The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. Sigmund Freud
Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.
Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.
We find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else.
Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.
In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.
The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.
There is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies... Complete suppression of man's aggressive tendencies is not an issue; what we may try is to direct it into a channel other than that of warfare.
A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.
Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.
The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.
Where id was, there ego shall be.
My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.
Religion belonged to the infancy of humanity. Now that humanity had come of age, it should be left behind.
The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.