Vielleicht wird unser Vorurteil auch dadurch bestärkt, daß es – von außen gesehen – oft vom Leben Begünstigte zu sein scheinen, […] denen wir daher sozusagen das Recht nicht zusprechen wollen, daß sie erkrankten; kennt...

[B]y reinterpreting Freudianism in terms of language, a pre-eminently social activity, Lacan permits us to explore the relations between the unconscious and human society. One way of describing his work is to say that he...

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in...

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.

The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the...

Cine n-ar dori să moară vis nd că moare?

A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet “for sale”, who can still suffer over...

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...

Is this World a reality or just a Human perceptions?

Načež hlas v mém nitru pronesl: Je to umění. Překvapilo mě to. Nikdy mě nenapadlo, že to, co píši, má něco společného s uměním. Pak mě ale napadlo: Mé nevědomí možná utváří osobnost, která není...

The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing, and it is at this specific point at which...

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person’s self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient’s cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his...

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

One criticism of Freud still sometimes heard on the political Left is that his thinking is individualist — that he substitutes ‘private’ psychological causes and explanations for social and historical ones. This accusation reflects a...

Now, what if Others were encapsulated in Things, in a way that Being towards Things were not ontologically severable, in Heidegger’s terms, from Being towards Others? What if the mode of Dasein of Others were...

As soon as they leave, Leon says to me: “I disagree, sir. There are people who aren’t insane, and I’m one of them. People who generalize are mentally ill.

Fui acusado de ser um utópico, de querer eliminar o desprazer do mundo e defender apenas o prazer. Contudo, tenho declarado claramente que a educação tradicional torna as pessoas incapazes para o prazer encouraçando-as contra...

Freud kdysi řekl, že lidstvo zažilo tři velké urážky: nejdříve uslyšelo, že země není středem vesmíru, pak se dovědělo, že člověk pochází z opice, a nakonec mu psychoanalytici řekli, že člověk není pánem ve vlastním...

Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to transform insignificant childhood hurts into private shrines at which they worship unceasingly the...

…in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve...

My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional.

The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the...

We have already seen that when positive authority suggests a change in behavior, the recipient will accept it provided he is capable of doing so and provided it does not require drastic modification of belief...

A vida brota a partir de milhares de fontes vibrantes, entrega-se à todos que a agarram, recusa-se a ser expressa em frases tediosas, aceita apenas ações transparentes, palavras verdadeiras e o prazer do amor

Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel.

Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which psychoanalysis is powerless to bestow.

The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies.

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

Psychoanalytic insight, Miller seems to suggest, is itself a pathological symptom.

On Christmas. “Santa Claus represents God on assistance,” said Clyde.”Santa Claus is a negative-idealed god, the pagan god of material worship,” Leon stated. “Christmas means the rebirth, regeneration. Some people have Christmas every day. The...

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth.

Pyschoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we’re going to, but an idea...

young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term...

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves

The purported insight achieved by the patient is not the product of a process of veridical self-discovery, but rather reflects the patient’s conversion to the therapist’s interpretation.

I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people’s vanity.

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or...

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.

notwithstanding how good a seed my be, it’s proper germination,growth and fruit bearing may be mutilated if not planted in a good soil

This time once again it has been my chief aim to make no sacrifice to an appearance of being simple, complete or rounded off, not to disguise problems and not to deny the existence of...

Lacan wrote about two levels of speaking, one in which we know what we are saying (even when struggling with something difficult or contradictory) and another in which we have no idea of what we...

The notion of dream interpretation far antedates the birth of psychoanalysis, and probably served an important function in most, if not all, historical societies. In having lost this function, modern man has also lost the...

Talking about one’s feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and...

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will...

Charaktere sind vielleicht schon bezeichnet und beschrieben worden, seit es Lebewesen gibt, die sprechen können. Dichter haben das sehr differenziert getan; man denke an Proust, Tolstoi oder Dostojewski. Diese Autoren haben die innere Dynamik eines...

The woman who refuses to see her sexual organs as mere wood chips, designed to make the man’s life more comfortable, is in danger of becoming a lesbian–an active, phallic woman, an intellectual virago with...

Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education if by education we mean the topiary art of clipping a tree into a beautiful artificial shape. But those who have a higher conception of education will...

To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.

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,...