The Last Psychiatrist Quotes

Great sentences from doctor, blogger, and pirate The Last Psychiatrist (@thelastpsych). If you’re reading it, it’s for you.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Btw,

‘the porn book’ he first mentioned over 10 years ago was finally published in 2021.

Sadly, Porn by Edward Teach MD:

https://t.co/1SQYx0UQKe

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

When you make behaviors a disease, individuals lose and systems win, they benefit in still being able to call something "shameful" without needing to take any responsibility for its creation. You'll see this in surprising places, for example organized religion.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Frantic activity as a defense against impotence.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

If you’re going to put barbecue sauce on your 5 year old’s chicken nuggets so you can get a quiet minute to immerse yourself in other people’s lies, you may as well just introduce him to anime.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

You can never have a good relationship with anyone when your focus is the relationship.  There's a human being there who existed well before you got to them, and they weren't built for you or your needs or your parents or your future dreams as an actor.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Americans don't want riches, they want what they are told to want. They don't want a nice car: they want a Lexus. They don't want a nice house; they want a Viking refrigerator, granite counters. They don't want nice things: they want things that represent nice things.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

The revenge fantasies of lunatics don't involve punishment but negative reinforcement.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

The UPS guy comes to the door and you are instantly nice, bright, warm. "Hey, thanks, have a good one buddy! Go Raiders!" You'll say it's an act, but the other way of looking at it is that you think it's worth faking politeness to the UPS guy, but not to your family. See?

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

"If I can't be myself at home, what's the point?" Because that isn't the real you, there isn't a you. Who you are is what you do. If you come home and are cranky and curt, then you are a jerk. You don't get to say, "I'm a nice person, but I just happen to be irritable every day."

[Anna Khachiyan @annakhachiyan]

“TLP talks about this” https://t.co/qbjhQiJH2H

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Please recall my useful heuristic:  if you ever find yourself in complete agreement with the public, especially when "public" includes people you wanted to murder in the last election, then your position is not only wrong, it's not even yours.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Instead of asking, "why do I feel disconnected?" ask the reverse question: "what would I feel if I wasn't disconnected?" Be specific, say the answer out loud.

Go ahead, take some time, think about it. What does connecting feel like? I'll wait.

Let me guess: you have no idea.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Much of what you think you know, what you think is fact, is established not by the force of evidence but by the absence of resources for the opposition.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

The image is not the real, only a representation. But if there is no real, then that representation becomes the real.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

They write a study about a link between pesticides and ADHD. I observe that the link isn't the point; the point is to provide another half inch to the stack of "studies about ADHD" so you never question the diagnosis itself.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Psychiatry is the tool the system uses when it can't shoot you in the head.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Life is what happens while you're trying to get to the computer.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Meds are mostly the wrong solution for what are largely social/economic/family problems. However, not only are there no other solutions; not only is no one even suggesting that these are social problems; current policy is to label these social ills as psychiatric.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Every paradigm is informed by contemporary society, even if they seem unrelated. The go-to example is Freud’s theories, from which we derive “pent up” and “release” and “drives” and “pressures”– all of which are the language of the turn-of-the century steam industrial world.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

Sometimes the structural imbalances go your way, and sometimes they don’t, better figure out who makes the scales.

[The Last Psychiatrist Quotes @TLP_Quotes]

One of the great insights of psychoanalysis is that you never really want an object, you only want the wanting, which means the solution is to set your sights on an impossible ideal and work hard to reach it. You won't. That's not just okay, that's the point.