PSYCHOANALYSIS QUOTES

quotations about psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis quote

Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it. They should, because they put it all in beforehand. It's like an Easter Egg hunt.

SAUL BELLOW

The Dean's December

Tags: Saul Bellow


In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the imaginary level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis.

TERRY EAGLETON

Literary Theory: An Introduction


As a practice and sensibility, psychoanalysis remains attuned to superficiality; it constitutes a search for depth on the surface of things.

AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT

Atomic Light


There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.

ERICH FROMM

Psychoanalysis and Religion

Tags: Erich Fromm


Where id is, there shall ego be.

SIGMUND FREUD

New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

Tags: Sigmund Freud


Psychiatrists -- the dominant lay priesthood since the First World War.

J. G. BALLARD

A User's Guide to the Millennium

Tags: J. G. Ballard


Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It had no mother.

GERMAINE GREER

The Female Eunuch

Tags: Germaine Greer


There is considerable danger that psychoanalysis, as well as other forms of psychotherapy and adjustment psychology, will become new representations of the fragmentation of man, that they will exemplify the loss of the individual's vitality and significance, rather than the reverse, that the new techniques will assist in standardizing and giving cultural sanction to man's alienation from himself rather than solving it, that they will become expressions of the new mechanization of man, now calculated and controlled with greater psychological precision and on a vaster scale of unconscious and depth dimensions -- that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general will become part of the neurosis of our day rather than part of the cure.

ROLLO MAY

The Discovery of Being

Tags: Rollo May


The ego is not master in its own house.

SIGMUND FREUD

A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis

Tags: Sigmund Freud


It is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.

ROBERT A. JOHNSON

She: Understanding Feminine Psychology


For our purposes, the essential discovery of psycho-analysis is this: that an impulse which is prevented, by behaviourist methods, from finding overt expression in action, does not necessarily die, but is driven underground, and finds some new outlet which has not been inhibited by training. Often the new outlet will be more harmful than the one that has been prevented, and in any case the deflection involves emotional disturbance and unprofitable expenditure of energy. It is therefore necessary to pay more attention to emotion, as opposed to overt behaviour, than is done by those who advocate conditioning as alone sufficient in the training of character.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Education and the Social Order

Tags: Bertrand Russell


Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead -- a dead parent, for example -- can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.

JACQUES DERRIDA

New York Times Magazine, January 23, 1994

Tags: Jacques Derrida


Classical psychoanalysis regards conscious thoughts as a disguised representation of unconscious conflicts that are presumably causing the problem. The patient's own explanations are regarded as spurious rationalizations, his coping mechanisms as defenses. Consequently, his conscious ideas, his reasoning and judgements, his practical solutions to problems are not taken at face value: they are treated as stepping-stones to deeper, concealed components of the mind.

AARON T. BECK

Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders

Tags: Aaron T. Beck


I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills.

STEPHEN KING

interview, September 14, 2000

Tags: Stephen King


Anyway, I don't trust those people who poke around sad people's minds and tell them how interesting it all is up there. It's not interesting.

OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

Eileen


Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

SIGMUND FREUD

letter to Carl Jung, 1906

Tags: Sigmund Freud


Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.

IRVIN D. YALOM

Existential Psychotherapy

Tags: Irvin D. Yalom


No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

SIGMUND FREUD

Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

Tags: Sigmund Freud


Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering.

MELANIE KLEIN

attributed, Becoming Attached: First Relationships and how They Shape Our Capacity to Love


I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

NORA EPHRON

The Guardian, June 26, 1995

Tags: Nora Ephron