Background Image

...

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.

-Sigmund Freud

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Functional Importance Of

Sigmund Freud

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Sigmund Freud

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

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.

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.

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

No One Who Has Seen A Baby Sinking Back Satiated From The Breast And Falling Asleep With Flushed Cheeks And A Blissful Smile Can Escape The Reflection That This Picture Persists As A Prototype Of The Expression Of Sexual Satisfaction In Later Life.

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.

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

Dreams Are Constructed From The Residue Of Yesterday.

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.

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.

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

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.

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

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

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.

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

It Is Unreasonable To Expect Science To Produce A System Of Ethics-ethics Are A Kind Of Highway Code For Traffic Among Mankind-and The Fact That In Physics Atoms Which Were Yesterday Assumed To Be Square Are Now Assumed To Be Round Is Exploited With Unjustified Tendentiousness By All Who Are Hungry For Faith; So Long As Physics Extends Our Dominion Over Nature, These Changes Ought To Be A Matter Of Complete Indifference To You.

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.

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.

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.

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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.

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

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

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

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.

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

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

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]

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.

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.

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

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

Collective Unconscious

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Impression Forces Itself Upon One That Men Measure By False Standards, That Everyone Seeks Power, Success, Riches For Himself, And Admires Others Who Attain Them, While Undervaluing The Truly Precious Thing In Life.

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

Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis.

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

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

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

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

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

The World Is No Nursery.

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.

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.

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.

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

Natural Instinct

The Doctor Should Be Opaque To His Patients And, Like A Mirror, Should Show Them Nothing But What Is Shown To Him.

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

If Children Could, If Adults Knew.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The True Believer Is In A High Degree Protected Against The Danger Of Certain Neurotic Afflictions; By Accepting The Universal Neurosis He Is Spared The Task Of Forming A Personal Neurosis.

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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

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.

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

The Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

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.

America Is A Mistake, A Giant Mistake.

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.

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

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.

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.

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

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

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

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

Christmas Is The Alcoholidays

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

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

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

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

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.

The News That Reaches Your Consciousness Is Incomplete And Often Not To Be Relied On.... Turn Your Eyes Inward, Look Into Your Own Depths, Learn First To Know Yourself!

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.

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.

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

Neither In My Private Life Nor In My Writings, Have I Ever Made A Secret Of Being An Out-and-out Unbeliever.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Scientific Method

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Yes, America Is Gigantic, But A Gigantic Mistake.

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.

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.

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 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.

The State In Which The Ideas Existed Before Being Made Conscious Is Called By Us Repression, And We Assert That The Force Which Instituted The Repression And Maintains It Is Perceived As Resistance During The Work Of Analysis.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Find A Place For What We Lose. Although We Know That After Such A Loss The Acute Stage Of Mourning Will Subside, We Also Know That We Shall Remain Inconsolable And Will Never Find A Substitute. No Matter What May Fill The Gap, Even If It Be Filled Completely, It Nevertheless Remains Something Else.

Our Possibilities Of Happiness Are Already Restricted By Our Constitution. Unhappiness Is Much Less Difficult To Experience. We Are Threatened With Suffering From Three Directions: From Our Own Body, Which Is Doomed To Decay And Dissolution And Which Cannot Even Do Without Pain And Anxiety As Warning Signals; From The External World, Which May Rage Against Us With Overwhelming And Merciless Forces Of Destruction; And Finally From Our Relations To Other Men. The Suffering Which Comes From This Last Source Is Perhaps More Painful To Us Than Any Other.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 Price Of Civilization Is Instinctual Renunciation.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

Religion Is An Attempt To Get Control Over The Sensory World, In Which We Are Placed, By Means Of The Wish-world Which We Have Developed Inside Us As A Result Of Biological And Psychological Necessites.

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

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

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

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.

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

The More The Fruits Of Knowledge Become Accessible To Men, The More Widespread Is The Decline Of Religious 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 Dream Unites The Grossest Contradictions, Permits Impossibilities, Sets Aside The Knowledge That Influences Us By Day, And Exposes Us As Ethically And Morally Obtuse.

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

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

It Would Be One Of The Greatest Triumphs Of Humanity, One Of The Most Tangible Liberations From The Constraints Of Nature To Which Mankind Is Subject, If We Could Succeed In Raising The Responsible Act Of Procreating Children To The Level Of A Deliberate And Intentional Activity And In Freeing It From Its Entanglement With The Necessary Satisfaction Of A Natural Need.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

The Essence Of Analysis Is Surprise. When People Are Themselves Surprised By What They Say, That's When They Are Really Making Some Progress.

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.

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

Were We Fully To Understand The Reasons For Other People's Behavior, It Would All Make Sense.

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.

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

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

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

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.

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

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

When A Man Has Once Brought Himself To Accept Uncritically All The Absurdities That Religious Doctrines Put Before Him And Even To Overlook The Contradictions Between Them, We Need Not Be Greatly Suprised At The Weakness Of His Intellect.

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

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

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

Where Id Was, There Ego Shall Be.

In General People Experience Their Present Naively, As It Were, Without Being Able To Form An Estimate Of Its Contents; They Have First To Put Themselves At A Distance From It - The Present, That Is To Say, Must Have Become The Past - Before It Can Yield Points Of Vantage From Which To Judge The Future.

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.

It Is Easy To See That The Ego Is That Part Of The Id Which Has Been Modified By The Direct Influence Of The External World.

"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"

None Believes In His Own Death. In The Unconscious Everyone Is Convinced Of His Own Immortality.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is In Essence A Cure Through Love.

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?

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

Characteristics

Trending Author

Vittorio Alfieri

Category