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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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The View Is Often

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

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.

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

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

We Have Long Observed That Every Neurosis Has The Result, And Therefore Probably The Purpose, Of Forcing The Patient Out Of Real Life, Of Alienating Him From Actuality.

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

It Would Be Very Nice If There Were A God Who Created The World And Was A Benevolent Providence, And If There Were A Moral Order In The Universe And An After-life; But It Is A Very Striking Fact That All This Is Exactly As We Are Bound To Wish It To Be.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Dreams Are Constructed From The Residue Of Yesterday.

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

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.

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.

The Wish To Be Able To Fly Is To Be Understood As Nothing Else Than A Longing To Be Capable Of Sexual Performance.

There Is An Intellectual Function In Us Which Demands Unity, Connection And Intelligibility From Any Material, Whether Of Perception Or Thought, That Comes Within Its Grasp; And If, As A Result Of Special Circumstances, It Is Unable To Establish A True Connection, It Does Not Hesitate To Fabricate A False One.

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.

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

If Children Could, If Adults Knew.

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

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

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

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.".

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.

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

Man Has, As It Were, Become A Kind Of Prosthetic God. When He Puts On All His Auxiliary Organs, He Is Truly Magnificent; But Those Organs Have Not Grown On Him And They Still Give Him Much Trouble At Times.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

Obviously One Must Hold Oneself Responsible For The Evil Impulses Of One's Dreams. In What Other Way Can One Deal With Them? Unless The Content Of The Dream Rightly Understood Is Inspired By Alien Spirits, It Is Part Of My Own Being.

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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.

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

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

I Have No Concern With Any Economic Criticisms Of The Communist System; I Cannot Inquire Into Whether The Abolition Of Private Property Is Expedient Or Advantageous. But I Am Able To Recognize That The Psychological Premisses On Which The System Is Based Are An Untenable Illusion. In Abolishing Private Property We Deprive The Human Love Of Aggression Of One Of Its Instruments... But We Have In No Way Altered The Differences In Power And Influence Which Are Misused By Aggressiveness.

Men Are Not Gentle, Friendly Creatures Wishing For Love, Who Simply Defend Themselves If They Are Attacked, But ... A Powerful Measure Of Desire For Aggression Had To Be Reckoned As Part Of Their Instinctual Endowment.

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.

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

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

By Abolishing Private Property One Deprives The Human Love Of Aggression.

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

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.

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

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 Psychoanalysis Of Individual Human Beings, However, Teaches Us With Quite Special Insistence That The God Of Each Of Them Is Formed In The Likeness Of His Father, That His Personal Relation To God Depends On His Relation To His Father In The Flesh And Oscillates And Changes Along With That Relation, And That At Bottom God Is Nothing Other Than An Exalted Father.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

From Error To Error One Discovers The Entire Truth.

It Is A Mistake To Believe That Science Consists In Nothing But Conclusively Proved Propositions, And It Is Unjust To Demand That It Should. It Is A Demand Made By Those Who Feel A Craving For Authority In Some Form To Replace The Religious Catechism By Something Else, Even A Scientific One.

The 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Expectation That Every Neurotic Phenomenon Can Be Cured May, I Suspect, Be Derived From The Layman's Belief That The Neuroses Are Something Quite Unnecessary Which Have No Right Whatever To Exist. Whereas In Fact They Are Severe, Constitutionally Fixed Illnesses, Which Rarely Restrict Themselves To Only A Few Attacks But Persist As A Rule Over Long Periods Throughout Life.

I Like To Avoid Concessions To Faint-heartedness. One Can Never Tell Where That Road May Lead One; One Gives Way First In Words, And Then Little By Little In Substance Too.

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

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

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.

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

There Are No Mistakes.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Bold One Gets When One Is Sure Of Being Loved.

Not All Men Are Worthy Of Love.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

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.

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

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.

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.

Where Id Was, There Ego Shall Be.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

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

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.

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.

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

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?'

Religion (is) A Universal Obsessional Neurosis.

America Is A Mistake, A Giant Mistake.

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.

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?

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.

Knowledge Is The Intellectual Manipulation Of Carefully Verified Observations.

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.

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

There Is To My Mind No Doubt That The Concept Of Beautiful Had Its Roots In Sexual Excitation And That Its Original Meaning Was Sexually Stimulating.

The Paranoid Is Never Entirely Mistaken.

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

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

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.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother.

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.

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

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

Incidentally, Why Was It That None Of All The Pious Ever Discovered Psycho-analysis? Why Did It Have To Wait For A Completely Godless Jew?

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

One Is Very Crazy When In Love.

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.

The Madman Is A Dreamer Awake

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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

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

The Conscious Mind May Be Compared To A Fountain Playing In The Sun And Falling Back Into The Great Subterranean Pool Of Subconscious From Which It Rises.

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

Collective Unconscious

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

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.

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.

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

Characteristics

Now It Is Nothing But Torture.

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

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.

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.

The Sexual Wishes In Regard To The Mother Become More Intense And The Father Is Perceived As An Obstacle To The; This Gives Rise To The Oedipus Complex.

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.

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

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.

Experience Teaches That For Most People There Is A Limit Beyond Which Their Constitution Cannot Comply With The Demands Of Civilization. All Who Wish To Reach A Higher Standard Than Their Constitution Will Allow, Fall Victims To Neurosis. It Would Have Been Better For Them If They Could Have Remained Less "perfect".

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat

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