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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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We Know Less About

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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In The Development Of Mankind As A Whole, Just As In Individuals, Love Alone Acts As The Civilizing Factor In The Sense That It Brings A Change From Egoism To Altruism.

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.

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

It Almost Looks Like Analysis Were The Third Of Those 'impossible' Professions In Which One Can Be Quite Sure Of Unsatisfying Results. The Other Two, Much Older-established, Are The Bringing Up Of Children And The Government Of Nations.

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.

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.

...perhaps The Hopes I Have Confessed To Are Of An Illusory Nature, Too. But I Hold Fast To One Distinction. Apart From The Fact That No Penalty Is Imposed For Not Sharing Them, My Illusions Are Not, Like Religious Ones, Incapable Of Correction.

The 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

America Is A Mistake, Admittedly A Gigantic Mistake, But A Mistake Nevertheless.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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

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

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

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

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

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

The Inclination To Aggression Constitutes The Greatest Impediment To Civilization.

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.

Dreams Are The Royal Road To The Unconscious.

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.

Human Beings Are Funny. They Long To Be With The Person They Love But Refuse To Admit Openly. Some Are Afraid To Show Even The Slightest Sign Of Affection Because Of Fear. Fear That Their Feelings May Not Be Recognized, Or Even Worst, Returned. But One Thing About Human Beings Puzzles Me The Most Is Their Conscious Effort To Be Connected With The Object Of Their Affection Even If It Kills Them Slowly Within.

There Is No Doubt That The Resistance Of The Conscious And Unconscious Ego Operates Under The Sway Of The Pleasure Principle: It Seeks To Avoid The Unpleasure Which Would Be Produced By The Liberation Of The Repressed.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Where Id Was, There Ego Shall Be.

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.

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

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

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.

Another Technique For Fending Off Suffering Is The Employment Of The Displacements Of Libido Which Our Mental Apparatus Permits Of And Through Which Its Function Gains So Much In Flexibility. The Task Here Is That Of Shifting The Instinctual Aims In Such A Way That They Cannot Come Up Against Frustration From The External World.

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

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.

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

The Goal Towards Which The Pleasure Principle Impels Us - Of Becoming Happy - Is Not Attainable: Yet We May Not - Nay, Cannot - Give Up The Efforts To Come Nearer To Realization Of It By Some Means Or Other.

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

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.

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

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.

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

No One Who, Like Me, Conjures Up The Most Evil Of Those Half-tamed Demons That Inhabit The Human Breast, And Seeks To Wrestle With Them, Can Expect To Come Through The Struggle Unscathed.

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

If A Man Has Been His Mother's Undisputed Darling He Retains Throughout Life The Triumphant Feeling, The Confidence In Success, Which Not Seldom Brings Actual Success Along With It.

The Psychical, Whatever Its Nature May Be, Is Itself Unconscious.

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

From Error To Error One Discovers The Entire Truth.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

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

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.

There Is Scarcely Room For Doubt That Something In The Psychological Relation Of A Mother-in-law To A Son-in-law Breeds Hostility Between Them And Makes It Hard For Them To Live Together. But The Fact That In Civilized Societies Mothers-in-law Are Such A Favourite Subject For Jokes Seems To Me To Suggest That The Emotional Relation Involved Includes Sharply Contrasted Components. I Believe, That Is, That This Relation Is In Fact An 'ambivalent' One, Composed Of Conflicting Affectionate And Hostile Impulses.

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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.

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

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

Yes, America Is Gigantic, But A Gigantic Mistake.

But One Thing About Human Beings Puzzles Me The Most Is Their Conscious Effort To Be Connected With The Object Of Their Affection Even If It Kills Them Slowly Within.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

It Is No Wonder If, Under The Pressure Of These Possibilities Of Suffering, Men Are Accustomed To Moderate Their Claims To Happiness - Just As The Pleasure Principle Itself, Indeed, Under The Influence Of The External World, Changed Into The More Modest Reality Principle -, If A Man Thinks Himself Happy Merely To Have Escaped Unhappiness Or To Have Survived His Suffering, And If In General The Task Of Avoiding Suffering Pushes That Of Obtaining Pleasure Into The Background.

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

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.".

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

There Are No Mistakes.

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.

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

Characteristics

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

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

In So Doing, The Idea Forces Itself Upon Him That Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis, And He Is Optimistic Enough To Suppose That Mankind Will Surmount This Neurotic Phase, Just As So Many Children Grow Out Of Their Similar Neurosis.

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.

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

Love Is A State Of Temporary Psychosis.

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

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

Religion (is) A Universal Obsessional Neurosis.

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.

The Pleasure Of Satisfying A Savage Instinct, Undomesticated By The Ego, Is Uncomparably Much More Intense Than The One Of Satisfying A Tamed Instinct. The Reason Is Becoming The Enemy That Prevents Us From A Lot Of Possibilities Of Pleasure.

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.

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection.

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

The Liberty Of The Individual Is No Gift Of Civilization. It Was Greatest Before There Was Any Civilization, Though Then, It Is True, It Had For The Most Part No Value, Since The Individual Was Scarcely In A Position To Defend It. The Development Of Civilization Imposes Restrictions On It, And Justice Demands That No One Shall Escape Those Restrictions.

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. . . .

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.

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

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

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

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

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 An Infamously Low Capacity For Visualizing Relationships, Which Made The Study Of Geometry And All Subjects Derived From It Impossible For Me.

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

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

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

The Individual Does Actually Carry On A Double Existence: One Designed To Serve His Own Purposes And Another As A Link In A Chain, In Which He Serves Against, Or At Any Rate Without, Any Volition Of His Own.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

There Is A Psychological Technique Which Makes It Possible To Interpret Dreams, And ... If That Procedure Is Employed, Every Dream Reveals Itself As A Psychical Structure Which Has A Meaning And Which Can Be Inserted At An Assignable Point In The Mental Activities Of Waking Life.

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 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?'

I Do Not Think Our Successes Can Compete With Those Of Lourdes. There Are So Many More People Who Believe In The Miracles Of The Blessed Virgin Than In The Existence Of The Unconscious.

The Price Of Civilization Is Instinctual Renunciation.

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