I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering that there is a sort of psychic economy whereby if you embrace success happiness and comfort these things have to be paid for.
My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind - intimacy physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.
This is how psychiatry has functioned-as a kind of property arm of the government who can put you away if your husband doesn't like you.
One side of the American psyche wants smaller government lower taxes and more choices for individuals even if those choices increase risk. The other wants a strong social safety net to protect the weakest among us even if it costs more to minimize risk.
The relationships that people have - that are sexual psychological emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents schools churches or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that.
Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress a bartender his wife a good psychiatrist - whatever.
Alcohol doesn't console it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary it encourages him in his folly it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
The soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong.
Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.
I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.