Psychotherapy Quotes

• Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

  Michael Torke

  Funny, Music, Listening

  60 Copy quote

• When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Inspirational, Change, Positive

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.113, Beacon Press

  362 Copy quote

  Show source

• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

  Rollo May

  People, Purpose, Existential

  20 Copy quote

• Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

  Carl Jung

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Letters”

  206 Copy quote

  Show source

• The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering.

  Carl Jung

  Suffering, Principles, Faces

  23 Copy quote

• In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

  Carl Rogers

  Relationship, Change, Healing

  Carl Rogers (2012). “On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  293 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not too difficult to get the skeletons out of the closet with people, but to get the gold out is a different matter. That is therapy. Psychology is the Art of finding the gold of the spirit.

  Robert Johnson

  Art, Skeletons, People

  20 Copy quote

• Effective psychotherapy works because the therapist continues to grow as a person and as a healer.

  Jed Diamond

  Therapists, Grows, Healer

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• Psychotherapy can be one of the greatest and most rewarding adventures, it can bring with it the deepest feelings of personal worth, of purpose and richness in living.

  Eda LeShan

  Adventure, Feelings, Purpose

  Eda J. LeShan (1965). “How to survive parenthood”

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.

  Milton H. Erickson

  Unique, Bed, Needs

  Milton H. Erickson, Jeffrey K. Zeig, Brent B. Geary (2000). “The Letters of Milton H. Erickson”, p.17, Zeig Tucker & Theisen Publishers

  164 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where you stand determines what you see and what you do not see; it determines also the angle you see it from; a change in where you stand changes everything.

  Steve de Shazer

  Change, Views, Perspective

  117 Copy quote

• I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.

  Albert Ellis

  Children, School, Thinking

  80 Copy quote

• Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.

  Thomas Szasz

  Philosophy, Mean, Advice

  10 Copy quote

• The science of psychotherapy is knowing what to say, the art is knowing when to say it. (36)

  Jonathan Kellerman

  Art, Knowing, Art Is

  4 Copy quote

• Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Encounters, Patient, Isolation

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, p.406, Basic Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Psychotherapy is the prostitution of friendship.

  Hans Eysenck

  Prostitution

  26 Copy quote

• Depression comes back over time in about 90 percent of people on antidepressants. Studies show that relapses are far less common when people are treated with psychotherapy.

  Irving Kirsch

  People, Common, Study

  20 Copy quote

• How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

  Sigmund Freud

  Love, Life, Relationship

  Sigmund Freud (1960). “Letters”

  101 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

  Stephen Covey

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Stephen R. Covey (2016). “An Effective Life: Inspirational Philosophy from Dr. Covey’s Life”, p.88, FranklinCovey Co.

  438 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Positive, Happiness

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [259]

  118 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

  Marianne Williamson

  Life, Confidence, Fear

  A Return to Love ch. 7 (1992). Frequently misattributed to Nelson Mandela.

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• They show that roughly two-thirds of a group of neurotic patients will recover or improve to a marked extent within about two years of the onset of their illness, whether they are treated by means of psychotherapy or not.

  Hans Eysenck

  Mean, Years, Two

  Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Glenn Daniel Wilson (1973). “The experimental study of Freudian theories”, Methuen Publishing

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society.

  James Hillman

  Kids, Problem, Trouble

  3 Copy quote

• A person who doesn't breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn't move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn't feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body.

  Alexander Lowen

  Life, Freedom, Moving

  Alexander Lowen (1994). “Bioenergetics”, Penguin Group USA

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relationship with the past. Psychotherapy, that widespread method for promoting mental health, relies heavily on memory and on the ability to retrieve and organize images and events from the personal pastIf we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us—to write the first draft and then return for the second draft—we are doing the work of memory.

  Patricia Hampl

  Memories, Moving, Writing

  5 Copy quote