#psychology

It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#psychology #motivational

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#human-nature #psychology #social-commentary #nature

But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#nature

The common denominator of all jokes is a path of expectation that is diverted by an unexpected twist necessitating a complete reinterpretation of all the previous facts — the punch-line…Reinterpretation alone is insufficient. The new model must be inconsequential. For example, a portly gentleman walking toward his car slips on a banana peel and falls. If he breaks his head and blood spills out, obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call an ambulance. But if he simply wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him, and then gets up, you start laughing. The reason is, I suggest, because now you know it’s inconsequential, no real harm has been done. I would argue that laughter is nature’s way of signaling that "it’s a false alarm." Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? I suggest that the rhythmic staccato sound of laughter evolved to inform our kin who share our genes; don’t waste your precious resources on this situation; it’s a false alarm. Laughter is nature’s OK signal. ↗

— V.S. Ramachandran

#humor #laughter #humor

One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#psychology #guilt

Trauma does not have to occur by abuse alone... ↗

— Asa Don Brown

#psychologist #psychology #ptsd #recovery #research

Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#psychology

Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac. ↗

— Keith Ablow

#potential

your mind is like an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone. ↗

— Augusten Burroughs

#psychology

He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running. ↗

— Richard Adams

#psychology