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There was never a genius without a tincture of madness. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

Of course, Behaviorism 'works.' So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public. - W. H. Auden

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

Heredity deals the cards; environment plays the hand. -Charles L. Brewer,

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you. -- Rita Mae Brown

If you need therapy once a week, you see a therapist. If you need therapy 4 times a week, you go into analysis. If you need therapy 20 times a week, you *become* a therapist. - Simon Budman (the brief therapy guy)

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Albert Camus

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be! -Miguel de Cervantes, writer (1547-1616)

Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. -Margaret Chittenden, writer

The extreme limit of wisdom- that's what the public calls madness. --Jean Cocteau

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad. -Salvador Dali, painter (1904-1989)

....it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane -- Philip K. Dick

Insanity is continuing the same behavior and expecting a different result. --Albert Einstein

The most sophisticated defense mechanism I ever encountered was becoming a psychotherapist. -Anna Freud


The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want? -- Freud

A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.--Sigmund Freud

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.
--Sigmund Freud


Psychopathology may be viewed as stories gone mad and psychotherapy may be viewed as acts of story repair... (Howard, 1990)

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. - William James (1842-1910, American Psychologist, Professor, Author)


Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. - C. G. Jung (1875-1961)

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents. -Carl Jung

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -- Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. -Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist and psychologist (1875-1961)

To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light. -Carl G. Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)


Psychotherapy is not an applied science, it is a basic science in which the scientists are the client and his therapist --George Kelly

To define psychotherapy as a form of treatment--Something one person does to another--is misleading. Psychotherapy takes place when one person makes constructive use of another who has offered himself for that purpose.--George Kelly



We have lost the art of living; and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead. --D. H. Lawrence

They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.-Nathaniel Lee (on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c.)


Illness is in part what the world has done to a victim, but in a larger part it is what the victim has done with his world. -Karl Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990)

What's done to children, they will do to society. -Karl A. Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990)


The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act. --Stanley Milgram

The problem I find in formulating my answers is how to walk the tenuous line between dialogue and polemic, and how to be true to differences while respectful of the commonalities in thinking' Minuchin Journal of Marital and family Therapy (1999)

Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats. -O'Neill

When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event. -R. Pirsig

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.--Lillian Smith

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. - Thomas  Szasz

Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process. -Lionel Trilling


A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. -Paul Valery

As for me, you must know, I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice. What consoles me is that I am beginning to consider madness as an illness like any other and that I accept it as such. --Vincent Van Gogh


A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Under-Achievers Anonymous has an 11-step program.

A definition for manic-depressive (adj.): easy glum, easy glow.

Psychotics build castles in the sky; schizophrenics live in them; and psychiatrists charge them both rent!

A hypochondriac is a person who wants to have his ache and treat it too.

Woman: What school of thought do you come from?
Psychologist: Well, I always say I'm Freudian, but I am really Jung at heart.

A neurotic is a person who has discovered the secret of perpetual emotion.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.



The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating. -Heard in a neuro-psychology classroom