Therapeutic Relationship Quotes

If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.

Frank Farrelly. . .must be thought of with respect (perhaps even delight?) by his clients who have so far played the game of therapy with their therapists, but, I am afraid, also a shocking example for those therapists who, in Laing's words, 'are playing at not playing a game'.

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.

There's a woman I see who's not my therapist, but she's like an old friend who's a therapist in profession. She lets me talk to her like a therapist once in a while, and she does a great thing. Whenever I have a big dilemma, like this is a big problem in my life, she always says, 'Wow, you're going to have to figure that out.'

Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.

The work of a psychotherapist involves being empathic and insightful with one's patients without getting too lost in their painful stories to be helpful.

My analyst refused to hear my dreams. This was years ago.

I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest.

I don't want to be idealized by a patient because of what I've written.

Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.

The psychiatrist must become a fellow traveler with his patient.

I went a few times, but I felt there was no way that any therapist could understand my particular torment and also felt in some respects they were sicker than I was.

None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future. Some have expressed the very opposite feeling--the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.

If you're truly in a band and you guys have been together for a long time, there's a family bond that you have. In fact, I've talked about this with therapists, especially if you're talking about a relationship, because when you're with somebody, you're going to your family, and she's alone.

I didn't know many people in London and became depressed, ending up in therapy. One day, the therapist called me Josh instead of Jacob, and I was mortified. I was telling this woman things I'd never told anyone, and she didn't even know my name.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy.

I became a psychotherapist because that's where people will unburden themselves, where they will show what is in their hearts.

This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.

Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.

Remember when you're out there trying to heal the sick, that you must always first forgive them.

Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other. We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.

Everybody wants a robot that will do psychotherapy. But If you don't have empathy, you don't have psychotherapy. The robot doesn't know about life.

The fact remains that many of the most creative and innovative hypotheses that are eventually verified by empirical research are born in the consulting room out of practitioners' work with individual patients.