Therapists Quotes

“Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted.”

“The process is important, regardless of the outcome, just ask Schacter.(...)mental health... is not a destination but a process. It's about how you drive, not where you're going. The therapist is like a driving instuctor, not a chauffeur.”

“My first girlfriend broke up with me on a yellow legal pad. After she picked me up from the airport one day, she took out a letter that her therapist wrote, and she read it to me. She and her therapists wrote a letter breaking up with me together.”

“Family therapists view the therapeutic relationship as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Family therapists see beyond the problematic patterns in the family to the potential healing power of family relationships.”

“Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder had tried to tell previous therapists of their plight, but had been disbelieved. These therapists had used fallacious "capricious criteria" (KIuft, 1988) to discredit the diagnosis; e.g., that the patient could not possibly have MPD because she was aware of the other alters [sic!].”

“Talking about independence makes me wonder, Who is truly independent in this world? A farmer who grows food is dependent on a baker, a barber, a doctor, and so on. A doctor is dependent on other people of different professions in order to survive. I am dependent and will be dependent on certain caregivers and therapists. Those caregivers and therapists need people like me to earn their bread and butter and draw their salaries. So no one is doing any favors when choosing whatever his means of livelihood is.”

“When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”. I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.”

“In 2006, there is no army of recovered memory therapists, and Dr McNally’s assumptions about patients with PTSD and those working in this field are troubling. Owing to past debates, those working in the PTSD field are perhaps more knowledgeable than others about malingered, factitious, and iatrogenic variants.Why, then, does Dr McNally attack PTSD as a valid diagnosis, demean those working in the field, and suggest that sufferers are mostly malingered or iatrogenic, while giving little or no consideration is given to such variants of other psychiatric conditions? Perhaps the trauma field has been “so often embroiled in serious controversy” (4, p 816) for the same reason Dr McNally and others have trouble imagining the traumatization of a Vietnam War cook or clerk. One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients."Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.”

“I’m not bilingual, but I am fluent in therapists’ jargon.”