psychology
I put my faith in therapy as others do in religion, or philosophy.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 175.
Psycho-therapy is rather amazing—something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium—chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.
Letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated November 18, 1949, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 92.
If psychoanalysis is going to divest me of all decoration, costume, adornment, flavor, characteristic, then what will be left?
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol. 1 1931–1934) (New York: The Swallow Press, 1966), 119.
Counterphobic, a shrink once called it, meaning I run fast toward any event I suspect might be excruciating.
Lit (New York: Harper, 2009), 94.
My ordinary state of mind is very much like the waiting room at the DMV.
Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo (New York: Da Capo Press, 2003).
To enter the world of a child (or a cat) the least you must do is sit down on the ground without interrupting the child in whatever he is doing, and wait for him to notice you. It will then be the child who makes contact with you, and you (being older, and I hope not older in vain) with your higher intelligence will be able to understand his needs and his interests, which are by no means confined to the bottle and the potty. He is trying to understand the world he is living in, he is groping his way ahead from one experience to the next, always curious and wanting to know everything.
Design as Art (New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 2008), 93.