“Though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. His goal is to become a more effective neurotic, so that he may have what he wants without risking getting into anything new. He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 4)
“Psychologists have written about how our relationship with our parents in childhood and early adolescence creates our ‘map’ for understanding love in adulthood. When we interact with our parents as children, some behaviors and attitudes win us attention and affection and other behaviors and attitudes cause us to feel abandoned, unsafe, and unloved. The behaviors and attitudes that win us affection often come to define what we understand as love.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 48)