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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.
Sigmund Freud -
Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.
Sigmund Freud
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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.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud
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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.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
Public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
Let us consider the polarity of love and hate.... Now, clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularityaccompanied by hate, and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in many circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate.
Sigmund Freud -
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
Sigmund Freud
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Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
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.
Sigmund Freud -
Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.
Sigmund Freud
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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.
Sigmund Freud -
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?
Sigmund Freud -
A hero is a man who stands up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him.
Sigmund Freud -
Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.
Sigmund Freud