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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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The Reproaches Against Science

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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

Poetry By Famous Poets

No, Our Science Is No Illusion. But An Illusion It Would Be To Suppose That What Science Cannot Give Us We Can Get Elsewhere.

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

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.

I Take Up The Standpoint That The Tendency To Aggression Is An Innate, Independent, Instinctual Disposition In Man, And I Come Back Now To The Statement That It Constitutes The Most Powerful Obstacle To Culture.

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

Natural Instinct

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

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.

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.

One Must Not Be Mean With The Affections; What Is Spent Of The Fund Is Renewed In The Spending Itself.

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

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

If Children Could, If Adults Knew.

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.

The Devil Would Be The Best Way Out As An Excuse For God; In That Way He Would Be Playing The Same Part As An Agent Of Economic Discharge As The Jew Does In The World Of The Aryan Ideal. But Even So, One Can Hold God Responsible For The Existence Of The Devil Just As Well As For The Existence Of The Wickedness Which The Devil Embodies.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.".

Life As We Find It Is Too Hard For Us; It Entails Too Much Pain, Too Many Disappointments, Impossible Tasks. We Cannot Do Without Palliative Remedies.

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

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

I Am Not Aware, However, That Patients Suffering From Traumatic Neurosis Are Much Occupied In Their Waking Lives With Memories Of Their Accident. Perhaps They Are More Concerned With Not Thinking Of It.

The 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 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.

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

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 Madman Is A Dreamer Awake

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

If Youth Knew; If Age Could.

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

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.

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

Obsessive Compulsive

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

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

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

The Price Of Civilization Is Instinctual Renunciation.

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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.

This Transmissibility Of Taboo Is A Reflection Of The Tendency, On Which We Have Already Remarked, For The Unconscious Instinct In The Neurosis To Shift Constantly Along Associative Paths On To New Objects.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Religion Is The Process Of Unconscious Wish Fulfillment, Where, For Certain People, If The Process Did Not Take Place It Would Put Them In Self-danger Of Coming To Mental Harm, Being Unable To Cope With The Idea Of A Godless, Purposeless Life.

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

Collective Unconscious

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

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

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

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

Opposition Is Not Necessarily Enmity.

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

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

I Should Like To Raise The Question Whether The Inevitable Stunting Of The Sense Of Smell As A Result Of Man's Turning Away From The Earth, And The Organic Repression Of The Smell-pleasure Produced By It, Does Not Largely Share In His Predisposition To Nervous Diseases.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Scientific Method

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'.

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

Sexual Morality - As Society In Its Extreme Form, The American, Defines It - Is Contemptible. I Advocate An Incomparably Freer Sexual Life.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

[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.

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

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

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

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

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.

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

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

When A Love-relationship Is At Its Height There Is No Room Left For Any Interest In The Environment; A Pair Of Lovers Are Sufficient To Themselves

Love Relationship

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

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

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]

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

Characteristics

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

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?

One Is Very Crazy When In Love.

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.

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

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

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

The Division Of The Psychical Into What Is Conscious And What Is Unconscious Is The Fundamental Premise Of Psycho-analysis; And It Alone Makes It Possible For Psycho-analysis To Understand The Pathological Processes In Mental Life, Which Are As Common As They Are Important, And To Find A Place For Them In The Framework Of Science.

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

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.

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.

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

Being Entirely Honest With Oneself Is A Good Exercise.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Public Self Is A Conditioned Construct Of The Inner Psychological Self.

Religion (is) A Universal Obsessional Neurosis.

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

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

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

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.

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

"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"

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis.

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

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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. . . .

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

We 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.

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

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.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is In Essence A Cure Through Love.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

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.

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

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 Very Emphasis Of The Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Makes It Certain That We Are Descended From An Endlessly Long Chain Of Generations Of Murderers, Whose Love Of Murder Was In Their Blood As It Is Perhaps Also In Ours.

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.

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.

Civilization Is A Process In The Service Of Eros, Whose Purpose Is To Combine Single Human Individuals, And After That Families, Then Races, Peoples And Nations, Into One Great Unity, The Unity Of Mankind. Why This Has To Happen, We Do Not Know; The Work Of Eros Is Precisely This.

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

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.

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

The World Is No Nursery.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

In The Theory Of Psycho-analysis We Have No Hesitation In Assuming That The Course Taken By Mental Events Is Automatically Regulated By The Pleasure Principle. We Believe, That Is To Say, That The Course Of Those Events Is Invariably Set In Motion By An Unpleasurable Tension, And That It Takes A Direction Such That Its Final Outcome Coincides With A Lowering Of That Tension That Is, With An Avoidance Of Unpleasure Or A Production Of Pleasure.

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

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

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

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

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

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.

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