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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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Homosexuality Is Assuredly No

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

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 An Infamously Low Capacity For Visualizing Relationships, Which Made The Study Of Geometry And All Subjects Derived From It Impossible For Me.

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

The Poor Ego Has A Still Harder Time Of It; It Has To Serve Three Harsh Masters, And It Has To Do Its Best To Reconcile The Claims And Demands Of All Three...the Three Tyrants Are The External World, The Superego, And The Id.

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.

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

Life, As We Find It, Is Too Hard For Us; It Brings Us Too Many Pains, Disappointments And Impossible Tasks. In Order To Bear It We Cannot Dispense With Palliative Measures... There Are Perhaps Three Such Measures: Powerful Deflections, Which Cause Us To Make Light Of Our Misery; Substitutive Satisfactions, Which Diminish It; And Intoxicating Substances, Which Make Us Insensible To It.

The First Human Who Hurled An Insult Instead Of A Stone Was The Founder Of Civilization.

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.

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.

Conservatism, However, Is Too Often A Welcome Excuse For Lazy Minds, Loath To Adapt Themselves To Fast Changing Conditions.

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.

America Is A Mistake, Admittedly A Gigantic Mistake, But A Mistake Nevertheless.

The Functional Importance Of The Ego Is Manifested In The Fact That Normally Control Over The Approaches To Motility Devolves Upon It. Thus In Its Relation To The Id It Is Like A Man On Horse Back, Who Has To Hold In Check The Superior Strength Of The Horse; With This Difference, That The Rider Tries To Do So With His Own Strength While The Ego Uses Borrowed Forces.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother.

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.

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.

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

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

Intelligence Will Be Used In The Service Of The Neurosis.

I Had Thought About Cocaine In A Kind Of Day-dream.

Man Has, As It Were, Become A Kind Of Prosthetic God.

We Are So Constituted That We Can Gain Intense Pleasure Only From The Contrast, And Only Very Little From The Condition Itself.

It Would Be Very Nice If There Were A God Who Created The World And Was A Benevolent Providence, And If There Were A Moral Order In The Universe And An After-life; But It Is A Very Striking Fact That All This Is Exactly As We Are Bound To Wish It To Be.

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.

The Poets And Philosophers Before Me Discovered The Unconscious; What I Discovered Was The Scientific Method By Which The Unconscious Can Be Studied.

Scientific Method

In The Last Analysis The Entire Field Of Psychology May Reduce To Biological Electrochemistry.

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

Nature Delights In Making Use Of The Same Forms In The Most Various Biological Connections: As It Does, For Instance, In The Appearance Of Branch-like Structures Both In Coral And In Plants, And Indeed In Some Forms Of Crystal And In Certain Chemical Precipitates.

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Some Place In My Soul, In A Very Hidden Corner, I Am A Fanatical Jew. I Am Very Much Astonished To Discover Myself As Such In Spite Of All Efforts To Be Unprejudiced And Impartial. What Can I Do Against It At My Age?

We Are What We Are Because We Have Been What We Have Been.

The Primitive Stages Can Always Be Re-established; The Primitive Mind Is, In The Fullest Meaning Of The Word, Imperishable.

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

Instinct Of Love Toward An Object Demands A Mastery To Obtain It, And If A Person Feels They Can't Control The Object Or Feel Threatened By It, They Act Negatively Toward It.

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

Much Of Our Highly Valued Cultural Heritage Has Been Acquired At The Cost Of Sexuality.

The Psychic Development Of The Individual Is A Short Repetition Of The Course Of Development Of The Race.

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

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

Our Unconscious, Then, Does Not Believe In Its Own Death; It Behaves As If It Were Immortal. It Knows Nothing That Is Negative; In It Contradictories Coincide. This May Be The Secret Of Heroism.

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.

Taboo Restrictions Are Distinct From Religious Or Moral Prohibitions. They Are Not Based Upon Any Divine Ordinance, But May Be Said To Impose Themselves On Their Own Account. They Differ From Moral Prohibitions In That They Fall Into No System That Declares Quite Generally That Certain Abstinences Must Be Observed And Gives Reasons For That Necessity.

Analogies, It Is True, Decide Nothing, But They Can Make One Feel More At Home.

Children Are Completely Egoistic; They Feel Their Needs Intensely And Strive Ruthlessly To Satisfy Them.

The Transformation Of Object-libido Into Narcissistic Libido Which Thus Takes Place Obviously Implies An Abandonment Of Sexual Aims, A Desexualization - A Kind Of Sublimation, Therefore.

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 Think That In General It Is A Good Plan Occasionally To Bear In Mind The Fact That People Were In The Habit Of Dreaming Before There Was Such A Thing As Psychoanalysis.

Unexpressed Emotions Will Never Die. They Are Buried Alive And Will Come Forth Later In Uglier Ways.

We May Say That Hysteria Is A Caricature Of An Artistic Creation, A Compulsion Neurosis A Caricature Of A Religion, And A Paranoiac Delusion A Caricature Of A Philosophic System.

Artistic Creation

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.

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

[the Child Receives Impressions Like] A Photographic Exposure That Can Be Developed After Any Interval Of Time And Transformed Into A Picture.

Might We Not Say That Every Child At Play Behaves Like A Creative Writer, In That He Creates A World Of His Own, Or, Rather, Rearranges The Things Of His World In A New Way Which Pleases Him?

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

Collective Unconscious

The Whole Life Of Instinct Serves The One End Of Bringing About Death.

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

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

I No Longer Count As One Of My Merits That I Always Tell The Truth As Much As Possible; It Has Become My Metier.

Telling The Truth

You Can Always Make A Lot Of People Love One Another So Long As There Are A Smaller Number Outside The Group For Them To Kick.

Dreams Are Constructed From The Residue Of Yesterday.

The View Is Often Defended That Sciences Should Be Built Up On Clear And Sharply Defined Basal Concepts. In Actual Fact No Science, Not Even The Most Exact, Begins With Such Definitions. The True Beginning Of Scientific Activity Consists Rather In Describing Phenomena And Then In Proceeding To Group, Classify And Correlate Them.

Religion Originates In The Child's And Young Mankind's Fears And Need For Help. It Cannot Be Otherwise.

The Expectation That Every Neurotic Phenomenon Can Be Cured May, I Suspect, Be Derived From The Layman's Belief That The Neuroses Are Something Quite Unnecessary Which Have No Right Whatever To Exist. Whereas In Fact They Are Severe, Constitutionally Fixed Illnesses, Which Rarely Restrict Themselves To Only A Few Attacks But Persist As A Rule Over Long Periods Throughout Life.

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.

There Is No Likelihood Of Our Being Able To Suppress Humanity's Aggressive Tendencies... Complete Suppression Of Man's Aggressive Tendencies Is Not An Issue; What We May Try Is To Direct It Into A Channel Other Than That Of Warfare.

It Is Impossible To Escape The Impression That People Commonly Use False Standards Of Measurement -- That They Seek Power, Success And Wealth For Themselves And Admire Them In Others, And That They Underestimate What Is Of True Value In Life.

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

America Is The Most Grandiose Experiment The World Has Seen, But, I Am Afraid, It Is Not Going To Be A Success.

In The Important Decisions Of Personal Life, We Should Be Governed By The Deep Inner Needs Of Our Nature.

The First Requisite Of Civilization, Therefore, Is That Of Justice — That Is, The Assurance That A Law Once Made Will Not Be Broken In Favour Of An Individual. This Implies Nothing As To The Ethical Value Of Such A Law.

At First The Analysing Physician Could Do No More Than Discover The Unconscious Material That Was Concealed From The Patient, Put It Together, And, At The Right Moment, Communicate It To Him. Psychoanalysis Was Then First And Foremost An Art Of Interpreting. Since This Did Not Solve The Therapeutic Problem, A Further Aim Quickly Came In View: To Oblige The Patient To Confirm The Analyst's Construction From His Own Memory.

It Is Not So Much That Man Is A Herd Animal, But That He Is A Horde Animal Led By A Chief.

If Youth Knew; If Age Could.

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

Innately, Children Seem To Have Little True Realistic Anxiety. They Will Run Along The Brink Of Water, Climb On The Window Sill, Play With Sharp Objects And With Fire, In Short, Do Everything That Is Bound To Damage Them And To Worry Those In Charge Of Them, That Is Wholly The Result Of Education; For They Cannot Be Allowed To Make The Instructive Experiences Themselves.

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.

An Overwhelming Majority Of Symbols In Dreams Are Sexual Symbols.

Perception Is Less Of A Recording System And More Of A Protection System Against External Stimuli.

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 Paranoid Is Never Entirely Mistaken.

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

The Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

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.

Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis.

Only A Good-for-nothing Is Not Interested In His Past.

The Effect Of The Consolations Of Religion May Be Compared To That Of A Narcotic.

Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

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.

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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.

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.

The Ego Refuses To Be Distressed By The Provocations Of Reality, To Let Itself Be Compelled To Suffer. It Insists That It Cannot Be Affected By The Traumas Of The External World; It Shows, In Fact, That Such Traumas Are No More Than Occasions For It To Gain Pleasure.

The Intention That Man Should Be Happy Is Not In The Plan Of Creation.

The Individual Does Actually Carry On A Double Existence: One Designed To Serve His Own Purposes And Another As A Link In A Chain, In Which He Serves Against, Or At Any Rate Without, Any Volition Of His Own.

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.

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.

I Have Often Felt As Though I Had Inherited All The Defiance And All The Passions With Which Our Ancestors Defended Their Temple And Could Gladly Sacrifice My Life For One Great Moment In History. And At The Same Time I Always Felt So Helpless And Incapable Of Expressing These Ardent Passions Even By A Word Or A Poem.

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

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

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

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.

Towards The Outside, At Any Rate, The Ego Seems To Maintain Clear And Sharp Lines Of Demarcation. There Is Only One State -- Admittedly An Unusual State, But Not One That Can Be Stigmatized As Pathological -- In Which It Does Not Do This. At The Height Of Being In Love The Boundary Between Ego And Object Threatens To Melt Away. Against All The Evidence Of His Senses, A Man Who Is In Love Declares That "i" And "you" Are One, And Is Prepared To Behave As If It Were A Fact.

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.

Civilization Runs A Greater Risk If We Maintain Our Present Attitude To Religion Than If We Give It Up.

Religious Ideas Have Sprung From The Same Need As All The Other Achievements Of Culture: From The Necessity For Defending Itself Against The Crushing Supremacy Of Nature.

If All The Evidence Put Forward For The Authenticity Of Religious Teachings Originates In The Past, It Is Natural To Look Round And See Whether The Present, About Which It Is Easier To Form Judgements, May Not Also Be Able To Furnish Evidence Of The Sort. If By This Means We Could Succeed In Clearing Even A Single Portion Of The Religious System From Doubt, The Whole Of It Would Gain Enormously In Credibility.

...perhaps The Hopes I Have Confessed To Are Of An Illusory Nature, Too. But I Hold Fast To One Distinction. Apart From The Fact That No Penalty Is Imposed For Not Sharing Them, My Illusions Are Not, Like Religious Ones, Incapable Of Correction.

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

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

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

The Voice Of The Intellect Is A Soft One, But It Does Not Rest Until It Has Gained A Hearing.

I Cannot Think Of Any Need In Childhood As Strong As The Need For A Father's Protection.

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

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

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

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

Knowledge Is The Intellectual Manipulation Of Carefully Verified Observations.

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.

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.

When A Man Is Freed Of Religion, He Has A Better Chance To Live A Normal And Wholesome Life.

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

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.

Sexuality Is The Key To The Problem Of The Psychoneuroses And Of The Neuroses In General. No One Who Disdains The Key Will Ever Be Able To Unlock The Door.

We Know That The Great Majority Of People Have A Strong Need For Authority Which It Can Admire, To Which It Can Submit, And Which Dominates And Sometimes Even Ill-treats It.

The Meager Satisfaction That Man Can Extract From Reality Leaves Him Starving.

After All, We Did Not Invent Symbolism; It Is A Universal Age-old Activity Of The Human Imagination.

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

The World Is No Nursery.

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.

Dreams Are Often Most Profound When They Seem The Most Crazy.

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

The Behavior Of A Human Being In Sexual Matters Is Often A Prototype For The Whole Of His Other Modes Of Reaction In Life.

The Ego Represents What We Call Reason And Sanity, In Contrast To The Id Which Contains The Passions.

The Idea Of Life Having A Purpose Stands And Falls With The Religious System.

In The Small Matters Trust The Mind, In The Large Ones The Heart.

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

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

Our Fascination With Gold Is Related To The Fantasies Of Early Childhood.

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

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 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.

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

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.

The Great Question That Has Never Been Answered, And Which I Have Not Yet Been Able To Answer, Despite My Thirty Years Of Research Into The Feminine Soul, Is 'what Does A Woman Want?'

A Transference Neurosis Corresponds To A Conflict Between Ego And Id, A Narcissistic Neurosis Corresponds To That Between Between Ego And Super-ego, And A Psychosis To That Between Ego And Outer World.

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.".

We Know Less About The Sexual Life Of Little Girls Than Of Boys. But We Need Not Feel Ashamed Of This Distinction; After All, The Sexual Life Of Adult Women Is A 'dark Continent' For Psychology.

My Boy! Smoking Is One Of The Greatest And Cheapest Enjoyments In Life, And If You Decide In Advance Not To Smoke, I Can Only Feel Sorry For You.

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

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

What Psycho-analysis Reveals In The Transference Phenomena Of Neurotics Can Also Be Observed In The Lives Of Some Normal People. The Impression They Give Is Of Being Pursued By A Malignant Fate Or Possessed By Some 'daemonic' Power; But Psycho-analysis Has Always Taken The View That Their Fate Is For The Most Part Arranged By Themselves And Determined By Early Infantile Influences.

A Civilization Which Leaves So Large A Number Of Its Participants Unsatisfied And Drives Them Into Revolt Neither Has Nor Deserves The Prospect Of A Lasting Existence.

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.

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 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.

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 Gods Retain Their Threefold Task: They Must Exorcize The Terrors Of Nature, They Must Reconcile Men To The Cruelty Of Fate, Particularly As It Is Shown In Death, And They Must Compensate Them For The Sufferings And Privations Which A Civilized Life In Common Has Imposed On Them.

Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us O'er The World's Tempestuous Sea; Guard Us, Guide Us, Keep Us, Feed Us, For We Have No Help But Thee.

A Religion, Even If It Calls Itself A Religion Of Love, Must Be Hard And Unloving To Those Who Do Not Belong To It.

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.

Religion (is) A Universal Obsessional Neurosis.

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

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

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

The Time Comes When Each Of Us Has To Give Up As Illusions The Expectations Which, In His Youth, He Pinned Upon His Fellow-men, And When He May Learn How Much Difficulty And Pain Has Been Added To His Life By Their Ill-will.

One Must Not Be Mean With Affections; What Is Spent Of The Funds Is Renewed In The Spending Itself. Left Untouched For Too Long, They Diminish Imperceptibly Or The Lock Gets Rusty; They Are There All Right But One Cannot Make Use Of Them.

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

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.

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

I Have Found Little That Is 'good' About Human Beings On The Whole. In My Experience Most Of Them Are Trash, No Matter Whether They Publicly Subscribe To This Or That Ethical Doctrine Or To None At All. That Is Something That You Cannot Say Aloud, Or Perhaps Even Think.

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

Civilization Has Little To Fear From Educated People And Brain-workers. In Them The Replacement Of Religious Motives For Civilized Behaviors By Other, Secular Motives, Would Proceed Unobtrusively. . . .

Men Have Gained Control Over The Forces Of Nature To Such An Extent That With Their Help They Would Have No Difficulty Exterminating One Another To The Last Man. They Know This, And Hence Comes A Large Part Of Their Current Unrest, Their Unhappiness And Their Mood Of Anxiety.

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.

What Is Characteristic Of Illusions Is That They Are Derived From Human Wishes.

Characteristics

That Which We Can't Remember, We Will Repeat.

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.

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.

Thus We Arrive At The Singular Conclusion That Of All The Information Passed By Our Cultural Assets It Is Precisely The Elements Which Might Be Of The Greatest Importance To Us And Which Have The Task Of Solving The Riddles Of The Universe And Of Reconciling Us To The Sufferings Of Life -- It Is Precisely Those Elements That Are The Least Well Authenticated Of Any.

When The Wayfarer Whistles In The Dark, He May Be Disavowing His Timidity, But He Does Not See Any The More Clearly For Doing So.

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 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.

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.

It Is Impossible To Overlook The Extent To Which Civilization Is Built Upon A Renunciation Of Instinct.

Natural Instinct

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

A Poor Girl May Have An Illusion That A Prince Will Come And Fetch Her Home. It Is Possible, Some Such Cases Have Occurred. That The Messiah Will Come And Found A Golden Age Is Much Less Probable.

Civilized People Have Exchanged Some Part Of Their Chances Of Happiness For A Measure Of Security.

The Only Shame In Masturbation Is The Shame Of Not Doing It Well.

The Sexual Wishes In Regard To The Mother Become More Intense And The Father Is Perceived As An Obstacle To The; This Gives Rise To The Oedipus Complex.

I Cannot Face With Comfort The Idea Of Life Without Work; Work And The Free Play Of The Imagination Are For Me The Same Thing, I Take No Pleasure In Anything Else.

I Became Aware Of My Destiny: To Belong To The Critical Minority As Opposed To The Unquestioning Majority.

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

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

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.

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