75 Quotes About Neurosis

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

[...]as Sylvester says, a man who has never been afflicted with a neurosis does not know the meaning of suffering.

That you find Kierkegaard "frightful" has warmed the cockles of my heart. I find him simply insupportable and cannot understand, or rather, I understand only too well, why the theological neurosis of our time has made such a fuss over him. You are quite right when you say that the pathological is never valuable. It does, however, cause us the greatest difficulties and for this reason we learn the most from it.

The fact that compulsive drives for success will arise only in a competitive culture does not make them any less neurotic.

The significant question is whether the activity pursued permits the release of tension without resolving the underlying conflict. If so, the conflict still remains, and hence the activity must be engaged in repeatedly. We then may have the beginning of compulsion neurosis.

...somos nosotros, los psicoanalistas, quienes en el silencio de la escucha imaginamos mentalmente, en forma de escena, el origen del sufrimiento experimentado por el neurótico".