Kenny Glassman - Psychologist

“My primary teaching assignment in Vienna was a course for Stanford undergraduates on the life and work of Sigmund Freud. The forty lectures I prepared became the basis of a “Freud Appreciation” course that I taught to psychiatric residents for the next fifteen years. I always emphasized to my students that Freud was not just the creator of psychoanalysis (accounting for less than 1 percent of all the therapy offered today), but that he invented the entire field of psychotherapy: it did not exist in any form prior to Freud. Though I have my criticisms of contemporary orthodox Freudian analysis, I have always felt great respect for Freud’s creativity and courage. He is very often in my mind when I do therapy. Recently, for example, I met with a new patient who was plagued with obscene obsessions about members of his family, and I immediately thought of Freud’s observation that behind such persistent obsessions there is often rage. I regret that Freud has fallen so far out of fashion. As one of my chapter titles in The Gift of Therapy declares, ‘Freud wasn’t always wrong.’”

- Irvin Yalom, Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir

The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It’s overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt.

- Leo Buscaglia

It's been my experience that most leaps of faith are often preceded by a shove.

- Goldie Herschlag

There's no pain in change.
There's no pain in growth.
The pain is in the resistance to change.
The pain is in the resistance to growth.

- BOB EARLL

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself, as our own spirit of resistance to it.

- JEAN NICOLAS GROU

The soul loses command of itself when it is impatient. Whereas, when it submits without a murmur it possesses itself in peace. To be impatient is to desire what we have not, or not to desire what we have. When we surrender to something unwanted, it is no longer such. Why make a real calamity of it by resistance? Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. We may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and acquiescent. Peace in this life springs from surrender even to disagreeable things, not in an exemption from bearing them.

- FRANÇOIS DE LA MOTHE FÉNELON

"I asked an elderly man once what it was like to be old and to know the majority of his life was behind him. He told me that he has been the same age his entire life. He said the voice inside of his head had never aged. He has always just been the same boy. His mother's son. He had always wondered when he would grow up and be an old man. He said he watched his body age and his faculties dull but the person he is inside never got tired. Never aged. Never changed.”
- Author unknown

Live each day as if it were your last, ‘cause one of these days you’re gonna be right.

- ANON.

My dear friends, you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day; you who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot quite make up your mind that now is the day to sacrifice your pride and kill them; you who are passing others sullenly upon the street, not speaking to them out of some silly spite, and yet knowing that it would fill you with remorse if you heard that one of them were dead tomorrow morning; or letting your friend's heart ache for a word of appreciation or sympathy, which you mean to give them some day,—if you only could know and see and feel, all of a sudden, that the time is short, it would break the spell. You would would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do.

- PHILLIPS BROOKS (para.)

An Ode to Procrastination
The Atlantic
James Parker
July/August 2021

The existential exhilaration of playing chicken with Time

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/an-ode-to-procrastination/619018/

An Ode to Procrastination The existential exhilaration of playing chicken with Time

Waking Up - The Power of Regret Join Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and bestselling author—on a course that will teach you to meditate, reason more effectively, and deepen your understanding of yourself and others.

I always grow poetic when I am lying to myself.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

As the years go by, adolescent death concerns are pushed aside by the two major life tasks of young adulthood: pursuing a career and beginning a family. Then, three decades later, as children leave home and the end points of professional careers loom, the midlife crisis bursts upon us, and death anxiety once again erupts with great force. As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind. It's not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It's like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it.”

- I. Yalom, Staring at the Sun, pp.3-4

For eons, thoughtful philosophers have attempted to dress the wound of mortality and to help us fashion lives of harmony and peace. As a psychotherapist treating many individuals struggling with death anxiety, I have found that ancient wisdom, particularly that of the ancient Greek philosophers, is thoroughly relevant today. Indeed, in my work as a therapist, I take as my intellectual ancestors not so much the great psychiatrists and psychologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - Pinel, Freud, Jung, Pavlov, Rorschach, and Skinner - but classical Greek philosophers, particularly Epicurus. The more I learn about this extraordinary Athenian thinker, the more strongly I recognize Epicurus as the proto-existential psychotherapist.

- Irvin Yalom, Staring at the Sun

Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut, was one of the first people to see the earth from outer space. As he later recounted: “In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”

When we are disturbed, it is because we find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of our lives—unacceptable to us, and we can find no serenity until we accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is. Unless we accept life completely on life’s terms, we cannot be happy. We need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in us and in our attitudes.

- P. OHLIGER (para.)

Our whole trouble in our lot in this world rises from the disagreement of our mind therewith. Let the mind be brought to the lot, and the whole tumult is instantly hushed; let it be kept in that disposition, and we shall stand at ease, in our affliction, like a rock unmoved with waters beating upon it.

- T. BOSTON (para.)

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

- Carl Rogers

A brain that is caught in problems, in fear, in despair, in the desire to fulfil this or that, is always creating illusion, and therefore is in a state of neurosis.

- J. Krishnamurti

“Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this person has that I cannot share, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep their wound, they do not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever their story, they no longer need to be alone with it. This is what will allow their healing to begin."

- Carl Rogers

Irvin Yalom: The Art of Psychotherapy (excerpt): A Thinking Allowed DVD w/ Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove Great news!! Now watch every title and guest in the Thinking Allowed Collection, complete and commercial free. More than 350 programs now streaming. Visit ht...

About two years old, talking about (amongst other things) writing his autobiography.
Extraordinary.

"How Our Life Shapes Our Life's Work" Irv Yalom interviewed by Molyn Leszcz at AGPA Connect "How Our Life Shapes Our Life's Work" - Irvin Yalom, MD, DLFAGPAInterviewed by Molyn Leszcz, MD, FRCPC, CGP, DFAGPAGroup Foundation Luncheon at AGPA Connect ...

There is something cosmical about morning; a standing advertisement of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. It is the hour when some part of us awakens which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.

― HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains — that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. — Richard Bentall,
Journal of Medical Ethics, 1992
(Thanks to Lori Gottlieb)

How sweet the morning air is! See how the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

- Arthur Conan Doyle

You can know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.

In spite of your happiness, there will still be ups and downs.

- W. G. WILSON et al. (para.) (BB pp.8, 117)

You will find no serenity until you accept people, places, things, and situations as being exactly the way they are at this moment. Unless you accept life completely on life’s terms, you cannot be happy. Concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in you and in your attitudes.

- P. OHLIGER (para.)

Learn to be as an angel, that could descend among the miseries of Earth without losing its heavenly purity or its perfect happiness. Gain healing from troubled waters. Make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in your passage through life. This will prepare you for it; it will make you thoughtful and give you acceptance without interfering with your cheerfulness.

- J. H. NEWMAN (para.)

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner.
How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

- Carl Sagan, 1990

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

- Carl Sagan

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth.

- Vera Nazarian

To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment.
Not to know and yet think we do know is a disease.
- Lao-Tzu