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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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Mans Most Disagreeable Habits

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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These [religious Ideas] Are Given Out As Teachings, Are Not Precipitates Of Experience Or End-results Of Thinking: They Are Illusions, Fullfilments Of The Oldest, Strongest And Most Urgent Wishes Of Mankind.

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

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

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

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

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]

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. . . .

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

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

We Must Not Allow Ourselves To Be Deflected By The Feminists Who Are Anxious To Force Us To Regard The Two Sexes As Completely Equal In Position And Worth.

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

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

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.

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.

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

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.

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.

Humanity Is In The Highest Degree Irrational, So That There Is No Prospect Of Influencing It By Reasonable Arguments. Against Prejudice One Can Do Nothing.

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

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

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.

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.

One Is Very Crazy When In Love.

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

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".

Writing Was In Its Origin, The Voice Of An Absent Person.

If Youth Knew; If Age Could.

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

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

Characteristics

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

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

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

I Cannot Face The Idea Of Life Without Work. What Would One Do When Ideas Failed Or Words Refused To Come? It Is Impossible Not To Shudder At The Thought.

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

The World Is No Nursery.

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

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

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

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.

A Certain Degree Of Neurosis Is Of Inestimable Value As A Drive, Especially To A Psychologist.

One Must Learn To Give Up Momentary, Uncertain And Destructive Pleasure For Delayed, Restrained, But Dependable Pleasure.

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

Only A Rebuke That 'has Something In It' Will Sting, Will Have The Power To Stir Our Feelings, Not The Other Sort, As We Know.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Christmas Is The Alcoholidays

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.

If The Truth Of Religious Doctrines Is Dependent On An Inner Experience That Bears Witness To The Truth, What Is One To Make Of The Many People Who Do Not Have That Experience?

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

Not All Men Are Worthy Of 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.

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.

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.

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 Are No Mistakes.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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

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.

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

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.

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

What We Call Happiness In The Strictest Sense Comes From The (preferably Sudden) Satisfaction Of Needs Which Have Been Dammed Up To A High Degree.

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

The Most Ancient And Important Taboo Prohibitions Are The Two Basic Laws Of Totemism: Not To Kill The Totem Animal And To Avoid Sexual Intercourse With Members Of The Totem Clan Of The Opposite Sex.

Once Again, Only Religion Can Answer The Question Of The Purpose Of Life. One Can Hardly Be Wrong In Concluding That The Idea Of Life Having A Purpose Stands And Falls With The Religious System.

Dogs Love Their Friends And Bite Their Enemies, Quite Unlike People, Who Are Incapable Of Pure Love And Always Have To Mix Love And Hate.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

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.

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

[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.

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

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

There Is A Psychological Technique Which Makes It Possible To Interpret Dreams, And ... If That Procedure Is Employed, Every Dream Reveals Itself As A Psychical Structure Which Has A Meaning And Which Can Be Inserted At An Assignable Point In The Mental Activities Of Waking Life.

Properly Speaking, The Unconscious Is The Real Psychic; Its Inner Nature Is Just As Unknown To Us As The Reality Of The External World, And It Is Just As Imperfectly Reported To Us Through The Data Of Consciousness As Is The External World Through The Indications Of Our Sensory Organs.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Conscience Is The Internal Perception Of The Rejection Of A Particular Wish Operating Within Us.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Regard Myself As One Of The Most Dangerous Enemies Of Religion

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.

Crystals Reveal Their Hidden Structures Only When Broken.

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.

No One Who, Like Me, Conjures Up The Most Evil Of Those Half-tamed Demons That Inhabit The Human Breast, And Seeks To Wrestle With Them, Can Expect To Come Through The Struggle Unscathed.

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

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.

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

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

If One Wishes To Form A True Estimate Of The Full Grandeur Of Religion, One Must Keep In Mind What It Undertakes To Do For Men. It Gives Them Information About The Source And Origin Of The Universe, It Assures Them Of Protection And Final Happiness, And It Guides - By - Precepts - Backed By The Full Force Of Its Authority.

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'.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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... 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?'

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.

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

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

History Is Just New People Making Old Mistakes.

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.

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.

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

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

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

As Everyone Knows, The Ancients Before Aristotle Did Not Consider The Dream A Product Of The Dreaming Mind, But A Divine Inspiration, And In Ancient Times The Two Antagonistic Streams, Which One Finds Throughout In The Estimates Of Dream Life, Were Already Noticeable. They Distinguished Between True And Valuable Dreams, Sent To The Dreamer To Warn Him Or To Foretell The Future, And Vain, Fraudulent, And Empty Dreams, The Object Of Which Was To Misguide Or Lead Him To Destruction.

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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.

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.

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

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

One Day, In Retrospect, The Years Of Struggle Will Strike You As The Most Beautiful.

Creativity Is An Attempt To Resolve A Conflict Generated By Unexpressed Biological Impulses, Such That Unfulfilled Desires Are The Driving Force Of The Imagination, And They Fuel Our Dreams And Daydreams.

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

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

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

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

The Idea Of Men's Receiving An Intimation Of Their Connection With The World Around Them Through An Immediate Feeling Which Is From The Outset Directed To That Purpose Sounds So Strange And Fits In So Badly With The Fabric Of Our Psychology That One Is Justified In Attempting To Discover A Psycho-analytic - That Is, A Genetic - Explanation Of Such A Feeling.

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

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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.

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?

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

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

Religious Illusion Must Bow To Scientific Truth. It Is In Total Error About The Nature Of The True World. Only Science Is Not An Illusion.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Ego Is First And Foremost A Bodily Ego; It Is Not Merely A Surface Entity, But Is Itself The Projection Of A Surface. If We Wish To Find An Anatomical Analogy For It We Can Best Identify It With The 'cortical Homunculus' Of The Anatomists, Which Stands On Its Head In The Cortex, Sticks Up Its Heels, Faces

Psychoanalysis Is In Essence A Cure Through Love.

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

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.

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

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

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 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.

The Voice Of The Intellect Is Soft One, But It Does Not Rest Until It Has Gained A Hearing. Ultimately, After Endless Rebuffs, It Succeeds. This Is One Of The Few Points In Which One May Be Optimistic About The Future Of Mankind.

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

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.".

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

Inspirational Life

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.

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

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.

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.

Men Are Strong So Long As They Represent A Strong Idea They Become Powerless When They Oppose It.

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Jon Huntsman, Jr.

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