“We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.”
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2; as translated by James Strachey, p.63
Sigmund Freud: Quotes about love
Sigmund Freud was Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. Explore interesting quotes on love.
Sigmund Freud:
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“Whoever loves become humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”
Wer verliebt ist, ist demütig. Wer liebt, hat sozusagen ein Stück seines Narzißmus eingebüßt.
"Gesammelte Schriften, Volume 6" (1924), p. 183
1920s
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.
“My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.”
Source: Civilization and Its Discontents
“How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”
Letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays (27 June 1882); published in Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939 (1961), 10-12
1880s
Source: Civilization and Its Discontents
Source: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
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
“Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.”
Letter to Carl Jung (1906), as quoted in Freud and Man's Soul (1984) by Bruno Bettelheim
1900s
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 5, as translated by James Strachey and Anna Freud (1961)
“…three of life's most important areas: work, love, and taking responsibility.”
From The Wolf-man and Sigmund Freud Muriel Gardiner, p. 365 (cf. books.google.com http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wolf_Man_and_Sigmund_Freud.html?id=TJoC54vuCmwC)
Attributed from posthumous publications