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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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The Unconscious - That

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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Free Sexual Intercourse Between Young Males And Respectable Girls" Was Urgently Necessary Or Society Was "doomed To Fall A Victim To Incurable Neuroses Which Reduce The Enjoyment Of Life To A Minimum, Destroy The Marriage Relation And Bring Hereditary Ruin On The Whole Coming Generation.

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.

Christmas Is The Alcoholidays

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

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.

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

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"

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

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

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

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

Homosexuality Is Assuredly No Advantage, But It Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of, No Vice, No Degradation, It Cannot Be Classified As An Illness.

The Madman Is A Dreamer Awake

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Cannot Face With Comfort The Idea Of Life Without Work; Work And The Free Play Of The Imagination Are For Me The Same Thing, I Take No Pleasure In Anything Else.

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

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

Every Man Has A Right Over His Own Life And War Destroys Lives That Were Full Of Promise; It Forces The Individual Into Situations That Shame His Manhood, Obliging Him To Murder Fellow Men, Against His Will.

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.

Yes, America Is Gigantic, But A Gigantic Mistake.

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

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

These Patients Have Turned Away From Outer Reality; It Is For This Reason That They Are More Aware Than We Of Inner Reality And Can Reveal To Us Things Which Without Them Would Remain Impenetrable.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Inclination To Aggression Constitutes The Greatest Impediment To Civilization.

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

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.

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.

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

The 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.

The Different Religions Have Never Overlooked The Part Played By The Sense Of Guilt In Civilization. What Is More, They Come Forward With A Claim...to Save Mankind From This Sense Of Guilt, Which They Call Sin.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

The Game Replaces Sexual Enjoyment By Pleasure In Movement.

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

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

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.

Being Entirely Honest With Oneself Is A Good Exercise.

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

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

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.

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

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.

He Does Not Believe That Does Not Live According To His Belief.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

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.

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.

The World Is No Nursery.

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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

We May Insist As Often As We Like That Man's Intellect Is Powerless In Comparison To His Instinctual Life, And We May Be Right In This. Nevertheless, There Is Something Peculiar About This Weakness. The Voice Of The Intellect Is A Soft One, But It Will Not Rest Until It Has Gained A Hearing. Finally, After A Countless Succession Of Rebuffs, It Succeeds.

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

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

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

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.

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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

Physical Attraction

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

Collective Unconscious

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

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

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

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.

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

Natural Instinct

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

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.

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.

A Poor Girl May Have An Illusion That A Prince Will Come And Fetch Her Home. It Is Possible, Some Such Cases Have Occurred. That The Messiah Will Come And Found A Golden Age Is Much Less Probable.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The Communal Life Of Human Beings Had . . . A Two-fold Foundation: The Compulsion To Work, Which Was Created By External Necessity, And The Power Of Love.

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

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.

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

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

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

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

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

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

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.

If Children Could, If Adults Knew.

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

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. . . .

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

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

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 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

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

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.

The First Requisite Of Civilization, Therefore, Is That Of Justice — That Is, The Assurance That A Law Once Made Will Not Be Broken In Favour Of An Individual. This Implies Nothing As To The Ethical Value Of Such A Law.

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

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?

...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.

Homosexuality Is Assuredly No Advantage, But It Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of, No Vice, No Degradation; It Cannot Be Classified As An Illness; We Consider It To Be A Variation Of The Sexual Function, Produced By A Certain Arrest Of Sexual Development. Many Highly Respectable Individuals Of Ancient And Modern Times Have Been Homosexuals, Several Of The Greatest Men Among Them (plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Etc.). It Is A Great Injustice To Persecute Homosexuality As A Crime--and A Cruelty, Too. If You Do Not Believe Me, Read The Books Of Havelock Ellis.

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.

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

Crystals Reveal Their Hidden Structures Only When Broken.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.".

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Nature Delights In Making Use Of The Same Forms In The Most Various Biological Connections: As It Does, For Instance, In The Appearance Of Branch-like Structures Both In Coral And In Plants, And Indeed In Some Forms Of Crystal And In Certain Chemical Precipitates.

The Religions Of Mankind Must Be Classed Among The Mass-delusions Of This Kind. No One, Needless To Say, Who Shares A Delusion Ever Recognizes It As Such.

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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.

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

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!"

An Unrestricted Satisfaction Of Every Need Presents Itself As The Most Enticing Method Of Conducting One's Life, But It Means Putting Enjoyment Before Caution, And Soon Brings Its Own Punishment.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

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 Necessities... If One Attempts To Assign To Religion Its Place In Man's Evolution, It Seems Not So Much To Be A Lasting Acquisition, As A Parallel To The Neurosis Which The Civilized Individual Must Pass Through On His Way From Childhood To Maturity.

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

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.

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

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.

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.

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 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.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

Knowledge Is The Intellectual Manipulation Of Carefully Verified Observations.

A Strong Experience In The Present Awakens In The Creative Writer A Memory Of An Earlier Experience (usually Belonging To His Childhood) From Which There Now Proceeds A Wish Which Finds Its Fulfilment In The Creative Work.

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection.

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

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

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

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

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

Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis.

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.

What Is A Totem? It Is As A Rule An Animal (whether Edible And Harmless Or Dangerous And Feared) And More Rarely A Plant Or A Natural Phenomenon (such As Rain Or Water), Which Stands In A Peculiar Relation To The Whole Clan. In The First Place, The Totem Is The Common Ancestor Of The Clan; At The Same Time It Is Their Guardian Spirit And Helper, Which Sends Them Oracles And, If Dangerous To Others, Recognizes And Spares Its Own Children.

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.

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

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.

A Religion, Even If It Calls Itself A Religion Of Love, Must Be Hard And Unloving To Those Who Do Not Belong To It.

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