Boris Sidis: Quotes about fear

Boris Sidis was American psychiatrist. Explore interesting quotes on fear.

Boris Sidis: 52 quotes2 likes

“Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.”

Source: Nervous Ills their Cause and Cure (1922), p. 311

“The main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.”

Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases (1916), p. 33

“Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its “fear of the Lord” and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.”

Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases (1916), p. 37

“It is time that the medical and teaching profession should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is the result of a defective, fear-inspiring education in early child life.”

Source: Nervous Ills their Cause and Cure (1922), p. 285