Gene Fowler Quotes

The problem of psychoanalysis is not the body of theory that Freud left behind, but the fact that it never became a medical science. It never tried to test its ideas.

My mom being a psychotherapist, I've been brought up with that whole psychoanalytical terrain.

In therapy you sit down; in analysis you lie down.

Practical knowledge of what works and what doesn't work is much better. Theoretical knowledge is important, but I think practical knowledge works better.

In London, it's quite a rarefied activity to be on an analyst's couch.

There were some great clinicians in the 20th century - great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius - there's a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.

As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.

I know it's fashionable to blame your childhood for everything nowadays - thank you, Freud. The thing is, though, I really don't feel scarred by mine. But perhaps if I'd been in therapy for 10 years, and you were able to read the records, you'd disagree.

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.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I'm not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

I have studied Freud and that kind of thing. I just never thought I would need it.

My mom's a psychologist, and so is my grandfather.

I am a psychologist. That's my training.

I have therapy. Every day. I read a bit of Freud; I try to be a better person. Every day.

I am a Professor of Psychology at Palo Alto University and a Research Psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not a part of the mechanism.

Theory is good for the intellect, but action is good for the soul. It's also good for your mental health, your physical health, and your pocketbook.

Theory looks well on paper, but does not amount to anything without practice.

Usefulness depends on tractability.

By and large it is uniformly true in mathematics that there is a time lapse between a mathematical discovery and the moment when it is useful; and that this lapse of time can be anything from 30 to 100 years, in some cases even more; and that the whole system seems to function without any direction, without any reference to usefulness, and without any desire to do things which are useful.

Knowing isn't doing; doing isn't knowing. Nothing but the knowing and the doing gets it done.

Ideas are useless unless used.

To use is necessary. And if you can't be used, then you're useless.

Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo.