#psych

The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99...There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book...and leafed through it...I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders," I thought. I opened the manual again. And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones. ↗

— Jon Ronson

#mental-health #psychology #mental-health

On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and creativity. I do not want to deny the benefits of psychoactive medication. I just want to point out that Sisyphus is not a patient with a mental health problem. To see him as a patient with a mental health problem is to ignore certain larger aspects of his predicament connected to boulders, mountains, and eternity. ↗

— Carl Elliott

#psychiatry #psychology #mental-health

Steve [sports psychiatrist] had already taught me to try and stop worrying so much about pleasing everyone. We knew that this was one of my most draining flaws and he again used three groups to clarify my thinking. There would always be some people, Steve said, who would care about me and love me. In contrast there would also be a select group of people who would never warm to me - no matter what I did. And in the middle came the overwhelming mass who were largely indifferent to any of my failures or triumphs. I needed to understand that most people didn't really care what I did or said. All my anguish about how they might perceive me was redundant. Steve helped me realize that I spent too much time trying to please those oblivious people in the middle or, more problematically, the small group who would never change their critical opinion of me. I should concentrate on the people who really did show concern for me. ↗

— Victoria Pendleton

#mental-health #psychiatry #psychology #sports #change

Typically, a psychiatrist can fool a patient by telling him the root of his problem can be fixed with this pill, that support group, and more psychiatry appointments. They don't tell the patient that the really fucked up people never get better. They mask their diseases by dousing them in heavy narcotics to numb their sickness, for years, until the peaceful eternal sleep comes and takes them away. ↗

— J. Matthew Nespoli

#psychiatrists #psychosis #mental-health

Horror is beyond the reach of psychology. ↗

— Theodor Adorno

#horror #psychology #reach

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed. ↗

— Alan Alda

#child #feel #had #i #kill

Aaron Sorkin was completely unable to understand the actual psychology of Mark or of Facebook. He can't conceive of a world where social status or getting laid or, for that matter, doing drugs, is not the most important thing. ↗

— Marc Andreessen

#actual #completely #conceive #doing #facebook

We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem. ↗

— Yasser Arafat

#establish #everything #explosion #including #israel

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that. ↗

— Tom Araya

#book #could #few #figure #had

I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#asylum #conversation #cut #each #every