Sigmund Freud: Doing

Sigmund Freud was Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Sigmund Freud: 294 quotes82 likes

“Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.62

“Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away.”

Sigmund Freud

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by Joan Riviere (1961)
Context: Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 6

“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.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“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.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 10

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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.”

Sigmund Freud

The Anatomy of the Mental Personality (Lecture 31) <br class="br">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)

“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 amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.”

Sigmund Freud

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35) <br class="br">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)

“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”

Sigmund Freud book Studies on Hysteria

Studies on Hysteria (1895), (co-written with Josef Breuer) as translated by Nicola Luckhurst (2004)
1890s

“If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?”

Sigmund Freud

1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

“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.”

Sigmund Freud book Moses and Monotheism

Moses and Monotheism (1938)
1930s

“In some place in my soul, in a very hidden corner, I am a fanatical Jew. I am very much astonished to discover myself as such in spite of all efforts to be unprejudiced and impartial. What can I do against it at my age?”

Sigmund Freud

Letter to Dr. David Feuchtwang (1931), as quoted in Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home (1990) by Emanuel Rice, p. 25
1930s