4,465 Quotes About Psychology

When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of the imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.

...the groveling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair.

Our inherent cognitive biases make us ripe for manipulation and exploitation by those who have an agenda to push, especially if they can discredit all other sources of information.

As for queueing-up, during the past five or ten years it has become what the psychologists call a conditioned reflex. If you put a dozen English people together, they form themselves into a queue almost instinctively.

Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions. One of my patients told me, ‘It is like hating your home, your kitchen and pots and pans, your bed, your chairs, your table, your rugs.’ Nothing feels safe – least of all your own body.

The internal system of an abuse victim differs from the non-abuse system with regard to the consistent absence of the effective leadership, the extreme rules under which the parts function, and the absenve of any consistent balance or harmony. Typically, the parts operate around outdated assumptions and beliefs derived from the childhood abuse, believing, for example, that it is still extremely dangerous to reveal secrets about childhood experiences which were endured.

Born of neurons, soul is the very essence of being - soul is the very foundation of your existence - your psychological existence, from which all your physical prowess and progress manifest.

Freud had a word for such reenactments: ‘The compulsion to repeat.

The social environment interacts with brain chemistry. Manipulating a monkey into a lower position in the dominance hierarchy made his serotonin drop, while chemically enhancing serotonin elevated the rank of former subordinates.