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I think this collection of quotes is a great way to learn about psychology. Some of the shorter ones:

The analyst's work is to see the unconscious in action.

Psychotherapy capitalizes on the half-awareness that life could be more gratifying than it is.

Knowledge of a life story is acquired in the course of attempting to tell it.

So you became, in your play, like your mother, and did to your toys what she did to you.

Therapy cannot proceed when the therapist is more anxious than the patient.

A special warning is in order against .... bitter banter ... Here the therapist indulges a fantasy that he has a license to attack under a thin disguise of humour.

One of the rules of analyzing is that one should not take sides in the analysand's conflicts.

We have to recognize the fact that the first wish of the a patient is to be understood.

Patients almost regularly project superego functions into the analyst and then react as if they are being judged.

The only way you can put a floor under a patient is by getting him to talk about what is most important to him at that moment.

It is almost always a relief to experience one's true feelings.

Splitting is geared to protect the ideal, good relationship with mother from "contamination" by bad representations of her.

Without transference-love the patient would have insufficient motivation to endure the unhappiness of analytic investigation.

What happens is that the child projects his own impulses onto his objects ... The infant expects in fantasy that his object (significant adults) will do to him what he has done, or that which he fantasies he has done or might wish to do, to them.

I find this book a source of comfort and understanding. When I'm feeling conflicted about something, I just open it up and read.

July 12, 2018
A few additional quotes from this collection:

... a small child will represent an experience to himself - symbolize it in his imagery - not as it would have appeared in a moving picture with a sound track, but as he himself experienced it, with all the small child misinterpretations, misunderstandings, ambivalent feelings, omissions, passions and distortions intact. Norman Cameron, 1963

... In the regression induced by the psychoanalytic treatment situation the [person] reacts to the analyst in successively different ways: first, as a mysterious medical person who promises some kind of help; second, as a misidentified father, mother, brother, and so forth; third, as a human being with certain weaknesses; and finally, as a human being with certain strengths. Karl Menninger, 1958

The question, 'Why is the patient resisting?' can be reduced to: what painful affect is he trying to avoid. Ralph Greenson, 1967

She was an adult before her time, and as an adult she sheds the responsibility of adulthood. Mueller and Aniskiewicz, 1986

When you talk about what's important, the [person may tear ] ... I respect the autonomic nervous system to show feelings like I respect few other things. Elvin Semrad, 1980

The reason symptomatic cures are deemed undesirable lies in the fact that the disappearance of the symptom, no matter how immediately pleasing to all parties concerned, is ultimately a sign that communicative process has become somewhat reduced, making further explorations more difficult, unless, of course, the disappearance of the symptoms is based upon through insight and subsequent resolution of the communicated conflict. Erwin Singer, 1965

Much time in analysis is spent interpreting the analysand's need to see things as either black or white. Roy Schafer, 1983

... They are unconsciously pre-occupied with unresolved [inner] conflicts, and this preoccupation pushes them into situations that allow their conflicts some degree of expression. In fact, they themselves often help to create such situations out of whatever interpersonal relationships present themselves. ... Norman Cameron, 1963

... in order to use a transference interpretation, the [person] must have a capacity for ... self-reflection ... Andrew Druck, 1989

... The therapist inevitably has two patients to deal with, two people whose motivations he must scrutinize and understand - the patient and himself. Erwin Singer, 1965

As I was finally leaving Fairbairn after the last session, I suddenly realized that in all that long period we had never once shaken hands,and he was letting me leave without that friendly gesture. I put out my hand and at once he took it, and I suddenly saw a few tears trickle down his face. I saw the warm heart of this man with a fine mind and a shy nature. Harry Guntrip, 1976

This is a fun, thought-provoking book to open at random and read a few quotes from. So many of these quotes come from intensely analytical therapies, but they still offer great rationale and thoughts that link theories that are part of more contemporary therapies. One of the points I'm enjoying reading through a variety of "voices" in this book is about the value of noticing what's happening between therapist and client. Indeed, effective therapy continues to have a whole lot more to do with the experience the client and therapist have together than it does with any interpretations or advice we might offer about what's happening "out there." Some quotes I disagree with, some I'm bored by, and some make me laugh out loud and read to a friend -- well worth having as part of my therapy book library!