Sheldon Kopp Quotes

• Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learned

• But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Experience

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

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Life

• 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.’

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Struggle

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

  Sheldon Kopp

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  Tags in Moon

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

  Sheldon Kopp

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  Tags in Run

• Only if he will give up trying to control his thinking, and let himself sink into his confusion, only then will things become clear.

  Sheldon Kopp

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  Tags in Control

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hope

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Patient

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worrying

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Patient

• For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other’s interpretation.

  Sheldon Kopp

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  Tags in Hope

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

  Sheldon Kopp

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  Tags in Taught

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Born

• We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Situation

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

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reasons

• This listening is that which will facilitate the patient’s telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Listening

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mean

• The therapist can interpret, advise, provide the emotional acceptance and support that nurtures personal growth, and above all, he can listen.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Therapist

• 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.

  Sheldon Kopp

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Win, Lose

Sheldon Kopp (47)

Birth:	29th March, 1929
Death:	29th March, 1999
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Author, Psychologist

About

Sheldon Kopp was a psychotherapist and author, based in Washington, D.C.. He was born in New York City, and received his PhD from the New School for Social Research. In addition to his private practice, he served as a Psychotherapy Supervisor for the Pastoral Counselling and Consultation Centres in Washington. He died of cardiac arrhythmia and pneumonia. He is also popular for his quotes. One of them is, "All of the significant battles are waged within the self."

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