Elvin Semrad Quotes

Sorrow is the vitamin of growth.

Never idealize anybody: They all stink.

Therapy is therapy-- talking to the patient about what matters to him, no matter at what pace he can take it... As long as you take the position of talking to a person about what matters to him, then he can feel secure. Someone cares enough and is concerned enough about him to work with him and listen.

My main interest is to kibbitz and learn.

We have three choices in life: to kill ourselves, go crazy, or learn to live with what we have in life.

Very shortly, you will be going onto your assigned wards. Within those wards, you will see over fifty of the sickest, craziest, most bizarre people you will ever encounter. They will be hallucinating, gesticulating, and delusional in the most grotesque ways. Every cell in your body will rebel and want to block out the experience. But here is the thing you must remember. Every one of those symptoms, as strange as they may seem to you, makes perfect sense to those people. Every single one, has been evolved and carefully crafted, to try to deal with some impossible family situation. Every symptom represents an attempt by that person to adapt to the hand that fate has dealt him. You are to regard each one as an artistic, creative endeavor to survive. Your job, and your only job, is to appreciate, and admire that effort!

When you feel loved, you don't have to be crazy.

[Regarding what to say to a patient:] We all have the same question and problem, and I follow a very simple rule: if it's comfortable for me to say it, then it is the right thing, the right time, and the right way to say it.

You have to respect his [the patient's] adulthood. To do this you have to treat him with respect and approach him on his highest level of function. Don't take away from him what he has, or you'll foster regression.