Sigmund Freud: Trending quotes

Sigmund Freud trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection

Sigmund Freud: 294 quotes82 likes

Die Anatomie ist das Schicksal "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" (1924) ( original text in German http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kleine-schriften-ii-7122/30) 1920s Variant: Anatomy is destiny

“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]”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.”

Sigmund Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Source: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

“From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.”

Sigmund Freud

“We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.”

Sigmund Freud

General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology https://books.google.com/books?id=T3F2XT_LxNwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:1416573593&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAvLT854_XAhVHKGMKHefOBU4Q6AEIJjAA Touchstone, (1963); Ch.1, "Formulation Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning", (1911) 1910s

“The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.”

Sigmund Freud book Dream Psychology

Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis For Beginners (1920) as translated by M. D. Eder
1920s

“I don't rack my brains much over the subject of good and evil, but, on average, I haven't discovered much 'good' in men. Based on what I know of them, they are for the most part nothing but scoundrels.”

Sigmund Freud

Correspondance avec le pasteur Pfister, 1909-1939, Gallimard, 1991, p.103; as quoted in Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World by Matthieu Ricard
Attributed from posthumous publications

“When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any more clearly for doing so.”

Sigmund Freud

The Problem of Anxiety (1925)
1920s

“But man's helplessness remains and along with it his longing for his father, and the gods. The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

“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 in their object-relations.”

Sigmund Freud

As quoted by Anna Freud in the preface to the (1981) edition of Topsy: The Story of a Golden-Haired Chow by Princess Marie Bonaparte.
Attributed from posthumous publications

“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.”

Sigmund Freud book The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud

Analysis Terminable and Interminable, sect. 5 (1937); reprinted in Complete Works, Standard Edition, vol. 23 (ed. James Strachey and Anna Freud. 1964); as quoted in The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews, Penguin Books, 2001.
1930s

“I do not in the least underestimate bisexuality... I expect it to provide all further enlightenment.”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (25 March 1898)
1890s

“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.”

Sigmund Freud

Anxiety and Instinctual Life (Lecture 32) 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

“Cruel though it may sound, we must see to it that the patient's suffering, to a degree that is in some way or other effective, does not come to an end prematurely. If, owing to the symptoms having been taken apart and having lost their value, his suffering becomes mitigated, we must re-instate it elsewhere in the form of some appreciable privation; otherwise we run the danger of never achieving any improvements except quite insignificant and transitory ones”

Sigmund Freud

Freud (1919) Lines of Advance in Psycho-Analytic Therapy. cited in: Jürgen Habermas (1972) Knowledge and Human Interests. p. 234
1910s

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”

Sigmund Freud

Frequently attributed to Freud, but there is no evidence Freud ever said it http://www.freud.org.uk/about/faq/. Misattributed

“A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.”

Sigmund Freud

"Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality" (1905), reprinted in "Essential Papers on Masochism" p.87, edited by Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly, New York University press, New York and London, (1995)
1900s

“In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there exists a psychological technique by which dreams may be interpreted and that upon the application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic activity of the waking state. I shall furthermore endeavor to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them the psychic forces, which operate whether in combination or opposition, to produce the dream. This accomplished by investigation will terminate as it will reach the point where the problem of the dream meets broader problems, the solution of which must be attempted through other material.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

"The Interpretation of Dreams" introduction, 1899; reprinted in "The Interpretation of Dreams the Illustrated Edition", Sterling Press, 2010, page 9
1890s

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

Sigmund Freud

Dora : An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), his analysis of the case of Ida Bauer (also translated as Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
1900s

“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.”

Sigmund Freud

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35) 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

“Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.”

Sigmund Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)
1920s