About Anthony Storr: Anthony Storr was an English psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author.
Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.
It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption.
The ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of ‘adaptation through maladaptation’ which is characteristic of our species…the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, ta...
The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.
In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.
The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldo...
I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.
I owed Lewis one thing, at least. Once you had suffered the experience of presenting a case at one of his Monday morning conferences, no other public appearance, whether on radio, TV or the lecture platform, could hold any terrors for you.
If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.
It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.
The professional must learn to be moved and touched emotionally, yet at the same time stand back objectively: I've seen a lot of damage done by tea and sympathy.
With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo sapiens habitually destroys members of his own species.
Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.
Since I was not able wholly to subscribe to any one set of beliefs advanced by any 'guru' I had to fall back on my own, however derivative.
It's not psychopathology that counts. It's what you do with it.
I want to show that the dividing lines between sanity and mental illness have been drawn in the wrong place.
The sane are madder than we think, the mad saner.
