I have, as it were, constructed a lay-figure for the purposes of a demonstration which I desired to be as rapid and as impressive as possible.
It may be said that hysteria is as ignorant of the science of the structure of the nervous system as we ourselves before we have learnt it.
Least of all should the artist be held responsible for the fate which befalls his works.
To put it briefly, there are two widely diffused human characteristics which are responsible for the fact that the organization of culture can be maintained only by a certain measure of coercion: that is to say, men are not naturally fond of work, and arguments are of no avail against their passions.
It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them.
Freud gave these conceptions spatial form because he still thought, as in his ‘Project’, that it would eventually be possible to locate them within the brain as described by neurology.
In other matters no sensible person will behave so irresponsibly or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions and for the line he takes. It is only in the highest and most sacred things that he allows himself to do so.
We may say that the patient does not remember anything at all of what he has forgotten and repressed, but rather acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory, but as an action; he repeats it, without of course being aware of the fact that he is repeating it.
Woe to you, my Princess, when I come... you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.
And I will go on kissing you till you are strong and gay and happy – and if they haven’t died, they are still alive today.
To love one’s neighbour as oneself – a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs as strongly counter to the original nature of man.
Religion interferes with this play of selection and adaptation by forcing on everyone indiscriminately its own path to the attainment of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in reducing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world by means of delusion; and this presupposes the intimidation of the intelligence.
The superego is, however, not simply a residue of the earliest object-choices of the id; it also represents an energetic reaction-formation against those choices.
We avoid the familiar reproach that we base our constructions of mental life on pathological findings; for dreams are regular events in the life of a normal person, however much their characteristics may differ from the productions of our waking life.
In tal modo era taciuta l’uccisione di Dio, ma un crimine la cui espiazione richiedeva che una vittima fosse immolata non poteva esser stato che un omicidio.
We are naturally grieved over the fact that a just God and a kindly providence do not guard us better against such influences in our most defenseless age. We thereby gladly forget that as a matter of fact everything in our life is accident from our very origin through the meeting of spermatozoa and ovum, accident, which nevertheless participates in the lawfulness and fatalities of nature, and lacks only the connection to our wishes and illusions.
We all still show too little respect for nature, which in Leonardo’s deep words recalling Hamlet’s speech “is full of infinite reasons which never appeared in experience.” Every one of us human beings corresponds to one of the infinite experiments in which these “reasons of nature” force themselves into experience.
In this situation, what we call natural ethics has nothing to offer but the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think one is better than others. This is where ethics based on religion enters the scene with its promises of a better life hereafter. I am inclined to think that, for as long as virtue goes unrewarded here below, ethics will preach in vain.
In the traumatic neuroses there are two outstanding features which might serve as clues for further reflection: first that the chief causal factor seemed to lie in the element of surprise, in the fright; and secondly that an injury or wound sustained at the same time generally tended to prevent the occurrence of the neurosis.
Not that I know so much, but there are so many equally valid possibilities. For the present I do not believe that anyone is justified in saying that sexuality is the mother of all feelings.