“If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.”

The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.

You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.

Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.

Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.

We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.

The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.

Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.

What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.

To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.

In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.

Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.

Why I was so intrigued with Red Skelton was because he was able to make you cry and laugh and the same time. That was power.

If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.

If I had been at a University I don’t think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don’t think I have been as successful

The greatest misfortune of all is not to be able to bear misfortune.

Every man is born with the faculty of reason and the faculty of speech, but why should he be able to speak before he has anything to say?

What a wonderful thing is to be able to contribute to the restoration of someone’s health. It’s not only a feeling that I’m worth something, but that I have something to contribute.

So far from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot even answer for my righteousness!

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.