57 Quotes by Anthony Storr

In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.

It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption.

The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.

The ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of ‘adaptation through maladaptation’ which is characteristic of our species…the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.

I once had a conversation with the director of a monastery. "Everyone who comes to us," he said, "does so for the wrong reasons." The same is generally true of people who become psychotherapists. It is sometimes possible to persuade people to be come psychotherapists who have not chosen the profession for their own personal reasons; but, for the most part, we have to put up with what we get; namely, ourselves.

The hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.

It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.