Background Image

...

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.

-Sigmund Freud

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When It Happens That

Sigmund Freud

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Sigmund Freud

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.

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

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

Dreams Are The Guardians Of Sleep And Not Its Disturbers.

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.

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.

It Is Always Possible To Bind Together A Considerable Number Of People In Love, So Long As There Are Other People Left Over To Receive The Manifestations Of Their Aggressiveness.

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

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

We Must Love Or We Grow Ill.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

In Almost Every Place Where We Find Totems We Also Find A Law Against Persons Of The Same Totem Having Sexual Relations With One Another And Consequently Against Their Marrying. This, Then, Is 'exogamy', An Institution Related To Totemism.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Regard Myself As One Of The Most Dangerous Enemies Of Religion

We Must Not Allow Ourselves To Be Deflected By The Feminists Who Are Anxious To Force Us To Regard The Two Sexes As Completely Equal In Position And Worth.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Crystals Reveal Their Hidden Structures Only When Broken.

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.

Religion Is An Attempt To Get Control Over The Sensory World, In Which We Are Placed, By Means Of The Wish-world Which We Have Developed Inside Us As A Result Of Biological And Psychological Necessites.

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 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.

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.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is In Essence A Cure Through Love.

[the Child] Takes His Play Very Seriously And He Expends Large Amounts Of Emotion On It. The Opposite Of Play Is Not What Is Serious But What Is Real.

Words Have A Magical Power. They Can Either Bring The Greatest Happiness Or The Deepest Despair.

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

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!"

At Bottom God Is Nothing More Than An Exalted Father.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Religion: Something Comparable To Childhood Neurosis

America Is A Mistake, A Giant Mistake.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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

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

Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery To Mundane Unhappiness.

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar.

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

Neurosis Is The Result Of A Conflict Between The Ego And Its Id, Whereas Psychosis Is The Analogous Outcome Of A Similar Disturbance In The Relation Between The Ego And The External World.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

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

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

Love Relationship

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

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.

I Think That In General It Is A Good Plan Occasionally To Bear In Mind The Fact That People Were In The Habit Of Dreaming Before There Was Such A Thing As Psychoanalysis.

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

Poetry By Famous Poets

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The 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

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.

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

Physical Attraction

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.

Unexpressed Emotions Will Never Die. They Are Buried Alive And Will Come Forth Later In Uglier Ways.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Intelligence Will Be Used In The Service Of The Neurosis.

Our Knowledge Of The Historical Worth Of Certain Religious Doctrines Increases Our Respect For Them, But Does Not Invalidate Our Proposal That They Should Cease To Be Put Forward As The Reasons For The Precepts Of Civilization. On The Contrary! Those Historical Residues Have Helped Us To View Religious Teachings, As It Were, As Neurotic Relics, And We May Now Argue That The Time Has Probably Come, As It Does In An Analytic Treatment, For Replacing The Effects Of Repression By The Results Of The Rational Operation Of The Intellect.

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

Dream Is The Dreamer's Own Psychical Act.

There Is A Powerful Force Within Us, An Un-illuminated Part Of The Mind - Separate From The Conscious Mind That Is Constantly At Work Molding Our Thought, Feelings, And Actions.

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

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

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.

No Neurotic Harbors Thoughts Of Suicide Which Are Not Murderous Impulses Against Others Redirected Upon Himself.

The Poor Ego Has A Still Harder Time Of It; It Has To Serve Three Harsh Masters, And It Has To Do Its Best To Reconcile The Claims And Demands Of All Three...the Three Tyrants Are The External World, The Superego, And The Id.

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

I Do Not In The Least Underestimate Bisexuality... I Expect It To Provide All Further Enlightenment.

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

Concerning The Factors Of Silence, Solitude And Darkness, We Can Only Say That They Are Actually Elements In The Production Of The Infantile Anxiety From Which The Majority Of Human Beings Have Never Become Quite Free.

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".

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

Where Such Men Love They Have No Desire And Where They Desire They Cannot Love

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Religion Is Comparable To A Childhood Neurosis.

We Are Never So Defenseless Against Suffering As When We Love, Never So Forlornly Unhappy As When We Have Lost Our Love Object Or Its Love.

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

My Psychoanalysis Has Equipped You With The Equivalent Of A Train Ticket To Recovery. It Is Now Your Decision Whether Or Not You Choose To Make Full Use Of It.

A Strong Egoism Is A Protection.

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

When We Share - That Is Poetry In The Prose Of Life.

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.

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

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

If You Can't Do It, Give Up!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Scientific Method

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.

Neurotics Complain Of Their Illness, But They Make The Most Of It, And When It Comes To Taking It Away From Them They Will Defend It Like A Lioness Her Young.

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.

A Woman Should Soften But Not Weaken A Man.

Love And Work Are The Cornerstones Of Our Humanness.

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

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

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.

Religion Restricts The Play Of Choice And Adaptation, Since It Imposes Equally On Everyone Its Own Path To The Acquisition Of Happiness And Protection From Suffering. Its Technique Consists In Depressing The Value Of Life And Distorting The Picture Of The Real World In A Delusional Manner - Which Presupposes An Intimidation Of The Intelligence. At This Price, By Forcibly Fixing Them In A State Of Psychical Infantilism And By Drawing Them Into A Mass-delusion, Religion Succeeds In Sparing Many People An Individual Neurosis. But Hardly Anything More.

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.

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.

A Child In Its Greed For Love Does Not Enjoy Having To Share The Affection Of Its Parents With Its Brothers And Sisters; And It Notices That The Whole Of Their Affection Is Lavished Upon It Once More Whenever It Arouses Their Anxiety By Falling Ill. It Has Now Discovered A Means Of Enticing Out Its Parents' Love And Will Make Use Of That Means As Soon As It Has The Necessary Psychical Material At Its Disposal For Producing An Illness.

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

All That Matters Is Love And Work.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

"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"

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Loneliness And Darkness Have Just Robbed Me Of My Valuables.

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.

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

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.

The Impression Forces Itself Upon One That Men Measure By False Standards, That Everyone Seeks Power, Success, Riches For Himself, And Admires Others Who Attain Them, While Undervaluing The Truly Precious Thing In Life.

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.

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.

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

Trending Author

M. Night Shyamalan

Category