Background Image

...

An Intimate Friend And A Hated Enemy Have Always Been Indispensable Requirements For My Emotional Life; I Have Always Been Able To Create Them Anew, And Not Infrequently My Childish Ideal Has Been So Closely Approached That Friend And Enemy Coincided In The Same Person.

-Sigmund Freud

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

An Intimate Friend And

Sigmund Freud

...

An Intimate Friend And A Hated Enemy Have Always Been Indispensable Requirements For My Emotional Life; I Have Always Been Able To Create Them Anew, And Not Infrequently My Childish Ideal Has Been So Closely Approached That Friend And Enemy Coincided In The Same Person.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Sigmund Freud

Christmas Is The Alcoholidays

If There Are Quarrels Between The Parents Or If Their Marriage Is Unhappy, The Ground Will Be Prepared In Their Children For The Severest Predisposition To A Disturbance Of Sexual Development Or To Neurotic Illness.

All Giving Is Asking, And All Asking Is An Asking For Love.

A Belligerent State Permits Itself Every Such Misdeed, Every Such Act Of Violence, As Would Disgrace The Individual.

The Study Of Dreams May Be Considered The Most Trustworthy Method Of Investigating Deep Mental Processes. Now Dreams Occurring In Traumatic Neuroses Have The Characteristic Of Repeatedly Bringing The Patient Back Into The Situation Of His Accident, A Situation From Which He Wakes Up In Another Fright.

When A Love-relationship Is At Its Height There Is No Room Left For Any Interest In The Environment; A Pair Of Lovers Are Sufficient To Themselves

Love Relationship

Sadism Is All Right In Its Place, But It Should Be Directed To Proper Ends.

If You Want To Endure Life, Prepare Yourself For Death.

When Making A Decision Of Minor Importance, I Have Always Found It Advantageous To Consider All The Pros And Cons. In Vital Matters, However, Such As The Choice Of A Mate Or A Profession, The Decision Should Come From The Unconscious, From Somewhere Within Ourselves. In The Important Decisions Of Personal Life, We Should Be Governed, I Think, By The Deep Inner Needs Of Our Nature.

A Father's Death Is The Most Important Event, The More Heartbreaking And Poignant Loss In A Man's Life.

Toward The Person Who Has Died We Adopt A Special Attitude: Something Like Admiration For Someone Who Has Accomplished A Very Difficult Task.

Love In The Form Of Longing And Deprivation Lowers The Self Regard.

The Dream Acts As A Safety-valve For The Over-burdened Brain.

Intolerance Of Groups Is Often, Strangely Enough, Exhibited More Strongly Against Small Differences Than Against Fundamental Ones.

My Love Is Something Valuable To Me Which I Ought Not To Throw Away Without Reflection.

The Fateful Question For The Human Species Seems To Me To Be Whether And To What Extent Their Cultural Development Will Succeed In Mastering The Disturbance Of Their Communal Life By The Human Instinct Of Aggression And Self-destruction ... One Thing Only Do I Know For Certain And That Is That Man's Judgements Of Value Follow Directly From His Wihes For Happiness-that, Accordingly, They Are An Attempt To Support His Illusions With Arguments.

A Child In Its Greed For Love Does Not Enjoy Having To Share The Affection Of Its Parents With Its Brothers And Sisters; And It Notices That The Whole Of Their Affection Is Lavished Upon It Once More Whenever It Arouses Their Anxiety By Falling Ill. It Has Now Discovered A Means Of Enticing Out Its Parents' Love And Will Make Use Of That Means As Soon As It Has The Necessary Psychical Material At Its Disposal For Producing An Illness.

Civilization Began The First Time An Angry Person Cast A Word Instead Of A Rock.

Most People Do Not Really Want Freedom, Because Freedom Involves Responsibility, And Most People Are Frightened Of Responsibility.

Illusions Commend Themselves To Us Because They Save Us Pain And Allow Us To Enjoy Pleasure Instead. We Must Therefore Accept It Without Complaint When They Sometimes Collide With A Bit Of Reality Against Which They Are Dashed To Pieces.

The Mosaic Religion Had Been A Father Religion; Christianity Became A Son Religion. The Old God, The Father, Took Second Place; Christ, The Son, Stood In His Stead, Just As In Those Dark Times Every Son Had Longed To Do.

Mans Most Disagreeable Habits And Idiosyncrasies, His Deceit, His Cowardice, His Lack Of Reverence, Are Engendered By His Incomplete Adjustment To A Complicated Civilisation. It Is The Result Of The Conflict Between Our Instincts And Our Culture.

It Might Be Said Of Psychoanalysis That If You Give It Your Little Finger It Will Soon Have Your Whole Hand.

Writers Write For Fame, Wealth, Power And The Love Of Women.

The Wish To Be Able To Fly Is To Be Understood As Nothing Else Than A Longing To Be Capable Of Sexual Performance.

Just As A Satisfaction Of Instinct Spells Happiness For Us, So Severe Suffering Is Caused Us If The External World Lets Us Starve, If It Refuses To Sate Our Needs. One May Therefore Hope To Be Freed From A Part Of One's Sufferings By Influencing The Instinctual Impulses.

A Hero Is A Man Who Stands Up Manfully Against His Father And In The End Victoriously Overcomes Him.

No Other Technique For The Conduct Of Life Attaches The Individual So Firmly To Reality As Laying Emphasis On Work; For His Work At Least Gives Him A Secure Place In A Portion Of Reality, In The Human Community. The Possibility It Offers Of Displacing A Large Amount Of Libidinal Components, Whether Narcissistic, Aggressive Or Even Erotic, On To Professional Work And On To The Human Relations Connected With It Lends It A Value By No Means Second To What It Enjoys As Something Indispensable To The Preservation And Justification Of Existence In Society.

Every Normal Person, In Fact, Is Only Normal On The Average. His Ego Approximates To That Of The Psychotic In Some Part Or Other And To A Greater Or Lesser Extent.

Words And Magic Were In The Beginning One And The Same Thing, And Even Today Words Retain Much Of Their Magical Power.

In Matters Of Sexuality We Are At Present, Every One Of Us, Ill Or Well, Nothing But Hypocrites.

What Is Common In All These Dreams Is Obvious. They Completely Satisfy Wishes Excited During The Day Which Remain Unrealized. They Are Simply And Undisguisedly Realizations Of Wishes.

Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

"he Sido Un Hombre Afortunado En La Vida, Nada Me Ha Sido Facil." "i've Been A Fortunate Man In Life, Nothing Has Come Easy"

We Have Become Convinced That It Is Better To Avoid Such Symbolic Disguisings Of The Truth In What We Tell Children And Not To Withhold From Them A Knowledge Of The True State Of Affairs Commensurate With Their Intellectual Level.

We Must Reckon With The Possibility That Something In The Nature Of The Sexual Instinct Itself Is Unfavorable To The Realization Of Complete Satisfaction.

Homosexuality Is Assuredly No Advantage, But It Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of, No Vice, No Degradation; It Cannot Be Classified As An Illness; We Consider It To Be A Variation Of The Sexual Function, Produced By A Certain Arrest Of Sexual Development. Many Highly Respectable Individuals Of Ancient And Modern Times Have Been Homosexuals, Several Of The Greatest Men Among Them (plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Etc.). It Is A Great Injustice To Persecute Homosexuality As A Crime--and A Cruelty, Too. If You Do Not Believe Me, Read The Books Of Havelock Ellis.

Only The Real, Rare, True Scientific Minds Can Endure Doubt, Which Is Attached To All Our Knowledge.

The Different Religions Have Never Overlooked The Part Played By The Sense Of Guilt In Civilization. What Is More, They Come Forward With A Claim...to Save Mankind From This Sense Of Guilt, Which They Call Sin.

There Are No Mistakes.

Our Knowledge Of The Historical Worth Of Certain Religious Doctrines Increases Our Respect For Them, But Does Not Invalidate Our Proposal That They Should Cease To Be Put Forward As The Reasons For The Precepts Of Civilization. On The Contrary! Those Historical Residues Have Helped Us To View Religious Teachings, As It Were, As Neurotic Relics, And We May Now Argue That The Time Has Probably Come, As It Does In An Analytic Treatment, For Replacing The Effects Of Repression By The Results Of The Rational Operation Of The Intellect.

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

The Religions Of Mankind Must Be Classed Among The Mass-delusions Of This Kind. No One, Needless To Say, Who Shares A Delusion Ever Recognizes It As Such.

An Intimate Friend And A Hated Enemy Have Always Been Indispensable Requirements For My Emotional Life; I Have Always Been Able To Create Them Anew, And Not Infrequently My Childish Ideal Has Been So Closely Approached That Friend And Enemy Coincided In The Same Person.

If You Want Your Wife To Listen To You, Then Talk To Another Woman; She Will Be All Ears.

It Is A Predisposition Of Human Nature To Consider An Unpleasant Idea Untrue, And Then It Is Easy To Find Arguments Against It.

We Choose Not Randomly Each Other. We Meet Only Those Who Already Exists In Our Subconscious.

There Is An Intellectual Function In Us Which Demands Unity, Connection And Intelligibility From Any Material, Whether Of Perception Or Thought, That Comes Within Its Grasp; And If, As A Result Of Special Circumstances, It Is Unable To Establish A True Connection, It Does Not Hesitate To Fabricate A False One.

It Is Always Possible To Bind Together A Considerable Number Of People In Love, So Long As There Are Other People Left Over To Receive The Manifestations Of Their Aggressiveness.

It Must Be Pointed Out, However, That Strictly Speaking It Is Incorrect To Talk Of The Dominance Of The Pleasure Principle Over The Course Of Mental Processes. If Such A Dominance Existed, The Immense Majority Of Our Mental Processes Would Have To Be Accompanied By Pleasure Or To Lead To Pleasure, Whereas Universal Experience Completely Contradicts Any Such Conclusion.

Where Such Men Love They Have No Desire And Where They Desire They Cannot Love

I Take Up The Standpoint That The Tendency To Aggression Is An Innate, Independent, Instinctual Disposition In Man, And I Come Back Now To The Statement That It Constitutes The Most Powerful Obstacle To Culture.

Obviously One Must Hold Oneself Responsible For The Evil Impulses Of One's Dreams. In What Other Way Can One Deal With Them? Unless The Content Of The Dream Rightly Understood Is Inspired By Alien Spirits, It Is Part Of My Own Being.

Where Questions Of Religion Are Concerned, People Are Guilty Of Every Possible Sort Of Dishonesty And Intellectual Misdemeanor.

Thinking Is An Experimental Dealing With Small Quantities Of Energy, Just As A General Moves Miniature Figures Over A Map Before Setting His Troops In Action.

A Man Should Not Strive To Eliminate His Complexes But To Get Into Accord With Them: They Are Legitimately What Directs His Conduct In The World.

A Lady Once Expressed Herself In Society - The Very Words Show That They Were Uttered With Fervour And Under The Pressure Of A Great Many Secret Emotions: "yes, A Woman Must Be Pretty If She Is To Please The Men. A Man Is Much Better Off. As Long As He Has Five Straight Limbs, He Needs No More!"

Opposition Is Not Necessarily Enmity; It Is Merely Misused And Made An Occasion For Enmity.

The Rest Of Our Enquiry Is Made Easy Because This God-creator Is Openly Called Father. Psycho-analysis Concludes That He Really Is The Father, Clothed In The Grandeur In Which He Once Appeared To The Small Child.

Adolescent Stage In The Development Of The Human Race From Which Humanity Should Free Itself.

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

Psycho-analysis Has Taught Us That A Boy's Earliest Choice Of Objects For His Love Is Incestuous And That Those Objects Are Forbidden Ones - His Mother And His Sister. We Have Learnt, Too, The Manner In Which, As He Grows Up, He Liberates Himself From This Incestuous Attraction. A Neurotic, On The Other Hand, Invariably Exhibits Some Degree Of Psychical Infantilism. He Has Either Failed To Get Free From The Psychosexual Conditions That Prevailed In His Childhood Or He Has Returned To Them - Two Possibilities Which May Be Summed Up As Developmental Inhibition And Regression.

Anxiety In Children Is Originally Nothing Other Than An Expression Of The Fact They Are Feeling The Loss Of The Person They Love.

Sexual Morality - As Society In Its Extreme Form, The American, Defines It - Is Contemptible. I Advocate An Incomparably Freer Sexual Life.

The Unconscious Of One Human Being Can React Upon That Of Another Without Passing Through The Conscious.

This Is One Race Of People For Whom Psychoanalysis Is Of No Use Whatsoever.

In Every Age Immorality Has Found No Less Support In Religion Than Morality Has. If The Achievements Of Religion In Respect To Man's Happiness, Susceptibility To Culture And Moral Control Are No Better Than This, The Question Cannot But Arise Whether We Are Not Overrating Its Necessity For Mankind, And Whether We Do Wisely In Basing Our Cultural Demands Upon It.

We Are Never So Defenseless Against Suffering As When We Love, Never So Forlornly Unhappy As When We Have Lost Our Love Object Or Its Love.

One Thing Only Do I Know For Certain And That Is That Man's Judgments Of Value Follow Directly His Wishes For Happiness-that, Accordingly, They Are An Attempt To Support His Illusions With Arguments. [p.111]

The Virtuous Man Contents Himself With Dreaming That Which The Wicked Man Does In Actual Life.

When We Share - That Is Poetry In The Prose Of Life.

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

The Analytic Psychotherapist Thus Has A Threefold Battle To Wage -- In His Own Mind Against The Forces Which Seek To Drag Him Down From The Analytic Level; Outside The Analysis, Against Opponents Who Dispute The Importance He Attaches To The Sexual Instinctual Forces And Hinder Him From Making Use Of Them In His Scientific Technique; And Inside The Analysis, Against His Patients, Who At First Behave Like Opponents But Later On Reveal The Overvaluation Of Sexual Life Which Dominates Them, And Who Try To Make Him Captive To Their Socially Untamed Passion.

Men Are More Moral Than They Think And Far More Immoral Than They Can Imagine.

I Have No Concern With Any Economic Criticisms Of The Communist System; I Cannot Inquire Into Whether The Abolition Of Private Property Is Expedient Or Advantageous. But I Am Able To Recognize That The Psychological Premisses On Which The System Is Based Are An Untenable Illusion. In Abolishing Private Property We Deprive The Human Love Of Aggression Of One Of Its Instruments... But We Have In No Way Altered The Differences In Power And Influence Which Are Misused By Aggressiveness.

The More The Fruits Of Knowledge Become Accessible To Men, The More Widespread Is The Decline Of Religious Belief.

Yes, America Is Gigantic, But A Gigantic Mistake.

The Defense Against Childish Helplessness Is What Lends Its Characteristic Features To The Adult's Reaction To The Helplessness Which He Has To Acknowledge - A Reaction Which Is Precisely The Formation Of Religion.

Characteristics

In So Doing, The Idea Forces Itself Upon Him That Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis, And He Is Optimistic Enough To Suppose That Mankind Will Surmount This Neurotic Phase, Just As So Many Children Grow Out Of Their Similar Neurosis.

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

Cigars Served Me For Precisely Fifty Years As Protection And A Weapon In The Combat Of Life... I Owe To The Cigar A Great Intensification Of My Capacity To Work And A Facilitation Of My Self-control.

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

Maturity Is The Ability To Postpone Gratification.

What Is A Totem? It Is As A Rule An Animal (whether Edible And Harmless Or Dangerous And Feared) And More Rarely A Plant Or A Natural Phenomenon (such As Rain Or Water), Which Stands In A Peculiar Relation To The Whole Clan. In The First Place, The Totem Is The Common Ancestor Of The Clan; At The Same Time It Is Their Guardian Spirit And Helper, Which Sends Them Oracles And, If Dangerous To Others, Recognizes And Spares Its Own Children.

The Dream Is The Liberation Of The Spirit From The Pressure Of External Nature, A Detachment Of The Soul From The Fetters Of Matter.

Words Have A Magical Power. They Can Bring Either The Greatest Happiness Or Deepest Despair; They Can Transfer Knowledge From Teacher To Student; Words Enable The Orator To Sway His Audience And Dictate Its Decisions. Words Are Capable Of Arousing The Strongest Emotions And Prompting All Men's Actions.

Religion Is An Attempt To Get Control Over The Sensory World, In Which We Are Placed, By Means Of The Wish-world, Which We Have Developed Inside Us As A Result Of Biological And Psychological Necessities... If One Attempts To Assign To Religion Its Place In Man's Evolution, It Seems Not So Much To Be A Lasting Acquisition, As A Parallel To The Neurosis Which The Civilized Individual Must Pass Through On His Way From Childhood To Maturity.

Cruelty And Intolerance To Those Who Do Not Belong To It Are Natural To Every Religion.

Civilization Is A Process In The Service Of Eros, Whose Purpose Is To Combine Single Human Individuals, And After That Families, Then Races, Peoples And Nations, Into One Great Unity, The Unity Of Mankind. Why This Has To Happen, We Do Not Know; The Work Of Eros Is Precisely This.

One Might Compare The Relation Of The Ego To The Id With That Between A Rider And His Horse. The Horse Provides The Locomotor Energy, And The Rider Has The Prerogative Of Determining The Goal And Of Guiding The Movements Of His Powerful Mount Towards It. But All Too Often In The Relations Between The Ego And The Id We Find A Picture Of The Less Ideal Situation In Which The Rider Is Obliged To Guide His Horse In The Direction In Which It Itself Wants To Go.

The Psychoanalysis Of Individual Human Beings, However, Teaches Us With Quite Special Insistence That The God Of Each Of Them Is Formed In The Likeness Of His Father, That His Personal Relation To God Depends On His Relation To His Father In The Flesh And Oscillates And Changes Along With That Relation, And That At Bottom God Is Nothing Other Than An Exalted Father.

Illusions Commend Themselves To Us Because They Save Us Pain And Allow Us To Enjoy Pleasure Instead.

Whoever Loves Becomes Humble. Those Who Love Have, So To Speak, Pawned A Part Of Their Narcissism.

We Have Long Observed That Every Neurosis Has The Result, And Therefore Probably The Purpose, Of Forcing The Patient Out Of Real Life, Of Alienating Him From Actuality.

The Dream Unites The Grossest Contradictions, Permits Impossibilities, Sets Aside The Knowledge That Influences Us By Day, And Exposes Us As Ethically And Morally Obtuse.

One Becomes Gradually Accustomed To A New Realization Of The Nature Of 'happiness': One Has To Assume Happiness When Fate Does Not Carry Out All Its Threats Simultaneously.

The Irish Are The One Race For Which Psychoanalysis Is Of No Use Whatsoever... Because They Already Live In A Dream World.

A String Of Reproaches Against Other People Leads One To Suspect The Existence Of A String Of Self-reproaches With The Same Content.

Public Self Is A Conditioned Construct Of The Inner Psychological Self.

How Bold One Gets When One Is Sure Of Being Loved.

The Conscious Mind May Be Compared To A Fountain Playing In The Sun And Falling Back Into The Great Subterranean Pool Of Subconscious From Which It Rises.

If A Man Has Been His Mother's Undisputed Darling He Retains Throughout Life The Triumphant Feeling, The Confidence In Success, Which Not Seldom Brings Actual Success Along With It.

All Family Life Is Organized Around The Most Damaged Person In It.

History Is Just New People Making Old Mistakes.

In Mourning It Is The World Which Has Become Poor And Empty; In Melancholia It Is The Ego Itself.

What A Distressing Contrast There Is Between The Radiant Intelligence Of The Child And The Feeble Mentality Of The Average Adult.

Tobacco Is The Only Excuse For Columbus's Misadventure In Discovering America.

From Error To Error One Discovers The Entire Truth.

The Aim Of Psychoanalysis Is To Relieve People Of Their Neurotic Unhappiness So That They Can Be Normally Unhappy.

Perhaps The Gods Are Kind To Us, By Making Life More Disagreeable As We Grow Older. In The End Death Seems Less Intolerable Than The Manifold Burdens We Carry

Poets Are Masters Of Us Ordinary Men, In Knowledge Of The Mind, Because They Drink At Streams Which We Have Not Yet Made Accessible To Science.

I Have Never Doubted That Religious Phenomena Are Only To Be Understood On The Pattern Of The Individual Neurotic Symptoms Familiar To Us.

The Assumption That Everything Past Is Preserved Holds Good Even In Mental Life Only On Condition That The Organ Of The Mind Has Remained Intact And That Its Tissues Have Not Been Damaged By Trauma Or Inflammation. But Destructive Influences Which Can Be Compared To Causes Of Illness Like These Are Never Lacking In The History Of A City, Even If It Has Had A Less Chequered Past Than Rome, And Even If, Like London, It Has Hardly Ever Suffered From The Visitations Of An Enemy.

The Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

There Is A Powerful Force Within Us, An Un-illuminated Part Of The Mind - Separate From The Conscious Mind That Is Constantly At Work Molding Our Thought, Feelings, And Actions.

Intelligence Will Be Used In The Service Of The Neurosis.

Dreams Are Constructed From The Residue Of Yesterday.

The Unconscious - That Is To Say, The 'repressed' - Offers No Resistance Whatever To The Efforts Of The Treatment. Indeed, It Itself Has No Other Endeavour Than To Break Through The Pressure Weighing Down On It And Force Its Way Either To Consciousness Or To A Discharge Through Some Real Action.

The Interpretation Of Dreams Is The Royal Road To A Knowledge Of The Unconscious Activities Of The Mind.

Collective Unconscious

As Regards Intellectual Work It Remains A Fact, Indeed, That Great Decisions In The Realm Of Thought And Momentous Discoveries And Solutions Of Problems Are Only Possible To An Individual, Working In Solitude.

The World Is No Nursery.

The Three Major Mother Gods Of The Eastern Populations Seemed To Be Generating And Destroying Entities At The Same Time; Both Goddesses Of Life And Fertility As Well As Goddesses Of Death.

There Is To My Mind No Doubt That The Concept Of Beautiful Had Its Roots In Sexual Excitation And That Its Original Meaning Was Sexually Stimulating.

One Must Not Be Mean With The Affections; What Is Spent Of The Fund Is Renewed In The Spending Itself.

The Facts Which Have Caused Us To Believe In The Dominance Of The Pleasure Principle In Mental Life Also Find Expression In The Hypothesis That The Mental Apparatus Endeavours To Keep The Quantity Of Excitation Present In It As Low As Possible Or At Least To Keep It Constant.

No Matter How Much Restriction Civilization Imposes On The Individual, He Nevertheless Finds Some Way To Circumvent It. Wit Is The Best Safety Valve Modern Man Has Evolved; The More Civilization, The More Repression, The More Need There Is For Wit.".

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

But The Less A Man Knows About The Past And The Present The More Insecure Must Prove To Be His Judgment Of The Future.

The Pleasure Principle Long Persists, However, As The Method Of Working Employed By The Sexual Instincts, Which Are So Hard To 'educate', And, Starting From Those Instincts, Or In The Ego Itself, It Often Succeeds In Overcoming The Reality Principle, To The Detriment Of The Organism As A Whole.

The Communal Life Of Human Beings Had . . . A Two-fold Foundation: The Compulsion To Work, Which Was Created By External Necessity, And The Power Of Love.

In The Development Of Mankind As A Whole, Just As In Individuals, Love Alone Acts As The Civilizing Factor In The Sense That It Brings A Change From Egoism To Altruism.

A State Of Consciousness Is Characteristically Very Transitory; An Idea That Is Conscious Now Is No Longer So A Moment Later, Although It Can Become So Again Under Certain Conditions That Are Easily Brought About.

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection.

What Good To Us Is A Long Life If It Is Difficult And Barren Of Joys, And If It Is So Full Of Misery That We Can Only Welcome Death As A Deliverer?

A Man Like Me Cannot Live Without A Hobby-horse, A Consuming Passion - In Schiller's Words A Tyrant. I Have Found My Tyrant, And In His Service I Know No Limits. My Tyrant Is Psychology. It Has Always Been My Distant, Beckoning Goal And Now Since I Have Hit Upon The Neuroses, It Has Come So Much The Nearer.

I Should Like To Raise The Question Whether The Inevitable Stunting Of The Sense Of Smell As A Result Of Man's Turning Away From The Earth, And The Organic Repression Of The Smell-pleasure Produced By It, Does Not Largely Share In His Predisposition To Nervous Diseases.

Even If All Parts Of A Problem Seem To Fit Together Like The Pieces Of A Jigsaw Puzzle, One Has To Remember That The Probable Need Not Necessarily Be The Truth And The Truth Not Always Probable.

Being Entirely Honest With Oneself Is A Good Exercise.

Plaque Was Placed On 6 May 1977 At Bellevue (a House On The Slopes Of The Wienerwald) Where The Freud Family Spent Their Summers.

The Act Of Birth Is The First Experience Of Anxiety, And Thus The Source And Prototype Of The Affect Of Anxiety.

What Decides The Purpose Of Life Is Simply The Programme Of The Pleasure Principle. This Principle Dominates The Operation Of The Mental Apparatus From The Start. There Can Be No Doubt About Its Efficacy, And Yet Its Programme Is At Loggerheads With The Whole World, With The Macrocosm As Much As With The Microcosm.

Psychiatry Is The Art Of Teaching People How To Stand On Their Own Feet While Reclining On Couches.

What Progress We Are Making. In The Middle Ages They Would Have Burned Me. Now They Are Content With Burning My Books.

Man Has, As It Were, Become A Kind Of Prosthetic God. When He Puts On All His Auxiliary Organs, He Is Truly Magnificent; But Those Organs Have Not Grown On Him And They Still Give Him Much Trouble At Times.

Every Man Has A Right Over His Own Life And War Destroys Lives That Were Full Of Promise; It Forces The Individual Into Situations That Shame His Manhood, Obliging Him To Murder Fellow Men, Against His Will.

I Do Not Doubt That It Would Be Easier For Fate To Take Away Your Suffering Than It Would For Me. But You Will See For Yourself That Much Has Been Gained If We Succeed In Turning Your Hysterical Misery Into Common Unhappiness.

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection Against Disease, But In The Last Resort We Must Begin To Love In Order That We May Not Fall Ill, And Must Fall Ill If, In Consequence Of Frustration, We Cannot Love.

Thinking In Pictures Is, Therefore, Only A Very Incomplete Form Of Becoming Conscious. In Some Way, Too, It Stands Nearer To Unconscious Processes Than Does Thinking In Words, And It Is Unquestionably Older Than The Latter Both Ontogenetically And Phylogenetically.

The Creative Writer Does The Same As The Child At Play; He Creates A World Of Fantasy Which He Takes Very Seriously.

Love Can Not Be Much Younger Than The Lust For Murder.

The Price We Pay For Our Advance In Civilization Is A Loss Of Happiness Through The Heightening Of The Sense Of Guilt.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

I Have Found Little 'good' About Human Beings. In My Experience, Most Of Them Are Trash.

Not To Know The Past Is To Be In Bondage To It, While To Remember, To Know, Is To Be Set Free.

America Is A Mistake, A Giant Mistake.

Religion Is The Process Of Unconscious Wish Fulfillment, Where, For Certain People, If The Process Did Not Take Place It Would Put Them In Self-danger Of Coming To Mental Harm, Being Unable To Cope With The Idea Of A Godless, Purposeless Life.

The Division Of The Psychical Into What Is Conscious And What Is Unconscious Is The Fundamental Premise Of Psycho-analysis; And It Alone Makes It Possible For Psycho-analysis To Understand The Pathological Processes In Mental Life, Which Are As Common As They Are Important, And To Find A Place For Them In The Framework Of Science.

The Genitals Themselves Have Not Undergone The Development Of The Rest Of The Human Form In The Direction Of Beauty.

The Most Complicated Achievements Of Thought Are Possible Without The Assistance Of Consciousness.

When We Attempt To Imagine Death, We Perceive Ourselves As Spectators.

So In Every Individual The Two Trends, One Towards Personal Happiness And The Other Unity With The Rest Of Humanity, Must Contend With Each Other.

Two Hallmarks Of A Healthy Life Are The Abilities To Love And To Work. Each Requires Imagination.

Pathology Has Made Us Acquainted With A Great Number Of States In Which The Boundary Lines Between The Ego And The External World Become Uncertain Or In Which They Are Actually Drawn Incorrectly. There Are Cases In Which Parts Of A Person's Own Body, Even Portions Of His Own Mental Life - His Perceptions, Thoughts And Feelings -, Appear Alien To Him And As Not Belonging To His Ego; There Are Other Cases In Which He Ascribes To The External World Things That Clearly Originate In His Own Ego And That Ought To Be Acknowledged By It.

I Am Not Aware, However, That Patients Suffering From Traumatic Neurosis Are Much Occupied In Their Waking Lives With Memories Of Their Accident. Perhaps They Are More Concerned With Not Thinking Of It.

I Consider It A Good Rule For Letter-writing To Leave Unmentioned What The Recipient Already Knows, And Instead Tell Him Something New.

A Layman Will No Doubt Find It Hard To Understand How Pathological Disorders Of The Body And Mind Can Be Eliminated By 'mere' Words. He Will Feel That He Is Being Asked To Believe In Magic. And He Will Not Be So Very Wrong, For The Words Which We Use In Our Everyday Speech Are Nothing Other Than Watered-down Magic. But We Shall Have To Follow A Roundabout Path In Order To Explain How Science Sets About Restoring To Words A Part At Least Of Their Former Magical Power.

Neurotics Complain Of Their Illness, But They Make The Most Of It, And When It Comes To Taking It Away From Them They Will Defend It Like A Lioness Her Young.

I Like To Avoid Concessions To Faint-heartedness. One Can Never Tell Where That Road May Lead One; One Gives Way First In Words, And Then Little By Little In Substance Too.

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

Demons Do Not Exist Any More Than Gods Do, Being Only The Products Of The Psychic Activity Of Man.

Woe To You, My Princess, When I Come. I Will Kiss You Quite Red And Feed You Till You Are Plump. And If You Are Froward, You Shall See Who Is The Stronger, A Gentle Little Girl Who Doesn't Eat Enough, Or A Big Wild Man Who Has Cocaine In His Body. -- A Love Letter From Freud To His Fiancée.

My Psychoanalysis Has Equipped You With The Equivalent Of A Train Ticket To Recovery. It Is Now Your Decision Whether Or Not You Choose To Make Full Use Of It.

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

[the Child] Takes His Play Very Seriously And He Expends Large Amounts Of Emotion On It. The Opposite Of Play Is Not What Is Serious But What Is Real.

Against The Suffering Which May Come Upon One From Human Relationships The Readiest Safeguard Is Voluntary Isolation, Keeping Oneself Aloof From Other People. The Happiness Which Can Be Achieved Along This Path Is, As We See, The Happiness Of Quietness. Against The Dreaded External World One Can Only Defend Oneself By Some Kind Of Turning Away From It, If One Intends To Solve The Task By Oneself.

I Do Not Think Our Successes Can Compete With Those Of Lourdes. There Are So Many More People Who Believe In The Miracles Of The Blessed Virgin Than In The Existence Of The Unconscious.

It Is Unavoidable That If We Learn More About A Great Man's Life, We Shall Also Hear Of Occasions On Which He Has Done No Better Than We, And Has In Fact Come Nearer To Us As A Human Being.

In This Way The Ego Detaches Itself From The External World. It Is More Correct To Say: Originally The Ego Includes Everything, Later It Detaches From Itself The External World. The Ego-feeling We Are Aware Of Now Is Thus Only A Shrunken Vestige Of A Far More Extensive Feeling - A Feeling Which Embraced The Universe And Expressed An Inseparable Connection Of The Ego With The External World.

The Liberty Of The Individual Is No Gift Of Civilization. It Was Greatest Before There Was Any Civilization.

There Is Scarcely Room For Doubt That Something In The Psychological Relation Of A Mother-in-law To A Son-in-law Breeds Hostility Between Them And Makes It Hard For Them To Live Together. But The Fact That In Civilized Societies Mothers-in-law Are Such A Favourite Subject For Jokes Seems To Me To Suggest That The Emotional Relation Involved Includes Sharply Contrasted Components. I Believe, That Is, That This Relation Is In Fact An 'ambivalent' One, Composed Of Conflicting Affectionate And Hostile Impulses.

Flowers Are Restful To Look At. They Have Neither Emotions Nor Conflicts.

Inspirational Life

In Almost Every Place Where We Find Totems We Also Find A Law Against Persons Of The Same Totem Having Sexual Relations With One Another And Consequently Against Their Marrying. This, Then, Is 'exogamy', An Institution Related To Totemism.

Religious Doctrines … Are All Illusions, They Do Not Admit Of Proof, And No One Can Be Compelled To Consider Them As True Or To Believe In Them.

Religion Belonged To The Infancy Of Humanity. Now That Humanity Had Come Of Age, It Should Be Left Behind.

Men Are Not Gentle, Friendly Creatures Wishing For Love, Who Simply Defend Themselves If They Are Attacked, But ... A Powerful Measure Of Desire For Aggression Had To Be Reckoned As Part Of Their Instinctual Endowment.

Immorality, No Less Than Morality, Has At All Times Found Support In Religion.

Philosophers Stretch The Meaning Of Words Until They Retain Scarcely Anything Of Their Original Sense. They Give The Name Of "god" To Some Vague Abstraction Which They Have Created For Themselves; Having Done So They Can Pose Before All The World As Deists, As Believers Of God, And They Can Even Boast That They Have Recognized A Higher, Purer Concept Of God, Notwithstanding That Their God Is Not Nothing More Than An Insubstantial Shadow And No Longer The Mighty Personality Of Religious Doctrines.

It Is A Great Injustice To Persecute Homosexuality As A Crime, And Cruelty Too

Whatever Fosters The Growth Of Civilization Works At The Same Time Against War.

He Does Not Believe That Does Not Live According To His Belief.

An Unrestricted Satisfaction Of Every Need Presents Itself As The Most Enticing Method Of Conducting One's Life, But It Means Putting Enjoyment Before Caution, And Soon Brings Its Own Punishment.

The Paranoid Is Never Entirely Mistaken.

One Feels Inclined To Say That The Intention That Man Should Be 'happy' Is Not Included In The Plan Of Creation.' . . . We Are So Made That We Can Derive Intense Enjoyment Only From A Contrast And Very Little From A State Of Things.

When It Happens That A Person Has To Give Up A Sexual Object, There Quite Often Ensues An Alteration Of His Ego Which Can Only Be Described As A Setting Up Of The Object Inside The Ego, As It Occurs In Melancholia; The Exact Nature Of This Substitution Is As Yet Unknown To Us.

A Man Who Has Been The Indisputable Favorite Of His Mother Keeps For Life The Feeling Of A Conqueror.

We Are Never So Defensless Against Suffering As When We Love.

Civilized Society Is Perpetually Menaced With Disintegration Through This Primary Hostility Of Men Towards One Another.

A Strong Experience In The Present Awakens In The Creative Writer A Memory Of An Earlier Experience (usually Belonging To His Childhood) From Which There Now Proceeds A Wish Which Finds Its Fulfilment In The Creative Work.

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

No, Our Science Is No Illusion. But An Illusion It Would Be To Suppose That What Science Cannot Give Us We Can Get Elsewhere.

Trending Author

Carlos Castaneda

John Galsworthy

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Category