HARRY STACK SULLIVAN

As you love yourself, so shall you love others. Strange but true, with no exceptions.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.

There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

If you do not feel equal to the headaches that psychiatry induces, you are in the wrong business. It is work - work the like of which I do not know.

All of us are much more human than otherwise.

I do not believe that I have had an interview with anybody in twenty-five years in which the person to whom I was talking was not annoyed during the early part of the interview by my asking stupid questions.

The psychiatric interviewer is supposed to be doing three things: considering what the patient could mean by what he says; considering how he himself can best phrase what he wishes to communicate to the patient; and, at the same time, observing the general pattern of the events being communicated. In addition to that, to make notes which will be of more than evocative value, or come anywhere near being a verbatim record of what is said, in my opinion is beyond the capacity of most human beings.

What you know about the people whom you know at all well is truly amazing, even though you have never formulated it.

[O]ne of the greatest difficulties encountered in bringing about favorable change is this almost inescapable illusion that there is a perduring, unique, simple existent self, [which is] in some strange fashion, the patient's, or the subject person's, private property.

When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term.

If you do not feel equal to the headaches that psychiatry induces, you are in the wrong business. It is work - work the like of which I do not know.

All of us are much more human than otherwise.

Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.

When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term.

When people approach you angrily, you take them very seriously, and, if you're like me, with the faint suggestion that you can be angry too, and that you would like to know what the shooting is about.

I do not believe that I have had an interview with anybody in twenty-five years in which the person to whom I was talking was not annoyed during the early part of the interview by my asking stupid questions.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.

What you know about the people whom you know at all well is truly amazing, even though you have never formulated it.

There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

[O]ne of the greatest difficulties encountered in bringing about favorable change is this almost inescapable illusion that there is a perduring, unique, simple existent self, [which is] in some strange fashion, the patient's, or the subject person's, private property.

The psychiatric interviewer is supposed to be doing three things: considering what the patient could mean by what he says; considering how he himself can best phrase what he wishes to communicate to the patient; and, at the same time, observing the general pattern of the events being communicated. In addition to that, to make notes which will be of more than evocative value, or come anywhere near being a verbatim record of what is said, in my opinion is beyond the capacity of most human beings.

We are all much more simply human than otherwise, be we happy and successful, contented and detached, miserable and mentally disordered, or whatever.

The supply of interpretations, like that of advice, greatly exceeds the need for them.

If you have to maintain self-esteem by pulling down the standing of others, you are extraordinarily unfortunate.

Everybody has a great deal of experience in living. But no one lives in anything like the highest style of the art; and it is very disconcerting to notice how badly one lives in the sense of the extent to which fatigue and other discomforts are connected with one's important dealings with other people.

As you love yourself, so shall you love others. Strange but true, with no exceptions.