Daily Inspiration Quote by Dennis Potter

Potter flips the usual hierarchy: “analysis” is meant to sound cold, clinical, and real; “therapy” is supposed to be the practical, evidence-based fix. He calls the latter a “myth” not to dismiss it, but to reclassify it as storytelling. In a single move, therapy becomes less like a repair shop and more like theater: an invented frame where pain can be given plot, motive, and an ending that feels survivable.

The phrasing matters. “Whole construct” suggests scaffolding, something assembled deliberately, not discovered in nature. “Myth” carries the double charge of falsehood and necessity: myths aren’t true in a literal sense, but they’re how societies metabolize terror, guilt, desire. Potter’s “beautiful and creative” lands like a defense of illusion in an age that fetishizes authenticity. He’s arguing that what heals us is often not raw truth, but a convincing form of truth - a narrative you can inhabit without being destroyed by it.

Coming from a dramatist, this isn’t an accidental metaphor. Potter built work around memory, fantasy, illness, and the ways people rehearse versions of themselves until one finally holds. The subtext is faintly combative: analysts may claim authority by naming hidden mechanisms; therapists, in Potter’s view, offer a sanctioned storymaking practice - one that admits its artifice and uses it anyway. The intent is to reclaim “making it up” as a serious human technology, not a lie but a lifeline.