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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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The Pleasure Of Satisfying

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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

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

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

You Wanted To Kill Your Father In Order To Be Your Father Yourself. Now You Are Your Father, But A Dead Father.

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

The Only Person With Whom You Have To Compare Ourselves, Is That You In The Past. And The Only Per-son Better You Should Be, This Is Who You Are Now.

Intelligence Will Be Used In The Service Of The Neurosis.

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

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

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

Poetry By Famous Poets

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Characteristics

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.

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

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

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?'

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.

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 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.

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

I 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.

Psychoanalysis Is In Essence A Cure Through Love.

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.

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

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.

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

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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

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.

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. . . .

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.

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.

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

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.

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

The Goal Of All Life Is Death

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

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

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

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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

Maturity Is The Ability To Postpone Gratification.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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'.

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.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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

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

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

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?

I Do Not In The Least Underestimate Bisexuality... I Expect It To Provide All Further Enlightenment.

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

The Paranoid Is Never Entirely Mistaken.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Inclination To Aggression Constitutes The Greatest Impediment To Civilization.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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]

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

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.

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.

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

...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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Are So Made That We Can Derive Intense Enjoyment Only From A Contrast.

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

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.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

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

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

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

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.

I Am Actually Not At All A Man Of Science, Not An Observer, Not An Experimenter, Not A Thinker. I Am By Temperament Nothing But A Conquistador

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.

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

Opposition Is Not Necessarily Enmity.

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

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

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

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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

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.

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.

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

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

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.

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.

History Is Just New People Making Old Mistakes.

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

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

Religion Is An Illusion And It Derives Its Strength From The Fact That It Falls In With Our Instinctual Desires.

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

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

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.

Being Entirely Honest With Oneself Is A Good Exercise.

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.

The Whole Thing [religion] Is So Patently Infantile, So Foreign To Reality, That To Anyone With A Friendly Attitude To Humanity It Is Painful To Think That The Great Majority Of Mortals Will Never Be Able To Rise Above This View Of Life.

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

Natural Instinct

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Collective Unconscious

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

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

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.

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

Knowledge Is The Intellectual Manipulation Of Carefully Verified Observations.

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.

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

The 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!

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.

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

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