Paradoxical Integration > Paradoxical's Quotes

“Unfortunately it is not possible to destroy our history. It lives inside us, probably the more powerful for our attempts to bury it. We and our families are likely to pay a high price in the present for trying to block out the past. Attempts to cover up family history tend to fester, influencing others born long after the original painful experiences and relationships.”
― Monica McGoldrick, You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting With Your Family

“All too often people are not aware of the trait-----whether positive or negative----they have absorbed from their families. You may feel contempt for your family's pretentiousness and be unaware that you have absorbed some of the same mannerisms. Awareness of the trait could easily lead to it's amelioration. Similarly, a positive awareness of connectedness to family can give you a sense of belonging and a feeling of continuity that will strengthen your own sense of identity.”
― Monica McGoldrick, You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting With Your Family

“Losses may make us feel as if time had stopped. Families may close down, attempting to control those aspects of their world over which they still have some power, since in the one area that really matters --- human relationships --- they have lost a sense of control.”
― Monica McGoldrick, You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting With Your Family

“Patienthood can become a way of life and rationale for people who are struggling for other reasons.”
― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

“Mental disorders should be diagnosed only when the presentation is clear-cut, severe, and clearly not going away on its own. The best way to deal with the everyday problems of living is to solve them directly or to wait them out, not to medicalize them with a psychiatric diagnosis or treat them with a pill.”
― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

“Overcoming problems on your own normalizes the situation, teaches new skills, and brings you closer to the people who were helpful. Taking a pill labels you as different and sick, even if you really aren't. Medication is essential when needed to reestablish homeostasis for those who are suffering from real psychiatric disorder. Medication interferes with homeostasis for those who are suffering from the problems of everyday life.”
― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

“[W]e have far too much faith in pills, far too little trust in resilience, time, and homeostasis.”
― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

“Les psychiatres, c'est très efficace. Moi, avant, je pissais au lit, j'avais honte. Je suis allé voir un psychiatre, je suis guéri. Maintenant, je pisse au lit, mais j'en suis fier.

Psychiatrists are very efficient. Before, I used to wet the bed. I went to see a psychiatrist, and was cured. Now, when I wet the bed, I'm proud of it.”
― Coluche

“Taking a pill is passive. In contrast, psychotherapy puts the patient in charge by instilling new coping skills and attitudes toward life.”
― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

“There is no clear boundary between mental health and mental illness. Psychological complaints exist on continua with normal behaviours and experiences. Where we draw the line between sanity and madness is a matter of opinion.”
― Richard P. Bentall, Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature

“So far as they're concerned, the physical fronts don't exist. Except for a mouth and an anus, their patient doesn't have a body. He isn't an organism, he wasn't born with a constitution or a temperament. All he has is the two ends of a digestive tube, a family and a psyche.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“I’m humbled by my feebleness in helping this person. Humbled that I had the arrogance to believe I’d seen and heard it all. You can never see and hear it all because, for all their sordid similarities, each story [...] unfolded in the particular existence of a unique human being.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“In the land of the crazies, we are all sane.”
― Michael F. Stewart, Counting Wolves

“What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.”
― R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise

“The duality and the freewill don't exist. There's only one choice to be made, the one that bring us upwards. Self-destruction is not a choice. And yet, every duality presents exactly that, and not really a choice.”
― Robin Sacredfire

“Pleasure is, and must remain, a side effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“[M]an does not live by welfare alone.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Implicit [in the psychiatric literature] is a set of normative assumptions regarding the father's prerogatives and the mother's obligations within the family, The father, like the children, is presumed to be entitled to the mother's love, nurturance, and care. In fact, his dependent needs actually supersede those of the children, for if a mother falls to provide the accustomed intentions, it is taken for granted that some other female must be found to take her place. The oldest daughter is a frequent choice... The father's wish, indeed his right, to continue to receive female nurturance, whatever the circumstances, is accepted without question.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Father-Daughter Incest

“The medical profession's classic prescription for coping with such predicaments, Primum non nocere (First, do no harm), sounds better than it is. In fact, it fails to tell us precisely what we need to know: What is harm and what is help?
However, two things about the challenge of helping the helpless are clear. One is that, like beauty and ugliness, help and harm often lie in the eyes of the beholder--in our case, in the often divergently directed eyes of the benefactor and his beneficiary. The other is that harming people in the name of helping them is one of mankind's favorite pastimes.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
― Thomas Szasz

“What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?”
― Forrest Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year

“Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.”
― Irvin D. Yalom , The Spinoza Problem

“The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No

“Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

“When a young tree is injured it grows around that injury. As the tree continues to develop, the wound becomes relatively small in proportion to the size of the tree. Gnarly burls and misshapen limbs speak of injuries and obstacles encountered through time and overcome. The way a tree grows around its past contributes to its exquisite individuality, character, and beauty. I certainly don't advocate for traumatization to build character, but since trauma is almost a given at some point in our lives, the image of the tree can be a valuable mirror.”
― Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

“The more you welcome your vulnerability the less afraid you'll feel”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed