A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".

Trace it, face it, and erase it.

Psychology is much more useful for studying harmartiology than soteriology, for studying sin more than righteousness.

"Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline." If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6. If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

A selection of carols for your dysfunctional friends.... SCHIZOPHRENIA: Do you Hear What I Hear? MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER: We Three Kings Disoriented Are NARCISSISTIC: Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me MANIC: Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Busses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and.. PARANOID: Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me. PERSONALITY DISORDER: You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll tell you Why. DEPRESSION: Silent Anhedonia, Holy Anhedonia, All is Flat, All is Lonely. OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER: Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rack ...........(oh darn, better start again) PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY: On the First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me (and then took it all away). BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire.

Shakey went to a psychiatrist. "Doc," he said, "I`ve got trouble. Every time I get into bed, I think there`s somebody under it. I get under the bed, I think there`s somebody on top of it. Top, under, top, under ... you gotta help me, I`m going crazy!" "Just put yourself in my hands for two years," said the shrink. "Come to me three times a week, and I`ll cure your fears." "How much do you charge?" "A hundred dollars per visit." "I'll sleep on it," said Shakey. Six months later the doctor met Shakey on the street. "Why didn't you ever come to see me again?" asked the psychiatrist. "For a hundred bucks a visit? A bartender cured me for ten dollars." "Is that so! How?" "He told me to cut the legs off the bed!"

"On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and more 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 Elliot, The Pursuit of Happiness, Atlantic Online 8/5/2003

The greatest discovery of my generation is that men can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. -- William James

Overall there are two classifications of Christians, the "healthy-minded" and the "morbid-minded." -- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902

I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology – the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated. – William James, 1842-1910

Physicists come in two colors. One group tries to find a mathematics that will explain a set of reliable observations. The second group attempts first to imagine the physical event behind the observation. Werner Heisenberg belongs to the first group, Paul Ehrenfest to the second. Psychologists can be assigned to two comparable groups. Some try to model, logically or mathematically, the mechanisms behind the learning of associations. A larger group broods on the psychological and biological processes that occur when an association is formed. The history of all the sciences suggests that the collection of evidence in the service of proving a conjecture is most useful when the synthetic notion originates in prior, trustworthy observations. This strategy can be dangerous in immature sciences, like psychology, that have a meager store of reliable facts.

I have always used a few lines from Darwin as a personal mantra: "I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved... as soon as facts are seen to be opposed to it..... I can't remember a single first formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences." Psychology is a young discipline, and immature fields advance more quickly by relying on inferences from observations, many unexpected, than by trying to prove deductions from a priori conceptions. [The Darwin quote is from his Notebooks, cited in H.E. Gruber, <i>Darwin on Man</i> (1974), 400.]

...interest... is usually recruited by events that differ only a little from what is familiar and therefore are understandable with some effort.... Adults show the keenest interest in ideas that are slightly discrepant from their existing knowledge. The celebrated writers and artists of any era are able to anticipate themes that are not yet, but are about to become, nodes of uncertainty in their society.... The artist who wants acceptance cannot "run too far ahead... of the reader." Over time the mind-heart, like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, finds a fresh novelty that recruits attention to a theme it can understand with effort and in that process becomes emotionally aroused. That is one reason why the form of psychotherapy that works best changes every twenty to twenty-five years. The curative power of psychoanalytic techniques began to wane when the therapists' secrets became public knowledge. The same fate may be in store for today's favorite psychotherapeutic regimens. Humans have the unfortunate habit of mistaking originality for wisdom because novelty is alerting, and, if understandable, creates an intuition of truth.

Tricked For Their Own Good

A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer's patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop.... "It sounds funny," said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, "but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home." The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.