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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.

-Sigmund Freud

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What Decides The Purpose

Sigmund Freud

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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.

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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.

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

The Voice Of Reason Is Small, But Very Persistent.

Voice Of Reason

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. . . .

Smoking Is Indispensable If One Has Nothing To Kiss.

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

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.

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

Once Again, Only Religion Can Answer The Question Of The Purpose Of Life. One Can Hardly Be Wrong In Concluding That The Idea Of Life Having A Purpose Stands And Falls With The Religious System.

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

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

Our Possibilities Of Happiness Are Already Restricted By Our Constitution. Unhappiness Is Much Less Difficult To Experience. We Are Threatened With Suffering From Three Directions: From Our Own Body, Which Is Doomed To Decay And Dissolution And Which Cannot Even Do Without Pain And Anxiety As Warning Signals; From The External World, Which May Rage Against Us With Overwhelming And Merciless Forces Of Destruction; And Finally From Our Relations To Other Men. The Suffering Which Comes From This Last Source Is Perhaps More Painful To Us Than Any Other.

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

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

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

Religion [is] The Universal Obsessional Neurosis Of Humanity

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

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

Maturity Is The Ability To Postpone Gratification.

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

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.

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.

Human Life In Common Is Only Made Possible When A Majority Comes Together Which Is Stronger Than Any Separate Individual And Which Remains United Against All Separate Individuals. The Power Of This Community Is Then Set Up As Right In Opposition To The Power Of The Individual, Which Is Condemned As Brute Force.

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

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.

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.

One Is Very Crazy When In Love.

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.

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

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

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

Hatred Of Judaism Is At Bottom Hatred Of Christianity.

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

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

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

The 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

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

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.

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.

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

Knowledge Is The Intellectual Manipulation Of Carefully Verified Observations.

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.

The Transformation Of Object-libido Into Narcissistic Libido Which Thus Takes Place Obviously Implies An Abandonment Of Sexual Aims, A Desexualization - A Kind Of Sublimation, Therefore.

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

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.

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.

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

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

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

To Be Sure, The Ancient Belief That The Dream Reveals The Future Is Not Entirely Devoid Of Truth. By Representing To Us A Wish As Fulfilled The Dream Certainly Leads Us Into The Future; But This Future, Taken By The Dreamer As Present, Has Been Formed Into The Likeness Of That Past By The Indestructible Wish.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

The Price Of Civilization Is Instinctual Renunciation.

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

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.

America Is A Mistake, A Giant Mistake.

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

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.

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.

Where Id Was, There Ego Shall Be.

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

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!"

Life, As We Find It, Is Too Hard For Us; It Brings Us Too Many Pains, Disappointments And Impossible Tasks. In Order To Bear It We Cannot Dispense With Palliative Measures... There Are Perhaps Three Such Measures: Powerful Deflections, Which Cause Us To Make Light Of Our Misery; Substitutive Satisfactions, Which Diminish It; And Intoxicating Substances, Which Make Us Insensible To It.

The Madman Is A Dreamer Awake

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.

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.

When Making A Decision Of Minor Importance, I Have Always Found It Advantageous To Consider All The Pros And Cons. In Vital Matters, However, Such As The Choice Of A Mate Or A Profession, The Decision Should Come From The Unconscious, From Somewhere Within Ourselves. In The Important Decisions Of Personal Life, We Should Be Governed, I Think, By The Deep Inner Needs Of Our Nature.

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

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.

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 You Want To Endure Life, Prepare Yourself For Death.

It Is Unavoidable That If We Learn More About A Great Man's Life, We Shall Also Hear Of Occasions On Which He Has Done No Better Than We, And Has In Fact Come Nearer To Us As A Human Being.

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.

One Thing Only Do I Know For Certain And That Is That Man's Judgments Of Value Follow Directly His Wishes For Happiness-that, Accordingly, They Are An Attempt To Support His Illusions With Arguments. [p.111]

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

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

"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"

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection Against Disease, But In The Last Resort We Must Begin To Love In Order That We May Not Fall Ill, And Must Fall Ill If, In Consequence Of Frustration, We Cannot Love.

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

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.

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

Christmas Is The Alcoholidays

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

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 Moment A Man Questions The Meaning And Value Of Life, He Is Sick, Since Objectively Neither Has Any Existence; By Asking This Question One Is Merely Admitting To A Store Of Unsatisfied Libido To Which Something Else Must Have Happened, A Kind Of Fermentation Leading To Sadness And Depression.

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

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

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

Poetry By Famous Poets

Sexuality Is The Key To The Problem Of The Psychoneuroses And Of The Neuroses In General. No One Who Disdains The Key Will Ever Be Able To Unlock The Door.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

Out Of Your Vulnerabilities Will Come Your Strength.

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

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

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.

From Error To Error One Discovers The Entire Truth.

There Is No Likelihood Of Our Being Able To Suppress Humanity's Aggressive Tendencies... Complete Suppression Of Man's Aggressive Tendencies Is Not An Issue; What We May Try Is To Direct It Into A Channel Other Than That Of Warfare.

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.

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

The 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.

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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 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.

There Are No Mistakes.

Just As No One Can Be Forced Into Belief, So No One Can Be Forced Into Unbelief.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Ego Is Not Master In Its Own House.

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

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.

We Know That The Great Majority Of People Have A Strong Need For Authority Which It Can Admire, To Which It Can Submit, And Which Dominates And Sometimes Even Ill-treats It.

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

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.

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

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

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

Dreams Are Constructed From The Residue Of Yesterday.

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

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

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.

No Other Technique For The Conduct Of Life Attaches The Individual So Firmly To Reality As Laying Emphasis On Work; For His Work At Least Gives Him A Secure Place In A Portion Of Reality, In The Human Community.

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.

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

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

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.

If There Are Quarrels Between The Parents Or If Their Marriage Is Unhappy, The Ground Will Be Prepared In Their Children For The Severest Predisposition To A Disturbance Of Sexual Development Or To Neurotic Illness.

The 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.

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

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

If Children Could, If Adults Knew.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Physical Attraction

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 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.

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.

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.

It Sounds Not Only Disagreeable But Also Paradoxical, Yet It Must Nevertheless Be Said That Anyone Who Is To Be Really Free And Happy In Love Must Have Surmounted His Respect For Women And Have Come To Terms With The Idea Of Incest With His Mother Or Sister.

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.

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

Scientific Method

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

Desire Presses Ever Forward Unsubdued.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Crystals Reveal Their Hidden Structures Only When Broken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Thinking Is An Experimental Dealing With Small Quantities Of Energy, Just As A General Moves Miniature Figures Over A Map Before Setting His Troops In Action.

Just As A Satisfaction Of Instinct Spells Happiness For Us, So Severe Suffering Is Caused Us If The External World Lets Us Starve, If It Refuses To Sate Our Needs. One May Therefore Hope To Be Freed From A Part Of One's Sufferings By Influencing The Instinctual Impulses.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Characteristics

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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Michael K. Simpson

Mayer Hawthorne

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