Diagnosing Quotes & Sayings

Guess your feelings is like charming a cobra with a stethoscope, a boyfriend told me once. Meaning what? Meaning that pain turned me venomous, that diagnosing me required a specialised kind of enchantment, that I flaunted feelings and withheld their origins at once. — Leslie Jamison

The difficulties in diagnosing DID result primarily from lack of education among clinicians about dissociation, dissociative disorders, and the effects of psychological trauma, as well as from clinician bias. This leads to limited clinical suspicion about dissociative disorders and misconceptions about their clinical presentation. Most clinicians have been taught (or assume) that DID is a rare disorder with a florid, dramatic presentation. Although DID is a relatively common disorder, R. P. Kluft (2009) observed that "only 6% make their DID obvious on an ongoing basis" (p. 600).
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p4-5 — James A. Chu

We are working on creating self-describing, self-organizing, self-diagnosing and self-repairing networks. — John Seely Brown

Whereas experts spend more time diagnosing the situation and less time choosing a course of action, novices are inclined to focus on possible actions at the expense of situation assessment. — Emma Barrett

Anyone who is truly crazy, in my book, wouldn't be able to understand the dialectic of crazy and not-crazy. Listen, I've worked for the pharmaceutical companies, they have a vested belief in making you believe that if you have a chemical imbalance you need them to be 'cured' of your current issues and personality. Indefinitely. Imagine diagnosing personality only in terms of its negative aspects. Does this strike you as a strategy designed for health? The only way to deal with a problem is to fucking deal with it. Get inside what positive motivation, what intention, makes you behave in the way you are ... and how you could maybe satisfy that need in a healthier or at least more agreeable manner. America wants quick, easy and painless; being a real person is slow, difficult and very messy. — James Curcio

THE HABIT OF NARRATION, of crafting something miraculous out of the commonplace, was hard to break. Narration came naturally after a time spent in the company of talking scarecrows or disappearing cats; it was, in its own way, a method of keeping oneself grounded, connected to the thin thread of continuity that ran through all lives, no matter how strange they might become. Narrate the impossible things, turn them into a story, and they could be controlled. — Seanan McGuire

We forgave, followed and accepted because we liked the way he looked. And he had a pretty wife. Camelot was fun, even for the peasants, as long as it was televised to their huts. — Joe McGinniss

I believe the reason we sleep is not just to allow our body to rest but that it is to allow this inner wisdom to speak to us through symbols. This includes the body or somatic problems as well as psychological ones. Dreams and drawings are useful in diagnosing physical conditions. — Bernie Siegel

I am a fantastic nurse. I discovered this about myself, and I'm really fantastic about diagnosing things. — Jill Flint

In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does. — Peter Breggin

This wedding is your parents' fault. They named her Kiley. She was doomed from birth to marry a hunky, fratty premed major. — Rainbow Rowell

Diagnosing and labeling people whose struggles are more environmental or learned than genetic or organic is often far more detrimental to healing and change than it is helpful. — Brene Brown

It is well for civilization that human beings constantly strive to gain greater and greater rewards, for it is this urge, this ambition, this aspiration that moves men and women to bestir themselves to rise to higher and higher achievement. Individual success is to be won in most instances by studying and diagnosing the kind of rewards human hearts seek today and are likely to seek tomorrow. — B.C. Forbes

The sky looked really great when nearly the entire country was blacked out. Of course, now it looked dangerous, too. I wondered if it would ever be just the night sky again, and not a black sea, full of sharks. Anyway, — Adam Rex

I didn't find Jesus. He's been there the whole time. — Billy Corgan

Don't use "below-the-belt" tactics. These include: blam- ing, interpreting, diagnosing, labeling, analyzing, preaching, moralizing, ordering, warning, interrogating, ridiculing, and lecturing. Don't put the other person down. — Harriet Lerner

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. — Groucho Marx

During the last considerable epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council, and I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the revaccinated cases (of smallpox) as pustular eczema, varioloid or what not
except smallpox. — George Bernard Shaw

Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem. — Clay Shirky

Boys' aggressiveness is increasingly being treated as a medical problem, particularly in schools, a trend that has led to the diagnosing and medicating of boys whose problem may really be that they have been traumatized and influenced by exposure to violence and abuse at home. Treating these boys as though they have a chemical problem not only overlooks the distress they are in but also reinforces their belief that they are "out of control" or "sick," rather than helping them to recognize that they are making bad choices based on destructive values. I have sometimes heard adults telling girls that they should be flattered by boys' invasive or aggressive behavior "because it means they really like you," an approach that prepares both boys and girls to confuse love with abuse and socializes girls to feel helpless. — Lundy Bancroft

Keep in mind that if you take a tour through a hospital and look at every machine with on and off switch that is brought into the service of diagnosing the human condition, that machine is based on principles of physics discovered by a physicist in a machine designed by an engineer. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The rhythm of relations of color and size makes the absolute appear in the relativity of time and space. — Piet Mondrian

When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Our vision of war is probably too influenced by the biggest one of all, World War II, where the forces of evil were so unambiguous and so relentless that there was no choice but to commit to total war and to demand unconditional surrender. Seldom, though, is it quite that clear cut. — David Horsey

To the medical man, astrology is invaluable in diagnosing diseases and prescribing a remedy, for it reveals the hidden cause of all ailments. — Max Heindel

When people aren't producing, companies typically resort to rewards or punishment. "What you haven't done is the hard work of diagnosing what the problem is. You're trying to run over the problem with a carrot or a stick," Ryan explains. That doesn't mean that SDT unequivocally opposes rewards. "Of course, they're necessary in workplaces and other settings," says Deci. "But the less salient they are made, the better. When people use rewards to motivate, that's when they're most demotivating." Instead, Deci and Ryan say we should focus our efforts on creating environments for our innate psychological needs to flourish. — Daniel H. Pink

The artist's transcendence is achieved through success at diagnosing and naming the maladies of the age. Artists tell a different sort of truth than scientists do. The truth of the scientist is a generalizing truth, while the artist or writer's is a particular truth. It is the truth about particular persons in particular situations. The poet or the novelist reveals truths about human lives by embodying these truths in concrete characters, in specific situations. Readers recognize their own reality in the work. We find ourselves saying, as we read, 'Yes! This is how it is for me.' Both those who enjoy the work of artists and the artists themselves achieve transcendence through this identification of the particular truths about selves in the world. — David LaRocca

In all modesty, we must admit that governments are not always the best doctors when it comes to diagnosing economic ailments and prescribing the right treatment. — Kim Campbell

I don't think you can have an authentic connection when one person is diagnosing the other. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

There are some good teachers out there, but the only one who is a genius at diagnosing my swing is my mom. She took up golf late, when she was 39, but in her younger days, she was an amazing athlete. She never read an instruction book or took lessons, but she has a remarkable eye for motion. — Boo Weekley

Postmodernism's specifically academic appeal comes from its being another in the sequence of all-purpose "unmasking" strategies that offer a way to criticize the intellectual efforts of others not by engaging with them on the ground, but by diagnosing them from a superior vantage point and charging them with inadequate self-awareness. Logical positivism and Marxism were used by academics in this way, and postmodernist relativism is a natural successor in the role.
[The Sleep of Reason] — Thomas Nagel

Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven's bounty and glory of life and freedom. — Kahlil Gibran

Say you have cancer - you have this broad thing we call cancer; we're going to irradiate you and pump this poisonous material into you and hope more of the bad stuff dies than the good. That is going to seem so medieval when we can fix it on a genetic level, and Foundation Medicine is the first step to diagnosing it on a genetic level. — Bill Maris

As they climbed it, the various Healers called out to them, diagnosing odd complaints and suggesting horrible remedies. Ron was seriously affronted when a medieval wizard called out that he clearly had a bad case of spattergroit.
"And what's that supposed to be?" he asked angrily, as the Healer pursued him through six more portraits, shoving the occupants out of the way.
" 'Tis a most grievous affliction of the skin, young master, that will leave you pockmarked and more gruesome even than you are now - "
"Watch who you're calling gruesome!" said Ron, his ears turning red.
"The only remedy is to take the liver of a toad, bind it tight about your throat, stand naked by the full moon in a barrel of eels' eyes - "
"I have not got spattergroit!"
"But the unsightly blemishes upon your visage, young master - "
"They're freckles!" said Ron furiously. — J.K. Rowling

Obama avoided the Vietnam draft with a letter from his family doctor diagnosing him as medically eight. — Stephen Colbert

From the Basement tapes
Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do."
Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him.
"Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live."
"If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it! — Dave Cullen

The pen, a double-edged mystery: cuts the writer, heals the reader. — Jenim Dibie

Dreams come a size too big so we can grow into them. — Josie Bissett