“Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.”

When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.

Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.

When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?

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.

I happened to be sitting on the couch with my cat, and once I saw that, it just put everything in perspective.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapist is in my paint brushes.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

You don’t build character sitting on the couch! You have to put in the work.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.