#psych

I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#insane-asylum #mental-health #psychiatrist #suicidal #suicide

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

Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. ↗

— Charles Duhigg

#habit #psychology #business

Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists. ↗

— J. G. Ballard

#ambition #become #career #certainly #course

Horror is beyond the reach of psychology. ↗

— Theodor Adorno

#horror #psychology #reach

For psychological purposes the most important differences in conation are those in virtue of which the object is revealed as sensed or perceived or imaged or remembered or thought. ↗

— Samuel Alexander

#differences #important #most #object #perceived

Desire then is the invasion of the whole self by the wish, which, as it invades, sets going more and more of the psychical processes; but at the same time, so long as it remains desire, does not succeed in getting possession of the self. ↗

— Samuel Alexander

#does #getting #going #invades #invasion