PSYCHOLOGY QUOTES II
quotations about psychology
Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.
STANISLAW LEM
His Master's Voice
It is still open to question whether psychology is a natural science, or whether it can be regarded as a science at all.
IVAN PAVLOV
Conditioned Reflexes
Psychology, which is the largest and last of the sciences, must not try to be too pure.
G. STANLEY HALL
attributed, "The crisis of experimentalism in the 1920s: EG Boring and his uses of history", American Psychologist, 1979
The chief difficulty for those who begin the study of scientific psychology is that all men indulge in popular psychology.
KARL FRIEDRICH MUENZINGER
Psychology: The Science of Behavior
Psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.
SIMONE WEIL
"The responsibility of writers", On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God
By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL
Man's Search for Meaning
A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL
Man's Search for Meaning
In this day and age when everybody thinks psychology is God's gift to the poor old anally fixated human race and even the president of the United States pops a trank before dinner, it's really a good way to get rid of those Old Testament guilts that keep creeping up our throats like the aftertaste of a bad meal we overate. If you say your father hated you as a kid, you can go out and flash the neighborhood, commit rape, or burn down the Kinights of Pythias bingo parlor and still cop a plea... But it also means that no one will believe you if it's true.
STEPHEN KING
Rage
Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.
DAVID RICHO
The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know
The sexual life of adult women is a "dark continent" for psychology.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Question of Lay Analysis
One can ask two different kinds of questions with regard to the topics of study in psychology as well as in other sciences. One can ask for the phenomenal characteristics of psychological units or events, for example, how many kinds of feelings can be qualitatively differentiated from one another or which characteristics describe an experience of a voluntary act. Aside from this are the questions asking for the why, for the cause and the effect, for the conditional-genetic interrelations. For example, one can ask: Under which conditions has been a decision made and which are the specific psychological effects which follow this decision? The depiction of phenomenal characteristics is usually characterized as "description", the depiction of causal relationships as "explanation."
KURT LEWIN
"Gesetz und experiment in der Psychologie", Symposion
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
MASON COOLEY
City Aphorisms
One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
To know psychology ... is no guarantee that we shall manage our minds rightly.
WILLIAM GLOVER
Know Your Own Mind
Psychology appeared to be a jungle of confusing, conflicting, and arbitrary concepts. These pre-scientific theories doubtless contained insights which still surpass in refinement those depended upon by psychiatrists or psychologists today. But who knows, among the many brilliant ideas offered, which are the true ones? Some will claim that the statements of one theorist are correct, but others will favour the views of another. Then there is no objective way of sorting out the truth except through scientific research.
RAYMOND CATTELL
The Scientific Analysis of Personality
Man is many things, but he is not rational.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
WILLIAM JAMES
Psychology: The Briefer Course
Psychology is an unusually fragmented discipline. It has connections with several other disciplines including biology, physiology, biochemistry, neurology, and sociology. This fragmentation and diversity make it unlikely that agreement can be reached on a common paradigm or general theoretical orientation.
MICHAEL W. EYSENCK
Psychology: An International Perspective
It's always good to have someone in psychology to explain customer behavior.
ROCCO BALDASSARE
"In the future tech will change, people won't", Campaign US, January 24, 2017
One of the fascinating aspects of psychology is how it sits at the interface not only of the humanities, science and medicine, but also of the person and the world.
PETER KINDERMAN
"Beyond binary thinking: making sense of our place in the world", British Psychological Society, January 18, 2017