Sheldon B. Kopp Quotes

Dreams provide a kind of wisdom of the heart, an echoing voice of a profound human sensitivity too often lost to us in the reasonable life of days.

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

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)

Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time.

It has been a long time since I believed in Reality. I prefer the loveliness and the terror of my subjective experiences to those coldly scientific explanations which in the long run turn out to be no more real, and far less fun, than my own fantasies and musings.

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)

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

Each of us is ultimately alone.

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)

Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.

Transformations require that we let go of familiar ways of doing things, without yet knowing what we will do next.

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

The Zen Master warns: 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!' This admonition points up that no meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Philosophy, religion, patriotism, all are empty idols. The only meaning in our lives is what we each bring to them. Killing the Buddha on the road means destroying the hope that anything outside of ourselves can be out master. No one is any bigger than anyone else. There are no mothers or fathers for grown-ups, only sisters and brothers.

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

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.

It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)

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

We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.

All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. (7)

There appear to be many people who chose to go crazy (or become alcoholics, addicts, criminals, suicides) rather than have to bear the pain and ambiguity of a life situation that they have decided that they cannot stand. (98)

So it is that God tugs at a pilgrim's sleeve telling him to remember that he is only human. He must be his own man, remain in exile, and belong to himself. He must pay attention to his own feelings and to the meaning of what he does, if he is to be for himself, and yet for others as well.

Often things are as bad as they seem.

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)

He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.

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)

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

The only times that we can have what we long for are those moments when we stop grasping for it. At such times, all things are possible: "to a mind that is 'still' the whole universe surrenders".

One can choose life, or choose death. Having chosen life, I must live it as it is.

And so, it is not astonishing that, 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. (4)

If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. 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. It is enough that I must die alone. I am determined to let down my walls, whatever the risks, if it means that I may have whatever is there for me.

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)

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.

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.

You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. (105)

You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

The unlived life isn't worth examining.

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.

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

For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63)

That is one of the reasons why a man should pick a path with heart, so that he can find his laughter.

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.

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.

Sometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships. In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give.

All significant battles are fought within self.

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)

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

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.

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.