Psychiatrist of America Quotes

“If you have to maintain self-esteem by pulling down the standing of others, you are extraordinarily unfortunate in a variety of ways. Since you have to protect your feeling of personal worth by noting how unworthy everybody around you is, you are not provided with any data that are convincing evidence of your having personal worth; so it gradually evolves into 'I am not as bad as the other swine.' To be the best of swine, when it would be nice to be a person, is not a particularly good way of furthering anything except security operations. When security is achieved that way, it strikes at the very roots of that which is essentially human -- the utterly vital role of interpersonal relations.' from The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry”
― Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Henry Stack Sullivan

“child-rearing attitudes . . . had their beginnings in the religions and myths of various subcultural groups — some of them dreadful and confining — and largely determined the fate of each child as he moved to chronological adulthood.”
― Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Henry Stack Sullivan

“he moved . . . toward preventive psychiatry, recommending some kind of 'personal inventory' — that is, an abbreviated training for anyone who dealt as an expert with other people, such as teachers . . . lawyers, and ministers . . . he voiced . . . despair about psychiatrists per se having the necessary humility for the work.”
― Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Henry Stack Sullivan

“If the first-born is a boy, 'he is apt to grow into morbidly close or morbidly distant relationship with the father.”
― Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Henry Stack Sullivan