Sheldon B. Kopp Quotes

Of course, one other hypothetical alternative would have been for the child to decide that since she was fine the way she was, there must have been something terribly wrong with her parents. But children need at least the continuing hope that their parents may come to love them. To decide that these crazy parents will never love her, no matter what she does, no matter whom she becomes, would leave a child buried in a depth of despair in which she would surely suffocate and die. (86)

Openness to my own dreams puts me in touch with the oldest, most human aspects of who I am; it helps me find my place in the community of man.

No man can be fully a man unless he comes to terms with the female double within him. So too, with women and their male shadows. Those who do not know their sexual counterparts are absurd caricatures of the identities to which they aspire. Not knowing the hidden other within themselves, they hate and distrust the opposite sex.

In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.

Research in self-disclosure supports my own experience that the personal openness of the guru facilitates and invites the increased openness of the pilgrim. (24)

This wish to satisfy someone greater than the Self, to be found acceptable, to belong at last, is a struggle familiar to many psychotherapy patients. In their lives they waste themselves on wondering how they are doing, on trying to figure out the expectations of others so that they can become someone in the eyes of others. They try to be practical, to be reasonable, to figure it all out in their heads. It is as though if only they could get the words straight in their heads, if only they could find the correct formula, then everything else in their lives would be magically straightened out. They are sure there is a right way to do things, though they have not yet found it. Someone in authority must know ... It is as thought if it were discovered that two and two really did not equal four (but five), then at that moment all over the world every machine would stop operating, all of the lights would go out. (110)

For a long time now I have trusted my dreaming self as wiser than that waking self whose head is cluttered with reason and practicalities, so busy trying to control things that he sometimes forgets that the heart has reasons that reason does not know. When I dream, I never forget to trust myself.

So it is that there is nothing to be taught, but yet there is something to be learned.

Often things are as bad as they seem.

If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone.

And should I wear my mask too long, when I take it off and try to discard it, I may find that I have thrown my face away with it.

If outrageous imagination is the wine of madness, then come fill my cup.

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23)

Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free.

We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making. We are born into a disordered world, into a family we did not choose, into circumstances we would have had somewhat improved, and we are even called by a name we did not select. (40)

I've never began any important venture for which I felt adequate prepared

It is, of course, necessary to have rules and procedures if we wish to accomplish large and complex tasks, but the question of whether or not it is worth the cost must be perennially re-examined. (117)

He may only get to keep that which he is willing to let go of.

Crises marked by anxiety, doubt, and despair have always been those periods of personal unrest that occur at the times when a man is sufficiently unsettled to have an opportunity for personal growth. We must always see our own feelings of uneasiness as being our chance for making the growth choice rather than the fear choice.

To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.

The most insidious of the premature responsibilities that may be foisted onto some children is the expectation that the child is somehow supposed to take care of his parents, rather than the other way around. Parents who were themselves raised with too little attention given to their own early feelings, if they have not worked out the resulting emotional problems in subsequent years, often look forward to having children of their own so that the children will make them happy. (81)

Again and again I find that my own inner counselor, my secret dreaming self, is not only wise and helpful but usually amusing as well.

You win some, you lose some, and your losses are never made up to you. She will simply have to do without; like it or not, she must face her losses and her helplessness to undo them.

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)

Should he start out on a psychotherapeutic pilgrimage, he sets out on an adventure in narration. The principle of explanation consists of getting the story told - somehow, anyhow - in order to discover how it begins. (21)

I remember a group therapy session when one of the patients was reluctantly turning his corner. He would accept it, he said, but he wouldn't like the idea of having to solve problems every day for the rest of his life. My co-therapist told him that it was not required that he like it. She shared her own displeasure, saying: 'I remember that when I first discovered what life was like, I was furious. I guess I'm still kind of mad sometimes.' (135)

The continuing struggle was once described in the following metaphor by a patient who had successfully completed a long course of psychotherapy: 'I came to therapy hoping to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.' (138)

Each person's only hope for improving his lot rests on recognizing the true nature of his or her basic personality, surrendering to it, and becoming who he or she really is.

Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)

We are all born into families and cultures we didn't choose, given names we didn't pick, instructed in behaviour and values we might not have freely chosen, and too often we end up expected to live lives designed by others.

Anarchy could never get a man to the moon, but it may the only mode that can allow us to survive on earth.

I have long trusted dreams as prophetic visions. I do not mean that they foretell the future, only that they illuminate the present, when my eyes are closed, so that I may see clearly.

The therapist can interpret, advise, provide the emotional acceptance and support that nurtures personal growth, and above all, he can listen. I do not mean that he can simply hear the other, but that he will listen actively and purposefully, responding with the instrument of his trade, that is, with the personal vulnerability of his own trembling self. This listening is that which will facilitate the patient's telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free. (5)

Only pains of life too intense to be borne could lead a man to forgo all response, to give up completely the joy of living as other men live. (153)

When a patient says he feels stuck and confused, and through good intentions he struggles to become loose and clear, he only remains chronically trapped in the mire of his own stubbornness. If instead he will go with where he is, only then is there hope. If he will let himself get deeply into the experience of being stuck, only then will he reclaim that part of himself that is holding him. Only if he will give up trying to control his thinking, and let himself sink into his confusion, only then will things become clear. (64)

You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.