Psychology

"Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud, also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level — man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology."

"Scientific language, which Korzybski used as his model of sane language, is almost exclusively extensional and denotative, or at least tries to be. The language of the mentally ill, most obviously "un-sane," is almost totally intensional and connotative. This is the language that does not correspond to anything "out there," and this is, in fact, how and perhaps even why the user is mentally ill. Korzybski's concern with keeping the conscious "connection" or correspondence between language and verifiable referents is, for all practical purposes, paralleled by the process of psychotherapy. In this process, which is largely "just talk," the purpose is to foster closer and more accurate correspondence between the patient's language and externally verifiable meanings."

"Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. It just increases our “stuckness” in the old world. As does a lot of poor psychotherapy. Cheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system."

"There is considerable danger that psychoanalysis, as well as other forms of psychotherapy and adjustment psychology, will become new representations of the fragmentation of man, that they will exemplify the loss of the individual's vitality and significance, rather than the reverse, that the new techniques will assist in standardizing and giving cultural sanction to man's alienation from himself rather than solving it, that they will become expressions of the new mechanization of man, now calculated and controlled with greater psychological precision and on a vaster scale of unconscious and depth dimensions — that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general will become part of the neurosis of our day rather than part of the cure. This would indeed be a supreme irony of history. It is not alarmism nor the showing of unseemly fervor to point out these tendencies, some of which are already upon us. It is simply to look directly at our historical situation and to draw unflinchingly the implications."

"There are three things needed to eliminate human misery. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."

"The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising."

"She listened for the pain in my words, not to the narrative itself. She was intuiting what it meant to me, what was most important, what, in that confused mass of experience and yearning she heard in my voice, she could single out to give back."

"Despite the burgeoning technologies in the field of "helping", on many levels psychotherapy is still a crapshoot. Some of the goal of training, I think, is to help students accept that fact. The work is part science, part art, and part luck. Learning to tolerate the anxiety inherent in that recipe is critical for any clinician."

"Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind."

"If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past."

"For art to be art it has to cure."

"...the human potential and psychotherapy movements, as well as the more 'life-affirming' New Religious Movements and religions of the self. This was the complex world of the Californian 'psychobabble', of Scientology and est (Erhard Seminars Training, later called Forums Network), of Encounter Groups, meditation techniques and self-help manuals designed to assist individuals 'realise their potential'."

"If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy. … The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world. The psychotherapist has, for the most part, been interested in changing the consciousness of peculiarly disturbed individuals. The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are, however, concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people."

"I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question "Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?" should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area."

"The re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of the old people, these are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy."

"The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine.""

"Things have to be done fast in America, and therefore therapy has to be brief."

"Whenever the therapist stands with society, he will interpret his work as adjusting the individual and coaxing his 'unconscious drives' into social respectability. But such 'official psychotherapy' lacks integrity and becomes the obedient tool of armies, bureaucracies, churches, corporations, and all agencies that require individual brainwashing. On the other hand, the therapist who is really interested in helping the individual is forced into social criticism. This does not mean that he has to engage directly in political revolution; it means that he has to help the individual in liberating himself from various forms of social conditioning, which includes liberation from hating this conditioning — hatred being a form of bondage to its object."

"Therapy is not to "talk about" things, but to change the person's life, and to relieve suffering, such as depression, anxiety, or relationship problems. Of course, empathy and skillful listening are important at the start of each session, but they are simply not sufficient to change the patient's life."

"According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process."

"Another term coined by Haack is Psychokulte (therapy cults), of which he distinguished two kinds: those with techniques which promise self-discovery or self-realization and establishments with therapies (Therapie-Institutionene)—Heelas's 'self-religions'. The followers of both types show the effects of Psychomutation, a distinct personality change (Haack, 1990a:191). Schneider (1995:189–190) lists organizations, such as Landmark Education, Verein zur Förderung der Psychologischen Menschenkenntnis (VPM), Scientology/Dianetics, Ontologische Einweihungsschule (Hannes Scholl), EAP and Die Bewegung (Silo) as examples of 'therapy cults'. These groups do not immediately suggest religion of Weltanschauung, but reveal ideological and religious elements on closer inspection. Their slogans are 'We have the saving principle' or 'We enable those who are able' and they offer Lebenshilfe (advice on how to live). Such advice is a commodity which is sold in very expensive seminars. The ideologies involved often lie in the grey areas between the humanities, psychotherapies, Lebenshilfe, 'mental hygiene' (Psychohygiene), and religion."

"All kinds of nice inspiring symbolical interpretations of the ritual are generally given for the benefit of people who seem to want them, but it is here evident that the candidate, unknown to himself or herself, has acted throughout the ceremony of initiation under the stress of hypnotism. No longer a free agent, the initiate takes the oath under hypnotic force which, has also been used to instil into him the feeling of fear. Fear guards the secret of initiation, fear born under the power of hypnotism to serve henceforth as the controlling agent of the initiators over the initiated. The Right Worshipful Master must be a genuine occultist, as it is up to him to charge (hypnotise) the candidate."

"I've recommended hypnotherapy to help ease chronic pain, lessen the side effects of chemotherapy, alleviate symptoms of autoimmune disease, and counteract anxiety and sleep disorders. Hypnotherapy can also be used to improve performance skills, as a form of analgesia or sedation for medical and dental procedures--even to stop hemorrhaging in accident victims. In general, I believe that no condition is out of bounds for trying hypnotherapy on."

"Hypnotic behaviour is meaningful, goal-directed striving, its most general goal being to behave like a hypnotised person as this is continuously defined by the operator and understood by the client."

"I tried acupuncture, the patch, and hypnosis, but found that I needed to do it alone - when the time was right for me."

"New York Time, in The Possibilities in Hypnosis, Where the Patient Has the Power (3 November 3, 2008)"

"Hypnosis seems helpful in treating addictions, and the depression and anxiety associated with them…"

"Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?"

"They are not just suffering in silence ¬ they are able to change their perception of pain."

"Hypnosis puts a person in a trance-like state so that they are more receptive to new suggestion, and better able to control what is happening to the body or see a problem from a new point of view."

"The phenomena of Mesmerism could be salvaged by physicians adopting a more rational and scientific approach, while avoiding the worst excesses of its metaphysical speculations. Moreover, in a discussion of similar ideas propounded by the philosopher Francis Bacon, he specifically recommends that physicians, like Braid, should develop a ‘doctrine of the bond between mind and body’ (i.e., Braid’s “psycho-physiology”). Moreover, Stewart urges enquiry into ‘the effect of fixing and concentrating the attention, in giving to ideal [i.e., imaginary] objects the power of realities over the belief."

"Hypnosis can be very helpful in allowing you to focus on what you want to focus on."

"As far as hypnosis is concerned, I had a very serious problem when I was in my twenties. I encountered a man who later became the president of the [[W:American Society of Clinical Hypnosis|American Society of Medical Hypnosis. He couldn't hypnotize me."

"This study [with a PET (for positron emission Tomography) scanner to monitor activity in the brain's visual areas] lends considerable weight to the idea that hypnosis is a real neurological phenomenon," said. But our goal is not just to verify a hypothesis. With hypnosis, we can help people modulate perceptions in ways that are therapeutically helpful."

"In the new book "Secret, Don't Tell: The Encyclopaedia of Hypnotism" Carla Emery, the author maintains that 10% of the population, the ONLY method needed for total mind control is hypnotism. No physical abuse is necessary.Like most people, I thought that hypnotism was not all that important, because people cannot be made to do things that they would not do if they were conscious. This is far from the truth. Carla Emery gives many examples, including some from court proceedings, which show that hypnotism CAN make people do incredibly immoral and unethical things, including prostituting themselves, robbing banks, giving away all their money to the hypnotist, and even murder!!! This is done by secretly putting a person into a trance, and then making them forget that they were ever hypnotized. After that, it is easier for the hypnotist to put them into a trance a second time, and each time they are put under they become more and more susceptible to the commands from the hypnotist. Perhaps the most amazing fact I learned from this book is that the more intelligent you are, the HIGHER is the likelihood that you can be hypnotized!!!!"

"Hypnotism will become more and more a tool of scientific investigation. Telepathy will be proven without a doubt, and utilized, sadly enough in the beginning, for purposes of war and intrigue. Nevertheless telepathy will enable your race to make its first contact with alien intelligence."

"The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder. The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, and was created by the CIA in the 1950’s under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control programs. Experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation, electro-convulsive treatment, brain electrode implants and hypnosis were designed to create amnesia, depersonalization, changes in identity and altered states of consciousness."

"The use of hypnosis by health care professionals for diagnosis and treatment is permitted. In an address from the Vatican on hypnosis in childbirth, the w:Pope Pius XIPope gave these guidelines: Hypnotism is a serious matter, and not something to be dabbled in. In its scientific use, the precautions dictated by both science and morality are to be followed. Under the aspect of anaesthesia, it is governed by the same principles as other forms of anaesthesia."

"Hypnosis can help. A growing body of research supports the ancient practice as an effective tool in the treatment of a variety of problems, from anxiety to chronic pain."

"The findings suggest that hypnotherapy is a valuable tool when it comes to enhancing the coping mechanisms of cancer patients...most patients (19 out of 20) reported that after the first two hypnotherapy sessions they were able to relax for the first time in a very long period, felt less tired and more energetic, had more refreshing night sleep and as a result were able to cope better with their daily activities."

"Speech, on account of the whole preceding life of the adult, is connected up with all the internal and external stimuli which can reach the cortex, signaling all of them and replacing all of them, and therefore it can call forth all those reactions of the organism which are normally determined by the actual stimuli themselves. We can, therefore, regard ‘suggestion’ as the most simple form of a typical reflex in man."

"If clinical multiple personality is buried and forgotten, then the Manchurian Candidate Programs will be safe from public scrutiny."

"Influence of the hypnotist upon the hypnotised, and that the hypnotised person simply reacts upon himself by reason of latent capacities in him which are artificially developed. Braid demonstrated that hypnotism, acting upon a human subject as upon a fallow field, merely set in motion a string of silent faculties which only needed its assistance to reach their development."

"In the late nineteenth century, scientists, psychiatrists, and medical practitioners began employing a new experimental technique for the study of neuroses: hypnotism. Though the efforts of the famous France|French neurologist [[w:Jean-Martin CharcotJean-Martin Charcot to transform hypnosis into a laboratory science failed, his Viennese translator and disciple Sigmund Freud took up the challenge and invented psychoanalysis. Previous scholarship has viewed hypnosis and psychoanalysis in sharp opposition or claimed that both were ultimately grounded in the phenomenon of suggestion and thus equally flawed. In this groundbreaking study, the relationship between hypnosis and psychoanalysis, revealed that the emergence of the familiar Freudian psychoanalytic setting cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of the sites, material and social practices, and controversies within the checkered scientific and medical landscape of hypnotism."

"I have long recognised as a fact that judgements really grounded on a long succession of small experiences mostly forgotten, or perhaps never brought out into very distinct consciousness, often grow into the likeness of intuitive perceptions.... When states of Mind in no respect innate or instinctive have been frequently repeated, the Mind acquires, as is proved by the power of Habit, a greatly increased facility of passing into those states and this increased facility must be owing to some change of a physical character, in the organic action of the Brain."

"Modern Hypnotism owes it name and its appearance in the realm of science to the investigations made by Braid. He is its true creator; he made it what it is; and above all, he gave emphasis to the experimental truth by means of which he proved that, when hypnotic phenomena are called into play, they are wholly independent of any supposed influence."

"The covert hypnosis techniques I developed needed to work quickly at the unconscious level. And they did. I easily gained control, commanded attention and compelled compliance from anyone."

"Denial of the reality of multiple personality by these doctors in the mind control network, who are also on the FMSF [False Memory Syndrome Foundation] Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, could be disinformation. The disinformation could be amplified by attacks on specialists in multiple personality as CIA conspiracy lunatics."

"Despite conclusive evidence for the efficacy of clinical hypnosis in the management of many cancer related symptoms and particularly acute and chronic pain, hypnosis is currently under-utilized in these applications."

"...using hypnosis, scientists have temporarily created hallucinations, compulsions, certain types of memory loss, false memories, and delusions in the laboratory so that these phenomena can be studied in a controlled environment.[ "The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis". Scientific American: July 2001"