Psychoanalytic Quotes

“Freud expressed the opinion—not quite in earnest, though, it seemed to me—that philosophy was the most decent form of sublimation of repressed sexuality, nothing more. In response I put the question, 'What then is science, particularly psychoanalytic psychology?' Whereupon he, visible a bit surprised, answered evasively: 'At least psychology has a social purpose.”
― Ludwig Binswanger

“Every one' of the psychoanalytic trainees she [Alice Miller] has supervised has the same history:

An insecure parent who did not appear to be insecure, but who depended on the child behaving in a particular way.

And an 'amazing ability' on the part of the child to perceive this and take on the assigned role.

"This role secured 'love' for the child-that is, his parents' narcissistic cathexis. He could sense he was needed and this, he felt, guaranteed him a measure of existential...[as quoted by Alice Miller]”
― Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

“My whole life I’d lived off the one wretched ambition that still possessed me: to be more than I was; to reject and despise everything that was in my reach and to set goals I was incapable of reaching; to chase after emotions I was incapable of feeling; to seek out adventures I couldn’t live up to; to have a friendship that was no friendship, a love that was no love; ambitions yoked to a weak will, a will stuck in the mire of unfulfilled desire.”
― Mela Hartwig, Am I a Redundant Human Being?

“Disillusionment may be tragic, may, rather, have its tragic side, but the true havoc of tragedy, from a psychoanalytic point of view, is of disillusionment avoided.”
― Adam Phillips, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

“همین جرقه های خرد حیاط مدرسه آدم را از کوره در بر می برد، همین اولین کلمه های تکان دهنده و عجیب آدمهاست که هیچ وقت نمی شود فراموش کرد، چرا که اتفاقات بعد، نمک روی زخم اند.”
― Ivo Andrić, The Woman from Sarajevo

“آدم هایی که قصد فریب ما را دارند، القاب و عناوین دهان پُرکنی روی این ضعف ها می گذارند و وقتی به سراغمان آمدند، آنها را ریسه می کنند؛ اما این ضعف ها آفاتی هستند که به جان درخت توانایی و شور و تلاش ما می افتند و بی برو برگرد آدم را به افلاس می کشانند و به خاک سیاه می نشانند.”
― Ivo Andrić, The Woman from Sarajevo