“The “brightness” of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.”

—  Paul Goodman, book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 85.

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Paul Goodman47
American novelist, playwright, poet and psychotherapist 1911–1972

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