“What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-bad, as his predecessors believed, but rather a jostling democracy of contending predispositions, deposited in every nature in roughly equal intensities. … Psychoanalysis is full of such mad logic; it is convincing only if the student of his own life accepts Freud’s egalitarian revision of the traditional idea of a hierarchical human nature.”

— Philip Rieff

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-b…" by Philip Rieff?

Philip Rieff photo

Philip Rieff16

American sociologist 1922–2006

Related quotes

“I believe there is no one Principle, which predominates in human Nature so much in every Stage of Life, from the Cradle to the Grave, in Males and females, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, high and low, as this Passion for Superiority.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (22 May 1777), as quoted in And the War Came: The Slavery Quarrel and the American Civil War https://books.google.com/books?id=WbFznb7PSGsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Donald J. Meyers <br class="br">1770s

“There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.”

Murray Bookchin book Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Source: Post-Scarcity Anarchism

“Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Freud"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

“It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

“Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 9: "Science and Philosophy"

“Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 33

“This is the nature of human energy; individuals generate it, and control it. Each person is self-controlling, and therefore responsible for his acts. Every human being, by his nature, is free.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943), p. xii.

“Any thought which is printed, either here or in the paper, without subsequent attack is generally believed to be true. This is not so much a logical condition as it is a fault of human nature. A longstanding or constant idea is often equated with a true one.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 9 “A Moral Dilemma” (p. 140).

“Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 10

“Conservatives believe that human nature is what makes us imperfectible. Liberals believe that human nature can be changed and perfected.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

Rocky Mountain News column, 2000

Related topics