773 Quotes by Sigmund Freud

May we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilization – possibly the whole of mankind – have become ‘neurotic’?

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.

If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness, and it guides – by – precepts – backed by the full force of its authority.

It often seems that the poet’s derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: “With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe.

Psychoanalysis is right to be mistrustful. One of its rules runs: whatever disturbs the continuation of the work of analysis is a resistance.

Obsessional prohibitions are extremely liable to displacement. They extend from one object to another along whatever paths the context may provide, and this new object then becomes, to use the apt expression of one of my women patients, ‘impossible’ – till at last the whole world lies under an embargo of ‘impossibility’.

Most of the ‘pain’ we experience is of a perceptual order, perception either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts or of something in the external world which may be painful in itself or may arouse painful anticipations in the psychic apparatus and is recognised by it as ’danger.

The dream is to be regarded, says Binz, “as a physical process always useless, frequently morbid.

Every man is a poet at heart.