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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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I Do Not Think

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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There Is No Doubt That The Resistance Of The Conscious And Unconscious Ego Operates Under The Sway Of The Pleasure Principle: It Seeks To Avoid The Unpleasure Which Would Be Produced By The Liberation Of The Repressed.

A Piece Of Creative Writing, Like A Day-dream, Is A Continuation Of, And A Substitute For, What Was Once The Play Of Childhood.

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.

One Is Very Crazy When In Love.

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 The Categories Which We Employ To Describe Conscious Mental Acts, Such As Ideas, Purposes, Resolutions, And So On, Can Be Applied Tothese Latent States.

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.

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 Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

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?

The Psychoanalysis Of Neurotics Has Taught Us To Recognize The Intimate Connection Between Wetting The Bed And The Character Trait Of Ambition.

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.

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

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

Opposition Is Not Necessarily Enmity.

Everywhere I Go I Find That A Poet Has Been There Before Me.

Poetry By Famous Poets

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

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

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

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

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.

He That Has Eyes To See And Ears To Hear May Convince Himself That No Mortal Can Keep A Secret. If His Lips Are Silent, He Chatters With His Fingertips; Betrayal Oozes Out Of Him At Every Pore.

Keeping Secrets

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.

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.

All Elongated Objects, Such As Sticks, Tree-trunks And Umbrellas(the Opening Of These Last Being Comparable To An Erection) May Stand For The Male Organ...boxes, Cases, Chests, Cupboards, And Ovens Represent The Uterus...rooms In Dreams Are Usually Women...many Landscapes In Dreams, Especially Any Containing Breidges Or Wooded Hills, May Clearly Be Recognized As Descriptions Of The Genitals.

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.

Incidentally, Why Was It That None Of All The Pious Ever Discovered Psycho-analysis? Why Did It Have To Wait For A Completely Godless Jew?

The Moment A Man Questions The Meaning And Value Of Life, He Is Sick, Since Objectively Neither Has Any Existence; By Asking This Question One Is Merely Admitting To A Store Of Unsatisfied Libido To Which Something Else Must Have Happened, A Kind Of Fermentation Leading To Sadness And Depression.

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.

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.

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.

In Human Beings Pure Masculinity Or Femininity Is Not To Be Found Either In A Psychological Or Biological Sense.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Characteristics

Analysis Does Not Set Out To Make Pathological Reactions Impossible, But To Give The Patient's Ego Freedom To Decide One Way Or Another.

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.

Like The Physical, The Psychical Is Not Necessarily In Reality What It Appears To Us To Be.

Physical Attraction

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.

Neurosis Is The Result Of A Conflict Between The Ego And Its Id, Whereas Psychosis Is The Analogous Outcome Of A Similar Disturbance In The Relation Between The Ego And The External World.

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.

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.

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

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

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

Love And Work, Work And Love...that's All There Is.

Humor Is A Means Of Obtaining Pleasure In Spite Of The Distressing Effects That Interface With It.

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

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

It Could Be Ventured To Understand Obsessive Compulsive Neurosis As The Pathological Counterpart Of Religious Development, To Define Neurosis As An Individual Religiosity; To Define Religion As A Universal Obsessive Compulsive Neurosis.

Obsessive Compulsive

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

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

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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

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.

It Is No Wonder If, Under The Pressure Of These Possibilities Of Suffering, Men Are Accustomed To Moderate Their Claims To Happiness - Just As The Pleasure Principle Itself, Indeed, Under The Influence Of The External World, Changed Into The More Modest Reality Principle -, If A Man Thinks Himself Happy Merely To Have Escaped Unhappiness Or To Have Survived His Suffering, And If In General The Task Of Avoiding Suffering Pushes That Of Obtaining Pleasure Into The Background.

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

Concerning The Factors Of Silence, Solitude And Darkness, We Can Only Say That They Are Actually Elements In The Production Of The Infantile Anxiety From Which The Majority Of Human Beings Have Never Become Quite Free.

Human Life In Common Is Only Made Possible When A Majority Comes Together Which Is Stronger Than Any Separate Individual And Which Remains United Against All Separate Individuals. The Power Of This Community Is Then Set Up As Right In Opposition To The Power Of The Individual, Which Is Condemned As Brute Force.

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.

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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 Regard Myself As One Of The Most Dangerous Enemies Of Religion

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It Almost Looks Like Analysis Were The Third Of Those 'impossible' Professions In Which One Can Be Quite Sure Of Unsatisfying Results. The Other Two, Much Older-established, Are The Bringing Up Of Children And The Government Of Nations.

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.

Indeed, The Great Leonardo (da Vinci) Remained Like A Child For The Whole Of His Life In More Than One Way. It Is Said That All Great Men Are Bound To Retain Some Infantile Part. Even As An Adult He Continued To Play, And This Was Another Reason Why He Often Appeared Uncanny And Incomprehensible To His Contemporaries.

I Had The Greatest Respect For The Authorities Of My Day--until I Studied Things For Myself, And Came To My Own Conclusions.

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

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

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

The Goal Towards Which The Pleasure Principle Impels Us - Of Becoming Happy - Is Not Attainable: Yet We May Not - Nay, Cannot - Give Up The Efforts To Come Nearer To Realization Of It By Some Means Or Other.

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

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. . . .

Yes, America Is Gigantic, But A Gigantic Mistake.

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.

Religion (is) A Universal Obsessional Neurosis.

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.

It Is Not Attention That The Child Is Seeking, But Love.

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

Let Us Consider The Polarity Of Love And Hate.... Now, Clinical Observation Shows Not Only That Love Is With Unexpected Regularityaccompanied By Hate (ambivalence), And Not Only That In Human Relationships Hate Is Frequently A Forerunner Of Love, But Also That In Many Circumstances Hate Changes Into Love And Love Into Hate.

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.

One... Gets An Impression That Civilization Is Something Which Was Imposed On A Resisting Majority By A Minority Which Understood How To Obtain Possession Of The Means To Power And Coercion. It Is, Of Course, Natural To Assume That These Difficulties Are Not Inherent In The Nature Of Civilization Itself But Are Determined By The Imperfections Of The Cultural Forms Which Have So Far Been Developed.

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

There Are No Mistakes.

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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

...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.

When Making A Decision Of Minor Importance, I Have Always Found It Advantageous To Consider All The Pros And Cons.

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

Words Have A Magical Power. They Can Either Bring The Greatest Happiness Or The Deepest Despair.

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

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.

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.

The Pleasure Of Satisfying A Savage Instinct, Undomesticated By The Ego, Is Uncomparably Much More Intense Than The One Of Satisfying A Tamed Instinct. The Reason Is Becoming The Enemy That Prevents Us From A Lot Of Possibilities Of Pleasure.

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.

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.

A Collection To Which Nothing Can Be Added And From Which Nothing Can Be Removed Is, In Fact, Dead!

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

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

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

The Adoption Of The Required Attitude Of Mind Towards Ideas That Seem To Emerge "of Their Own Free Will" And The Abandonment Of The Critical Function That Is Normally In Operation Against Them Seem To Be Hard Of Achievement For Some People. The "involuntary Thoughts" Are Liable To Release A Most Violent Resistance, Which Seeks To Prevent Their Emergence. If We May Trust That Great Poet And Philosopher Friedrich Schiller, However, Poetic Creation Must Demand An Exactly Similar Attitude.

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

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.

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

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

I No Longer Believe That William Shakespeare The Actor From Stratford Was The Author Of The Works That Have Been Ascribed To Him.

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

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

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

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.

Long Ago Man Formed An Ideal Conception Of Omnipotence And Omniscience Which He Embodied In His Gods. Whatever Seemed Unattainable To His Desires - Or Forbidden To Him - He Attributed To These Gods... Now He Has Himself Approached Very Near To Realizing This Ideal, He Has Nearly Become A God Himself.

It Sounds Not Only Disagreeable But Also Paradoxical, Yet It Must Nevertheless Be Said That Anyone Who Is To Be Really Free And Happy In Love Must Have Surmounted His Respect For Women And Have Come To Terms With The Idea Of Incest With His Mother Or Sister.

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.

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

My Way Of Working Was Different Years Ago. I Used To Wait Until An Idea Came To Me. Now I Go Half-way To Meet It, Though I Don't Know Whether I Find It Any The Quicker.

The Motive Forces Of Phantasies Are Unsatisfied Wishes, And Every Single Phantasy Is The Fulfillment Of A Wish, A Correction Of Unsatisfying Reality.

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.

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

Experience Teaches That For Most People There Is A Limit Beyond Which Their Constitution Cannot Comply With The Demands Of Civilization. All Who Wish To Reach A Higher Standard Than Their Constitution Will Allow, Fall Victims To Neurosis. It Would Have Been Better For Them If They Could Have Remained Less "perfect".

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

Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

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

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.

It Often Seems That The Poet's Derisive Comment Is Not Unjustified When He Says Of The Philosopher: “with His Nightcaps And The Tatters Of His Dressing-gown He Patches The Gaps In The Structure Of The Universe.

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

The Madman Is A Dreamer Awake

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

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

Obsessional Prohibitions Are Extremely Liable To Displacement. They Extend From One Object To Another Along Whatever Paths The Context May Provide, And This New Object Then Becomes, To Use The Apt Expression Of One Of My Women Patients, 'impossible' - Till At Last The Whole World Lies Under An Embargo Of 'impossibility'.

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.

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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

Religion Restricts The Play Of Choice And Adaptation, Since It Imposes Equally On Everyone Its Own Path To The Acquisition Of Happiness And Protection From Suffering. Its Technique Consists In Depressing The Value Of Life And Distorting The Picture Of The Real World In A Delusional Manner - Which Presupposes An Intimidation Of The Intelligence. At This Price, By Forcibly Fixing Them In A State Of Psychical Infantilism And By Drawing Them Into A Mass-delusion, Religion Succeeds In Sparing Many People An Individual Neurosis. But Hardly Anything More.

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

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.

I've Been A Fortunate Man In Life, Nothing Has Come Easily.

Inspirational Life

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.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

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.

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

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?'

The Reproaches Against Science For Not Having Yet Solved The Problems Of The Universe Are Exaggerated In An Unjust And Malicious Manner; It Has Truly Not Had Time Enough Yet For These Great Achievements. Science Is Very Young--a Human Activity Which Developed Late.

To Be Sure, The Ancient Belief That The Dream Reveals The Future Is Not Entirely Devoid Of Truth. By Representing To Us A Wish As Fulfilled The Dream Certainly Leads Us Into The Future; But This Future, Taken By The Dreamer As Present, Has Been Formed Into The Likeness Of That Past By The Indestructible Wish.

We Should Picture The Instrument That Carries Our Mental Functioning As Resembling A Compound Microscope Or Photographic Apparatus.

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.

But The Repressed Merges Into The Id As Well, And Is Merely A Part Of It. The Repressed Is Only Cut Off Sharply From The Ego By The Resistances Of Repression; It Can Communicate With The Ego Through The Id.

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

[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.

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.

The Sexual Life Of Adult Women Is A "dark Continent" For Psychology.

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

It Is A Mistake To Believe That Science Consists In Nothing But Conclusively Proved Propositions, And It Is Unjust To Demand That It Should. It Is A Demand Made By Those Who Feel A Craving For Authority In Some Form To Replace The Religious Catechism By Something Else, Even A Scientific One.

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

To Endure Life Remains, When All Is Said, The First Duty Of All Living Being Illusion Can Have No Value If It Makes This More Difficult For Us.

"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"

In The Depths Of My Heart I Can’t Help Being Convinced That My Dear Fellow-men, With A Few Exceptions, Are Worthless.

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.

Where They Love They Do Not Desire And Where They Desire They Do Not Love.

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

A Love That Does Not Discriminate Seems To Me To Forfeit A Part Of Its Own Value, By Doing An Injustice To Its Object; And Secondly, Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

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

I Was Making Frequent Use Of Cocaine At That Time ... I Had Been The First To Recommend The Use Of Cocaine, In 1885, And This Recommendation Had Brought Serious Reproaches Down On Me.

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

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.

Beauty Has No Obvious Use; Nor Is There Any Clear Cultural Necessity For It. Yet Civilization Could Not Do Without It.

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.

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

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.

Just As A Cautious Businessman Avoids Investing All His Capital In One Concern, So Wisdom Would Probably Admonish Us Also Not To Anticipate All Our Happiness From One Quarter Alone.

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

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

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

But One Thing About Human Beings Puzzles Me The Most Is Their Conscious Effort To Be Connected With The Object Of Their Affection Even If It Kills Them Slowly Within.

We Believe That Civilization Has Been Created Under The Pressure Of The Exigencies Of Life At The Cost Of Satisfaction Of The Instincts.

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.

The Paranoid Is Never Entirely Mistaken.

Do You Not Know How Uncontrolled And Unreliable The Average Human Being Is In All That Concerns Sexual Life?

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

No Neurotic Harbors Thoughts Of Suicide Which Are Not Murderous Impulses Against Others Redirected Upon Himself.

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

Where Id Was, There Ego Shall Be.

The Liberty Of The Individual Is No Gift Of Civilization. It Was Greatest Before There Was Any Civilization, Though Then, It Is True, It Had For The Most Part No Value, Since The Individual Was Scarcely In A Position To Defend It. The Development Of Civilization Imposes Restrictions On It, And Justice Demands That No One Shall Escape Those Restrictions.

Crystals Reveal Their Hidden Structures Only When Broken.

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

In The Long Run, Nothing Can Withstand Reason And Experience, And The Contradiction Religion Offers To Both Is Palpable.

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

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.".

Just As No One Can Be Forced Into Belief, So No One Can Be Forced Into Unbelief.

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Charles Bradlaugh

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