature and sculpture, and to a lesser extent painting. I am inclined, when appropriate, to dwell in front of them for a long time and intend to understand them in my own way, that is, to comprehend why they impressed me in the first place. Where I fail to do this, for example in music, I am almost unable to experience pleasure. The rationalistic or perhaps analytical inclination in me resists being captivated by a work of art and not being aware of why I am captivated and what has captivated me.
Apparently, we have the right to say: every playing child behaves like a poet, creating his own world for himself or, more precisely, bringing the objects of his world into a new order that suits him.
So a young man, when he stops playing, refuses only to rely on real objects; now he fantasizes instead of playing. He builds castles in the air, creates what is called “waking dreams.” I believe that most people create fantasies at various points in their lives.
It must be said: a happy person never fantasizes, only a dissatisfied one. Unsatisfied desires are the driving forces of dreams, and each fantasy individually is the fulfillment of a desire, the correction of an unsatisfactory reality... These are either ambitious desires, serving the exaltation of the individual, or erotic ones.
Likewise, our dreams at night are nothing more than these same dreams, similar to those that we are able to make explicit through the interpretation of dreams. Language, in its incomparable wisdom, has long resolved the question of the essence of dreams, calling the aerial creations of dreamers “waking dreams.”
...a strong living experience awakens in the artist the memory of an early experience, most often related to childhood, the source of the current desire, which creates its fulfillment in the work; the work itself reveals elements of both a fresh occasion and an old memory.
Even so, the artist retains a certain amount of independence, which will be expressed in the choice of material and in changes, often far-reaching, in the latter. But once the material is given, it is born from the folk treasury of myths, sagas and fairy tales. The study of these formations of folk psychology cannot now be considered complete, but from the analysis of myths, for example, it most likely follows that these are just distorted remnants of the desires and dreams of entire peoples, the age-old dreams of young humanity.
... the artist, with the help of changes and concealments, softens the character of egoistic dreams and captivates us with the purely formal, that is, aesthetic, attractiveness offered to us when depicting his fantasies ... In my opinion, all aesthetic pleasure given to us by the artist is of the nature of such preliminary pleasure, and genuine The pleasure of a work of art arises from the release of tensions in our soul. Perhaps this is precisely what contributes to the fact that the artist brings us into a state of enjoying our own fantasies, this time without any reproach and without shame.
The sublimation of drives is a particularly noticeable feature of cultural development; it allows higher mental activity—scientific, artistic, ideological—to play a very significant role in the cultural life.
...the artists themselves love to reduce the difference between their originality and the nature of an ordinary person; they so often assure us that there is a poet hidden in everyone, and that the last poet will die only with the last man.
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytical psychology
- The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is even the slightest reaction, both elements change.
- Show me a mentally healthy person, and I will cure him.
- What you resist remains.
- A dream is a small, well-hidden door that leads to that primordial cosmic night, which was the soul before the emergence of consciousness.
- The heaviest burden that falls on a child’s shoulders is the unlived life of his parents.
3 interesting quotes from Wilhelm Wundt, German physiologist and psychologist
Quite often it has been said that the inventor-technician and the merchant who combines the conditions of the fair and the creator of scientific hypotheses and theories can be called artists, if we take this word in the broadest sense.
...creative fantasy, which gives life to the fields of higher art, consists of a multitude of those elementary processes which, according to the analysis of such simple manifestations of fantasy, are manifested in the formation of our sensory perceptions.
Fantasy is not at all a special mental ability, a force that joins other mental forces, but that it acts everywhere within them.
Abraham Maslow, founder of humanistic psychology
- To avoid disappointment in people, you need to get rid of illusions. Learn to accept people as they are. There are no perfect people. You can find good people, but even they can be selfish, irritable and gloomy at times.
- Children don't need to be taught to be curious. But by accustoming them to the existing order of things, you can teach them not to be curious.
- I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, it's tempting to view everything as nails.
- If you intend to become less of a person than your abilities allow, I warn you that you will be a deeply unhappy person.
- After a period of happiness, joyful excitement and a sense of fullness of life, there will inevitably come a perception of what has been achieved for granted and there will be anxiety, dissatisfaction and a desire for more.
7 brilliant quotes from William James, American psychologist and philosopher
Compared to what we should be, we are still in a half-asleep state. We use only a small part of our physical and mental resources. In general, we can say that a person lives in this way far beyond his capabilities. He has abilities of various kinds that he does not usually use.
Genius is just an unusual way of looking at things.
The greatest benefit that can be gained from life is to spend it doing something that will outlive us.
Hidden in your subconscious is the power that can change the world.
Many people think that they are thinking, when in fact they are only rearranging old prejudices in a new order.
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that a person, by changing his internal attitude towards life, is able to change the external aspects of this life.
People usually use only a small part of the powers that they possess and which they could use under suitable circumstances.
Acknowledgments
I thank Nicholas Brealey and Sally Landsdell of the publisher's London office for editorial revisions that made this book much better. Thanks to the staff of the international rights department for making it available to millions of readers around the world.
Many thanks to Patricia O'Hara and Chuck Dresner of the publisher's Boston office for their contributions to this book and the other works in the series, and for making the series popular in the United States.
Of course, the book would not have been written if it were not for the brilliant ideas and concepts presented in classic books on psychology and discussed here. I thank all living authors for their contributions to the development of this field.
Quotes from the famous psychologist Eric Berne about how our brains are programmed
A script is a gradually unfolding life plan that is formed in early childhood, mainly under the influence of parents. This psychological impulse pushes a person forward with great force towards his destiny, and very often regardless of his resistance or free choice.
In the first two years, the child's behavior and thoughts are programmed mainly by the mother. This program forms the initial framework of his script, the “primary protocol” regarding who he should be, that is, whether he should be a “hammer” or a “hard place.”
When a child turns six years old, his life plan is ready. The priests and teachers of the Middle Ages knew this well, saying: “Leave me a child up to six years old, and then take it back.” A good preschool teacher can even foresee what kind of life awaits the child, whether he will be happy or unhappy, whether he will be a winner or a loser.
The plan for the future is drawn up mainly according to family instructions. Some of the most important points can be discovered quite quickly, in the first conversation, when the therapist asks, “What did your parents tell you about life when you were little?”
From each instruction, no matter in what indirect form it is formulated, the child tries to extract its imperative core. This is how he programs his life plan. We call this programming because the impact of the direction becomes permanent. The child perceives the wishes of the parents as a command; it can remain as such for the rest of his life, unless some dramatic revolution or event occurs in it. Only big experiences, such as war, or love disapproved by parents can give him instant liberation. Observations show that life experience or psychotherapy can also provide liberation, but much more slowly. The death of parents does not always break the spell. On the contrary, in most cases it makes it stronger.
More often than not, childhood decisions, rather than conscious planning in adulthood, determine a person's destiny. No matter what people think or say about their lives, it often seems as if some powerful attraction makes them strive somewhere, very often not at all in accordance with what is written in their autobiographies or work books. Those who want to make money lose it, while others get rich uncontrollably. Those who claim to seek love only awaken hatred even in those who love them.
In a person’s life, a scenario outcome is predicted, prescribed by parents, but it will be invalid until it is accepted by the child. Of course, acceptance is not accompanied by fanfare and a solemn procession, but nevertheless, one day a child can declare this with all possible frankness: “When I grow up, I will be just like mommy” (which corresponds to: “I will get married and have as many children ") or "When I get big, I'll be like dad" (which can correspond to: "I'll be killed in the war.").
Programming mostly occurs in a negative form. Parents fill their children's heads with restrictions. But sometimes they give permission. Prohibitions make it difficult to adapt to circumstances (they are inadequate), while permissions provide freedom of choice. Permissions do not lead a child into trouble unless they are accompanied by coercion. A true permit is a simple “may”, like a fishing license. Nobody forces the boy to fish. If he wants, he catches, if he wants, he doesn’t, and he goes with fishing rods when he likes and when circumstances allow.
Permission has nothing to do with permissive education. The most important permissions are permissions to love, change, and successfully cope with your tasks. A person who has such permission is immediately visible, just like someone who is bound by all sorts of prohibitions. (“He was, of course, allowed to think,” “She was allowed to be beautiful,” “They were allowed to be happy.”)
It must be emphasized once again: being beautiful (as well as being successful) is not a matter of anatomy, but of parental permission. Anatomy, of course, influences the pretty face, but only in response to the smile of a father or mother can a daughter’s face blossom with real beauty. If parents saw their son as a stupid, weak and clumsy child, and their daughter as an ugly and stupid girl, then they will be like that.
