May 6 celebrated 164 years since the birth of Sigmund Freud – the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method of treatment of mental illness, as well as the theory explaining human behavior. In honor of this, USA Art News remembers his statements about anxiety, individuality, and life.
- The scale of your personality is determined by the magnitude of the problem, which is able to piss you off.
- Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
- Every appliance is a partial death, the disappearance of a part of your personality.
- Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
- You don’t stop looking for strength and confidence outside, but you should look for yourself. They’ve always been there.
- We live in a thoroughly strange time in which we are surprised to note that progress is marching in step with barbarism.
- Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- There is no doubt that the problem of anxiety is the focal point of many critical issues; resolving the mystery of anxiety will shed a flood of light on the entire mental life of man.
- It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.
- Worrying, we are eager to save our strength for something, not knowing ourselves for what. And this habit of suppressing natural desires gives us a kind of refinement. We perceive the world deeper, and therefore we can consider ourselves capable of deep feelings. Why are we not sleeping? Maybe because we don’t like the cat howling that drunk people have to listen to in the streets. Why don’t we fall in love again every month? If a piece of our heart breaks every time we separate, why are we so stubborn sometimes? Because we’re harder in misery and distress.
- Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
- A person never gives up on anything, he just substitutes one pleasure for another.
- Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.