There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.
Interpretation
Psychiatry is a serious field with important implications; seeking enjoyment in it can lead to unrealistic expectations and consequences.
Harry Stack Sullivan's quote emphasizes the seriousness of psychiatry as a discipline. While one might hope to find joy or entertainment in the therapeutic process, doing so can foster an unrealistic and overly optimistic view of mental health care, which may result in disappointment or disillusionment when faced with the complexities of psychological issues.
In practice
This quote could be used in a mental health seminar to discuss the realistic expectations of therapy.
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term.
It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.
What I am, at any given moment in the process of my becoming a person, will be determined by my relationships with those who love me or refuse to love me, with those whom I love or refuse to love.
Wherever an inferiority complex exists, there is a good reason for it.
Each person is a unique individual. Hence, psychotherapy should be formulated to meet the uniqueness of the individual's needs, rather than tailoring the person to fit the Procrustean bed of a hypothetical theory of human behavior.
I believe that the therapist's function should be to help people become free to be aware of and to experience their possibilities.
If aspects of the person remain undigested-cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated-they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.
Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn to pieces by them.
Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.
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