Avoidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioral disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships
Anthony StorrThe ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of โadaptation through maladaptationโ which is characteristic of our speciesโฆthe hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.
Anthony StorrThe 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.
Anthony StorrIt 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.
Anthony Storr