Sigmund Freud on Homosexuality

In a response to a worried mother's inquiry about the sexuality of her son, Freud writes, "Homosexuality is ... nothing to be ashamed of."

Sigmund Freud's Letter Regarding Homosexuality 

Transcript

April 9th 1935

PROF. DR. FREUD

Dear Mrs [Erased],

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime – and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs on a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me — I don't expect you will — he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don't neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with best wishes,

Freud

P.s. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.

(The letter was later passed on to Alfred Kinsey and reproduced in The American Journal of Psychiatry in 1951, hence the note attached to its foot.)

Quotes about Freud

If often he was wrong and at times absurd
To us he is no more a person
Now but a climate of opinion.
― W. H. Auden, in "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (1940)


When Freud turned his searing eye to socialism he saw a delusional philosophy […] To Freud, the communists of the twentieth century were engaged in a perfectionist political project […] The central flaw Freud identified in socialist doctrine was the idea that private property is the primary, if not the sole, source of man’s depravity. With this foundational idea, socialists were able to say that man could be redeemed if, and only if, the institution of private property were abolished and replaced by a kinder, more humane system. [To Freud,] Man’s “depravity” is rooted much deeper in his nature and the abolition of private property would do little or nothing to change his basic constitution. [Freud argued that] socialism has its roots not in love and fraternity, as the socialists themselves would have us believe, but rather in revenge and aggression. According to Freud, “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness” (Freud 1961, 72). Freud pointed to nascent Soviet Russia as evidence of this phenomenon: “it is intelligible that the attempt to establish a new, communist civilization in Russia should find its psychological support in the persecution of the bourgeois. One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after they have wiped out their bourgeois.”
― Nicholas Buccola, in "'The Tyranny of the Least and the Dumbest': Nietzsche’s Critique of Socialism” in Quarterly Journal of Ideology Vol 31, no. 3 & 4 (2004), quoting and sumarizing Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents


I have become increasingly convinced that some of the popular methods presumed to discover what is in the unconscious cannot be counted upon as reliable methods of obtaining evidence. They often involve the use of symbolism and analogy in such a way that the interpreter can find virtually anything that he is looking for. Freud, for instance, from a simple dream reported by a man in his middle twenties [i.e., Sergei Pankejeff ] as having occurred at 4 years of age drew remarkable conclusions. The 4-year-old boy dreamed of seeing six or seven white wolves sitting in a tree. Freud interpreted the dream in such a way as to convince himself that the patient at 18 months of age had been shocked by seeing his parents have intercourse three times in succession and that this played a major part in the extreme fear of being castrated by his father which Freud ascribed to him at 4 years of age. No objective evidence was ever offered to support this conclusion. Nor was actual fear of castration ever made to emerge into the light of consciousness despite years of analysis.
― Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, 1941, fifth edition 1976, ISBN 0-9621519-0-4


In the early twentieth century the concepts of the preconscious and unconscious were made widely popular, especially in literary circles, by Freud, Jung, and their associates, mainly because of the sexual flavor they gave to them. By modern standards, Freud can hardly be regarded as a scientist but rather as a physician who had many novel ideas and who wrote persuasively and unusually well. He became the main founder of the new cult of psychoanalysis.
― Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (1994)


A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.
― E. L. Doctorow, in Ragtime: A Novel (1976)


He had a sharp vision; no illusions lulled him to sleep except for an often exaggerated faith in his own ideas.
― Albert Einstein, as quoted in Sigmund Freud (2006) by Kathleen Krull and Boris Kulikov, p. 132


That human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and hence that a whole society can be sick, is an assumption which was made very explicitly by Freud, most extensively in his Civilization and Its Discontent. ...he arrives at the concept of "social neurosis." "If the evolution of civilization," he writes, "has such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization — or epics of it — possibly even the whole of humanity — have become 'neurotic' under the pressure of the civilizing trends?
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)


Freud was one of the last representatives of Enlightenment philosophy. He genuinely believed in reason as the one strength man has and which alone could save him from confusion and decay.
― Erich Fromm, in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1977)


While the implications of Darwin’s views were threatening and unsettling, they were not quite so directly abrasive, not quite so unrespectable, as Freud’s views on infantile sexuality, the ubiquity of perversions, and the dynamic power of unconscious urges. 

― Peter Gay (1987). A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 144


While Darwin was satisfied with revising his work after further reflection and absorbing palpable hits by rational critics, while he trusted the passage of time and the weight of his argumentation, Freud orchestrated his wooing of the public mind through a loyal cadre of adherents, founded periodicals and wrote popularizations that would spread the authorized word, dominated international congresses of analysis until he felt too frail to attend them and after that through surrogates like his daughter Anna. 

― Peter Gay (1987). A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 145


I am fascinated by the fact that thousands of people continue to idealize and defend [Freud] without really knowing anything about him as a person.
― Phyllis Grosskurth (1991). The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis. Boston: Addison-Wesley, p. 219


I differ from Freud in that I think that most dreams are neither obscure nor bowdlerized, but rather that they are transparent and unedited. They reveal clearly meaningful undisguised and often highly conflictual themes worthy of note by the dreamer (and any interpretive assistant). My position echoes Jung's notion of dreams as transparently meaningful and does away with any distinction between manifest and latent content.
― J. Allan Hobson, in The Dreaming Brain : How the brain creates both the sense and nonsense of dreams (1988)


Every time I see a photograph of Freud I wonder how a man who spent his whole life tête-à-tête with sex can look that gloomy.
― Raymond Loewy, in Never Leave Well Enough Alone (1951)


Sigmund Freud… Analize [sic] this! Analize this! Analize this-this-this!
― Madonna, as written in Die Another Day


For Freud the ultimate psychological reality is the system of attractions and tensions which attaches the child to parental images, and then through these to all other persons.
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as quoted in The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty (1969) edited by A. L. Fisher


There is no longer any risk that Freudian research will shock us by recalling what there is of the "barbarian" in us; the risk is rather that the findings will be too easily accepted in an "idealist" form.
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as quoted in The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty (1969) edited by A. L. Fisher


At one time, many philosophers held that faultless "laws of thought" were somehow inherent, a priori, in the very nature of mind. This belief was twice shaken in the past century; first when Russell and his successors showed how the logic men employ can be defective, and later when Freud and Piaget started to reveal the tortuous ways in which our minds actually develop.
― Marvin Minsky, "Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious" (1980)


Each child makes "internal models" that help them predict their Imprimers' reactions... as an "internalized" system of values—and this could be how people develop what we call ethics, conscience, or moral sense. Perhaps Sigmund Freud had such a process in mind when he suggested that children can "introject" some of their parents' attitudes.
― Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)


Much research in psychology has been more concerned with how large groups of people behave than about the particular ways in which each individual person thinks... too statistical. I find this disappointing because, in my view of the history of psychology, far more was learned, for example, when Jean Piaget spent several years observing the ways that three children developed, or when Sigmund Freud took several years to examine the thinking of a rather small number of patients.
― Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)


How much of a person's competence is based on knowing which actions not to take? We usually think of a person's abilities in positive terms... But one could take the opposite view that "An expert is someone who rarely slips up—because of knowing what not to do." However, this subject was rarely discussed in the twentieth-century—except, perhaps most notably, in Sigmund Freud's analysis.
― Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)


Sigmund Freud's early view of the mind [is] as a system for dealing with conflicts between our instinctive and acquired ideas.
― Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)


Freud is all nonsense; the secret of neurosis is to be found in the family battle of wills to see who can refuse the longest to help with the dishes.
― Julian Mitchell, in As Far as You Can Go (1963), Pt. 1, Ch. 1


Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.
― Lewis Mumford in Interpretations and Forecasts (1967)


As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
― Albert Jay Nock, in Our Enemy, The State (1935)


When Freud comments on the shocking disparity between State-ethics and private ethics – and his observations on this point are most profound and searching – the historical method at once supplies the best of reasons why that disparity should be looked for.
― Albert Jay Nock, in Our Enemy, The State (1935)


American feminism’s nose dive began when Kate Millet, that imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity, declared Freud a sexist. Trying to build a sex theory without studying Freud, women have made nothing but mud pies.
― Camille Paglia (1991) "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf." First published in Arion, Spring 1991, reprinted in Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays (1992) ISBN 9780679741015, p. 243


The two deepest thinkers on sex in the twentieth century are Sigmund Freud and D.H. Lawrence. Their reputations as radical liberators were so universally acknowledged that brooding images of Freud and Lawrence in poster form adorned the walls of students in the Sixties.
― Camille Paglia (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality" in '"Vamps and Tramps: Essays NY: Vintage, p. 328


Doctor Freud not only used cocaine himself, but he also prescribed it to his patients. And then he drew his generalizations. Cocaine is a strong sexual arouser. That's why everything Freud invented — all those oedipuses, sphinxes and sphincters — is relevant only to a mental dimension of a patient, whose brain is turned to fried-eggs by cocaine. In such a state, one really has only one problem left — what to do first, to screw his mother or to do away with his father. Of course, until his cocaine runs out. And in those times, there were no problems with supplies. But so long as your daily dose is less than three grams, you don't have to fear either the Oedipus complex, nor other things discovered by Freud.
― Victor Pelevin, in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf: A Novel (2004)


Babies are … obviously narcissistic, but not in the way adults are, not even Spinoza's God, and I am a little afraid that Freud sometimes forgets that the narcissistic baby has no sense of self.
― Jean Piaget, in The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), as quoted in The Essential Piaget (1977), edited by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche


Yes, you hate me. But didn't I try to atone? If I'd been a real Nazi I'd have chosen Jung, nicht wahr? But I chose Freud instead, the Jew. Freud's vision of the world had no Buchenwalds in it. Buchenwald, according to Freud, once the light was let in, would become a soccer field, fat children would learn flower arranging and solfeggio in the strangling rooms.
― Thomas Pynchon, Hilarius to Oedipa in The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Ch. 5


Perhaps the last cultural fad one could still argue against was Karl Marx. But Freud — or Rawls? To argue against such persons is to grant them a premise they spend all of their effort disproving: that reason is involved in their theories.
― Ayn Rand as quoted in The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. IV, No. 2 (November-December 1975)


Freud … agreed in principle to the importance of sexual health. But he did not want what sexual health entailed, the attack on certain institutions which opposed it.
― Wilhelm Reich, as quoted in Reich Speaks of Freud (1967) edited by Mary Higgins and Chester M. Raphael


When I came to read Freud himself, I was amazed to discover how sensible his writings are and how much milder than what passes for Freudianism among the pseudo-intelligent.
― Bertrand Russell, "On Orthodoxies" (23 August 1933), in Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935, Vol. II [1998], pp. 57-58


It is now clear that Freud was correct in positing the unconscious mind develops before the conscious and that the early development of the unconscious is equivalent to the genesis of a self-system that operates beneath conscious verbal levels for the rest of the life span.
― Allan N. Shore (2009). “Relational Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: An Interface of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and Neuroscience,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04474


The two most original and creative figures in modern psychiatry, Freud and Jung were both proscribed by the Nazis … for both, though holding widely divergent views, upheld the value of the individual personality.
― Anthony Storr, in The Integrated Personality (1960)


Freud ... showed us that poetry is indigenous to the very constitution of the mind; he saw the mind as being, in the greater part of its tendency, exactly a poetry-making faculty.
― Lionel Trilling, Beyond Cutlure (1965), p. 79


Probably no theory evolved by man is as absurd as Sigmund Freud's theory of penis envy. To a woman, the penis and scrotum seem superfluous to man's otherwise neatly constructed body. They are almost untidy. She cannot understand that after use the penis is not retractable like an aerial on a portable radio. And as for envy — it would never occur, even to a little girl. Not in her deepest unconscious would she wish to possess a penis; and as to being at a disadvantage compared to a little boy, that is nonsense, for she gets preferential treatment anyway.
Freud was merely the victim of training by woman's self-abasement techniques — thanks to his mother, wife, and probably his daughters as well. He confused cause and effect; a woman only says she is worth less than a man. She doesn't really think it. If anyone ought to feel a sense of envy, it is men. They should be jealous of women's power. But, of course, they never are, for they glory in their powerlessness.
― Esther Vilar, in The Manipulated Man (1972), p. 84-85 ISBN 0374202028


Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he has been slow to undertake further revisions. His critics, however, are equally behind the times, attacking Freudian views of the 1920s as if they continue to have some currency in their original form.
― Drew Westen, in "The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science" (1998, Psychological Bulletin 124, p. 333)


The scientific debate on reports and recollections of child sexual abuse goes back to at least 1896, when Freud argued that repression of early childhood seduction (sexual molestation) had etiological significance for adult hysteria […]. He later recanted, saying that he was wrong about the repression of actual experiences of child sexual abuse and that it was fantasies (of sexual contact with parents or other adults) that drove the hysteria [..]. The research [in peer-reviewed publications in the 1980s and ‘90s] revisited the issue of repression of child sexual abuse and suggest that a large proportion of women sexually abused in childhood have no recall of the abuse. These studies support Freud's originally hypothesized connection between child sexual abuse, no recall of the abuse, and high levels of psychological symptoms in adulthood, at least in clinical samples.
― Linda Meyer Williams (1994). “Recall of Childhood Trauma: A Prospective Study of Women's Memories of Child Sexual Abuse,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Vol. 62, No. 6, 1167-1176


Freud is constantly claiming to be scientific. But what he gives is speculation — something prior even to the formation of an hypothesis.
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Lectures and Conversations (1966) edited by Cyril Barnett


Wisdom is something I would never expect from Freud. Cleverness, certainly; but not wisdom.
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Lectures and Conversations (1966) edited by Cyril Barnett


Freud … has not given an explanation of the ancient myth. What he has done is to propound a new myth.
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Lectures and Conversations (1966) edited by Cyril Barnett

Sigmund Freud Quotes

The Cambridge Companion to Freud

Buy The Cambridge Companion to Freud here.

Does Freud still have something to teach us? The premise of this volume is that he most certainly does. Approaching Freud from not only the philosophical but also historical, psychoanalytical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives, the contributors show us how Freud gave us a new and powerful way to think about human thought and action. They consider the context of Freud's thought and the structure of his arguments to reveal how he made sense of ranges of experience generally neglected or misunderstood. All the central topics of Freud's work from sexuality and neurosis to morality, art, and culture are covered.

Introduction Jerome Neu
1. Freud: the psychoarcheology of civilizations Carl E. Schorske
2. Seduced and abandoned: the rise and fall of Freud's seduction theory Gerald N. Izenberg
3. Freud's androids Clark Glymour
4. The interpretation of dreams James Hopkins
5. The unconscious Sebastian Gardner
6. The development of vicissitudes of Freud's ideas on the Oedipus complex Bennett Simon and Rachel B. Blass
7. Freud and perversion Jerome Neu
8. Morality and the internalized other Jennifer Church
9. Freud on women Nancy J. Chodorow
10. Freud and the understanding of art Richard Wollheim
11. Freud's anthropology: a reading of the 'cultural books' Robert A. Paul
12. Freud's later theory of civilization: changes and implications John Deigh
13. In fairness to Freud: a critical notice of The Foundations of Psychoanalysis, by Adolf Grünbaum David Sachs.

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Sigmund Freud bibliography

This is a list of writings published by Sigmund Freud.

• 1891 On Aphasia
• 1892 A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism
• 1893 On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena
• 1894 The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence
• 1894 Obsessions and phobias
• 1894 On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description “Anxiety Neurosis”
• 1895 A Project for a Scientific Psychology
• 1895 Studies on Hysteria (German: Studien über Hysterie; co-authored with Josef Breuer)
• 1896 The Aetiology of Hysteria
• 1896 Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses
• 1896 Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence
• 1898 Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses
• 1899 Screen Memories
• 1900 The Interpretation of Dreams (German: Die Traumdeutung)
• 1901 On Dreams (Abridged version of The Interpretation of Dreams)
• 1904 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (German: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens)
• 1905 Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
• 1905 Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)
• 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (German: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie)
• 1905 On Psycholtherapy
• 1906 My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses
• 1906 Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings
• 1907 Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices
• 1907 Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (German: Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens "Gradiva")
• 1908 The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
• 1908 Character and Anal Erotism (German: Charakter und Analerotik)
• 1908 On the Sexual Theories of Children
• 1908 "Civilized" Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness (German: Die „kulturelle“ Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervosität)
• 1908 Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming
• 1908 Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality
• 1909 Family Romances
• 1909 Some General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks
• 1909 Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy
• 1909 Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis
• 1910 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
• 1910 Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (German: Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci)
• 1910 The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words
• 1910 The Future Prospects of Psycho-analytic Therapy
• 1910 “Wild” psycho-analysis
• 1910 The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision
• 1910 A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men
• 1911 The Handling of Dream-Interpretation in Psycho-Analysis
• 1911 Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning'
• 1911 Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)
• 1912 On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love
• 1912 Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-analysis
• 1912 Types of Onset of Neurosis
• 1912 The Dynamics of Transference
• 1912 Contributions to a Discussion on Masturbation
• 1912 A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis
• 1913 Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics (German: Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker)
• 1913 The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific Interest
• 1913 On Beginning the Treatment. (Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis)
• 1913 The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis
• 1914 Remembering, Repeating and Working-through.(Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis)
• 1914 On Narcissism: an Introduction
• 1914 The Moses of Michelangelo
• 1914 On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (German: Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung)
• 1915 Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (German: Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod)
• 1915 Instincts and their Vicissitudes
• 1915 Repression
• 1915 The Unconscious
• 1915 A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease
• 1915 Some Character-Types Met within Psycho-Analytic Work
• 1916 Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
• 1917 Mourning and Melancholia
• 1917 A Difficulty on the Path of Psycho-Analysis
• 1917 On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism
• 1917 A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams
• 1918 From the History of an Infantile Neurosis
• 1918 The Taboo of Virginity
• 1918 Lines of Advance in Psycho-Analytic Therapy
• 1918 Introduction to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses
• 1919 A Child is Being Beaten
• 1919 The Uncanny (German: Das Unheimliche)
• 1920 The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman
• 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (German: Jenseits des Lustprinzips)
• 1920 A Note on the Prehistory of The Technique of Analysis
• 1921 Psycho-analysis and Telepathy
• 1921 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (German: Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse)
• 1922 Medusa's Head (German: Das Medusenhaupt)
• 1922 Dreams and Telepathy
• 1922 Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality
• 1923 The Ego and the Id (German: Das Ich und das Es)
• 1923 A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis
• 1923 Infantile Genital Organisation
• 1924 Neurosis and Psychosis
• 1924 The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis
• 1924 The Economic Problem of Masochism
• 1924 The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex
• 1925 The Resistances to Psycho-analysis
• 1925 Josef Breuer
• 1925 A Note upon the "Mystic Writing-Pad"
• 1925 An Autobiographical Study
• 1925 Negation
• 1925 Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes
• 1926 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
• 1926 The Question of Lay Analysis (German: Die Frage der Laieanalyse)
• 1927 The Future of an Illusion (German: Die Zukunft einer Illusion)
• 1927 Fetishism
• 1928 Dostoevsky and Parricide
• 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents (German: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
• 1931 Libidinal Types
• 1931 Female Sexuality
• 1932 The Acquisition of Control Over Fire
• 1933 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
• 1933 Why War? (German: Warum Krieg?; coauthored with Albert Einstein)
• 1936 A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis
• 1937 Analysis Terminable and Interminable
• 1937 Constructions in Analysis
• 1938 An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (German: Abriß der Psychoanalyse)
• 1938 Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis
• 1938 The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence
• 1939 Moses and Monotheism (German: Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion)

The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud ~ Free Download

The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud are now available in electronic (standard e-book/e-text) form. 

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See also:

 Introducing Freud: A Graphic Guide To The Father Of Psychoanalysis

 

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22 Freudian Gifts for Your Therapist or Your Mother!

Erich Fromm - To Have or To Be?

Buy To Have or To Be? by Erich Fromm here. - Free delivery worldwide

To Have Or to Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Nothing less than a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution to save our threatened planet, this book is a summary of the penetrating thought of Eric Fromm. His thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which concentrates on material possessions, power, and aggression, and is the basis of the universal evils of greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is based on love, the pleasure of sharing, and in productive activity. To Have Or to Be? is a brilliant program for socioeconomic change.

Born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Erich Fromm (1900-1980) studied sociology and psychoanalysis. In 1933, he emigrated as a member of the Frankfurt School of social thinkers to the United States, moved to Mexico in 1950, and spent his twilight years between 1974 and 1980 in Switzerland. His books Fear of Freedom (1941) and The Art of Loving (1956) made him famous. Other well-known books are Marx's Concept of Man, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, and The Essential Fromm.

SUPER HOMBRE contra SUPEREGO!

Wilhelm Reich - Quotes

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. ”
― Wilhelm Reich

“You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express”
― Wilhelm Reich, Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

“Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Love is the absence of Anxiety.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“Build your house on granite. By granite I mean your nature that you are torturing to death, the love in your child's body, your wife's dream of love, your own dream of life when you were sixteen. Exchange your illusions for a bit of truth. Throw out your politicians and diplomats! Take your destiny into your own hands and build your life on rock. Forget about your neighbor and look inside yourself! Your neighbor, too, will be grateful. Tell you're fellow workers all over the world that you're no longer willing to work for death but only for life. Instead of flocking to executions and shouting hurrah, hurrah, make a law for the protection of human life and its blessings. Such a law will be part of the granite foundation your house rests on. Protect your small children's love against the assaults of lascivious, frustrated men and women. Stop the mouth of the malignant old maid; expose her publicly or send her to a reform school instead of young people who are longing for love. Don;t try to outdo your exploiter in exploitation if you have a chance to become a boss. Throw away your swallowtails and top hat, and stop applying for a license to embrace your woman. Join forces with your kind in all countries; they are like you, for better or worse. Let your child grow up as nature (or 'God') intended. Don't try to improve on nature. Learn to understand it and protect it. Go to the library instead of the prize fight, go to foreign countries rather than to Coney Island. And first and foremost, think straight, trust the quiet inner voice inside you that tells you what to do. You hold your life in your hands, don't entrust it to anyone else, least of all to your chosen leaders. BE YOURSELF! Any number of great men have told you that.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. … Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
tags: freedom, insolence, slavery

“We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology

“You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say!”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope in the fact that among millions of decent, hard-working people there are only a few plague-ridden individuals, who do untold harm by appealing to the dark, dangerous drives of the armored average man and mobilizing him for political murder. There is but one antidote to the average man's predisposition to plague: his own feelings for true life. The life force does not seek power but demands only to play its full and acknowledged part in human affairs. It manifests itself through love, work and knowledge.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Full sexual consciousness and a natural
regulation of sexual life mean the end of
mystical feelings of any kind. In other words,
natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of
mystical religion. The church, by making
the fight over sexuality the center of its
dogmas and of its influence over the masses,
confirms this concept.”
― Wilhelm Reich

“Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance.

Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history.

Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. "The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame," it was now said. "Napoleon is to blame," came the reply. "The machines are to blame!" the weavers screamed, and "The lumpenproletariat is to blame," sounded back. "The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution!" the burgers shouted. "The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the proletarian dictators shout, and "The Russians are to blame," is hurled back. "Germany is to blame," the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. "England is to blame," the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And "Germany is to blame," the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. "Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame," it was said in 1940.

It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek "Guilty!" without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition

“'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition

“Because I'm a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“The "stiff, dead, retracted pelvis" is one of man's most frequent vegetative disturbances. It is responsible for lumbago as well as for hemorrhoidal disturbances. Elsewhere, we shall demonstrate an important connection between these disturbances and genital cancer in women, which is so common.
Thus, the "deadning of the pelvis" has the same function as the deadening of the abdomen, i.e., to avoid feelings, particularly those of pleasure and anxiety.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm

“I came to consider the instinct as nothing more than the "motor aspect of pleasure."
― Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm

“I can imagine no greater catastrophe than if I were mistaken, and the theory were correct that what I consider secondary instincts or drives are actually primary instincts! Because in that case the emotional plague would rest upon the support of a natural law while its archenemies, truth and sociality, would be relying upon unfounded ethics. Until now both lies and truth have taken recourse to ethics. But only lies have profited because they were able to appear under the guise of truth. Under these circumstances, egoism, theft, petty selfishness, slander, etc., would be the natural rule. (26.july.1943)”
― Wilhelm Reich, American Odyssey: Letters & Journals, 1940-1947

“I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I do not believe that to be religious in the best, authentic sense a man has to destroy his love life and mummify himself, body and soul.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Gradually it became clear that it is a fundamental error to try to give the sexual act a psychological interpretation, to attribute to it a psychic meaning as if it were a neurotic symptom. But this is what the psychoanalysts did. On the contrary: any idea occurring in the course of the sexual act only has the effect of hindering one's absorption in the excitation. Furthermore, such psychological interpretations of genitality constitute a denial of genitality as a biological function. By composing it of non-genital excitations, one denies the existence of genitality. The function of the orgasm, however, had revealed the qualitative difference between genitality and pregenitality. Only the genital apparatus can provide orgasm and can discharge sexual energy completely. Pregenitality, on the other hand, can only increase vegetative tensions. One readily sees the deep rift which formed here in psychoanalytic concepts.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm; Sex-economic Problems of Biological Energy

“What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as "the prophet of bigger and better orgasms"? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives?”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“The [character-]armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature.

The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in "material" but in "spiritual" things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature.

Both the mechanist and the mystic stand inside the limits and conceptual laws of a civilization which is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods. This civilization forms the mechanistic-mystical structures of men, and the mechanistic-mystical character structures keep reproducing a the mechanistic-mystical civilization. Both mechanists and mystics find themselves inside the framework of human structure in a civilization conditioned by mechanistics and mysticism. They cannot grasp the basic problems of this civilization because their thinking and philosophy correspond exactly to the condition they project and continue to reproduce. In order to realize the power of mysticism, one has only to think of the murderous conflict between Hindus and Muslims at the time India was divided. To comprehend what mechanistic civilization means, think of the "age of the atom bomb.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition

“Since it might appear unusual that a bio-psychiatrist should work as an expert in the realm of non-living nature, I believe it will be helpful to give the following summary:
My present work began in the realm of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, with natural scientific investigations of the energy at work in human emotions.
This led to the discovery of the bio-energy in the living organism, termed organismic orgone energy; and further to the discovery of the same type of a basically physical orgone energy in the atmosphere.
Orgonomy is not psychiatry, but the science of biophysics of the emotions, thus also including psychiatry, and physics in the realm of basic cosmic orgone energy.
It is not mysticism, but natural scientific, experimental investigation, also of mystical emotions and experiences.
Orgone energy is energy before matter (not after matter, as is atomic energy). It is studied by means of Geiger-Müller Counters and other physical instruments.
It follows entirely new, hitherto unknown functional laws of nature, and not the well known mechanical laws of electricity, heat, or mechanics.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Where's The Truth

“In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition

“How, then,' I hear you ask, 'shall I attain my end, whether it be Christian love, socialism, or American democracy?' Your Christian love and your socialism and your American democracy are what you do each day, your manner of thinking each hour, of embracing your life companion and loving your child; they are your attitude of social responsibility towards your work, and your determination not to become like the crushers of life you so hate.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“It is said culture requires slaves. I say that no cultured society can be built with slaves. This terrible Twentieth Century has made all cultural theories from Plato down seem ridiculous. Little man, there has never been a human culture.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Where's The Truth

“The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm

“I consider it an error in scientific communication that, most of the time, merely the polished and flawless results of natural research are displayed, as in an art show. And exhibit of the finished product alone has many drawbacks and dangers for both its creator and its users. The creator of the product will be only too ready to demonstrate perfection and flawlessness while concealing gaps, uncertainties and discordant contradictions of his insight into nature. He thus belittles the meaning of the real process of natural research. The user of the product will not appreciate the rigorous demands made on the natural scientist when the latter has to reveal and describe the secrets of nature in a practical way. He will never learn to think for himself and to cope by himself. Very few drivers have an accurate idea of the sum of human efforts, of the complicated thought processes and operations needed for manufacturing an automobile. Our world would be better off is the beneficiaries of work knew more about the process of work and the existence of the workers, if they did not pluck so thoughtlessly the fruits of labor performed by others.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition

“Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. "Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!!”
― Wilhelm Reich, Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

“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 o desprazer. Prazer e alegria de viver são inconcebíveis sem luta, experiências dolorosas e embates desagradáveis consigo mesmo. A saúde psíquica não se caracteriza pela teoria do nirvana dos iogues e dos budistas, nem pela hedonismo dos epicuristas, nem pela renúncia monástica; caracteriza-se, isso sim, pela alternância entre a luta desprazerosa e a felicidade, o erro e a verdade, o desvio e a correção da rota, a raiva racional e o amor racional; em suma, estar plenamente vivo em todas as situações da vida. A capacidade de suportar o desprazer e a dor sem se tornar amargurado e sem se refugiar na rigidez, anda de mãos dadas com a capacidade de aceitar a felicidade e dar amor.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm

“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”
― Wilhelm Reich, Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

“Wilhelm Reich identified "armor" as the sum total of typical character attitudes, which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, "deadness". Functionally identical to muscular armor (chronic muscular spasms)”
― Wilhelm Reich, Where's The Truth

“Tu es grand quand tu trouves ton plaisir dans le ciel bleu, dans le chevreuil, dans la rosée, dans la musique, dans la danse, quand tu admires tes enfants qui grandissent, la beauté du corps de ta femme ou de ton mari; quand tu te rends au planétarium pour étudier les astres, quand tu lis à la bibliothèque ce que d'autres hommes et femmes ont écrit sur la vie.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Voici quelques types de réactions anormales : mourir de faim face à l'abondance ; rester exposé au froid, à la pluie et à la neige, en présence de charbon, de matériel de construction et de place pour bâtir ; croire qu'une puissance divine à longue barbe blanche régit toutes choses et que l'on est à la merci de cette puissance pour le bien comme pour le mal ; massacrer d'innocentes personnes avec enthousiasme, et croire que l'on doit conquérir une région dont on n'avait jamais entendu parler auparavant ; marcher en haillons et se considérer en même temps comme le représentant de la "grandeur de la nation" ; oublier ce qu'un politicien avait promis avant de devenir chef de l'Etat ; déléguer à quelque individu que ce soit, fussent-ils hommes d'Etat, un pouvoir quasi absolu sur sa propre vie et son propre destin ; être incapable de comprendre que les soi-disant grands timoniers de l'Etat doivent eux aussi dormir, manger, répondre à l'appel de la nature, qu'eux aussi sont gouvernés par des pulsions affectives inconscientes et incontrôlables, et souffrent de dérangements sexuels comme tout autre mortel ; considérer comme évident qu'il faut battre les enfants dans l'intérêt de la "culture" ; refuser aux adolescents, qui sont dans la fleur de l'âge, le bonheur de l'union sexuelle ; et l'on peut multiplier les exemples à l'infini. (p. 29-30, Préface de la deuxième édition)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Si une minorité détient le pouvoir politique, alors elle possède également le pouvoir de constituer la structure idéologique générale. En conséquence, dans une société autoritaire, la façon de penser de la majorité du peuple correspond aux intérêts de ceux qui dominent politiquement et économique. Dans une véritable démocratie, une démocratie du travail en revanche, l'idéologie sociale correspondrait aux intérêts vitaux de tous les membres de la société. (p. 33, Préface de la deuxième édition)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“La vie sexuelle étroite, misérable, prétendument "apolitique" doit être étudiée dans son rapport avec les problèmes de la société autoritaire. La politique n'a pas pour domaine les déjeuners diplomatiques, mais la vie quotidienne. La conscience sociale est donc indispensable dans la vie quotidienne. Si les 1800 millions d'habitants de la planète parvenaient à comprendre l'action des cent principaux diplomates, tout irait pour le mieux ; la société et les besoins de l'homme ne seraient plus dès lors gouvernés par l'intérêt des armuriers et des politiciens. Mais ces 1800 millions d'hommes seront incapables de maîtriser leur propre destin tant qu'ils n'auront pas pris conscience de leur vie personnelle dans sa modestie. Ce qui les empêche, ce sont ces deux puissances intérieures : le moralisme sexuel et le mysticisme religieux. (p. 35, Préface de la seconde édition)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Celui qui ne meurt pas de faim n'a pas d'impulsion au vol et n'a donc pas besoin d'une moralité qui l'empêche de voler. La même loi fondamentale vaut pour la sexualité : celui qui est sexuellement satisfait n'a pas d'impulsion à violer et n'a pas besoin d'une moralité contrariant cette impulsion. Il s'agit d'une auto-régulation selon l'économie sexuelle, opposée à la régulation morale coercitive. (p. 38, Préface de la seconde édition)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Pour l'homme de loi, le mariage est l'union de deux personnes de sexe opposé fondée sur un document officiel ; pour le psychiatre, c'est un lien affectif fondé sur une union sexuelle, accompagné d'habitude d'un désir de paternité. Pour le psychiatre, il n'y a pas de mariage dès lors que les partenaires possèdent simplement les papiers, mais ne vivent pas ensemble. L'acte de mariage n'est pas en lui-même un mariage. Il y a mariage pour le psychiatre, lorsque deux individus de sexe opposé s'aiment, s'occupent l'un de l'autre, vivent ensemble et, pour la progéniture, font de cette union une famille. Pour le psychiatre, le mariage est une union réelle et pratique de nature sexuelle, sans considération d'une éventuelle inscription sur les registres d'état civil. Pour le psychiatre, l'acte de mariage n'est que la confirmation officielle d'une relation sexuelle décidée, entreprise et vécue par les partenaires ; il considère que ce sont les partenaires, et non les représentants de la loi, qui font qu'un mariage est ou n'est pas. (p. 188)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“[...] l'exigence de chasteté des jeunes filles prive les jeunes gens d'objets d'amour, ce qui crée les conditions typiques de notre ordre social, inévitables quoique non désirées en elles-mêmes: le mariage monogamique donne naissance à l'adultère, la chasteté des filles donne naissance à la prostitution. L'adultère et la prostitution sont le lot de la double morale sexuelle qui accorde à l'homme, avant comme pendant le mariage, ce qu'elle refuse à la femme, pour des raisons économiques. Etant donné les urgences naturelles de la sexualité, la rigueur de la morale sexuelle engendre l'opposé de ce à quoi elle vise ; l'immoralité au sens réactionnaire, c'est-à-dire l'adultère et les relations sexuelles extra-matrimoniales, se redouble en phénomènes sociaux grotesques: la perversion sexuelle d'une part, et la sexualité mercenaire, à l'intérieur comme à l'extérieur du mariage, d'autre part. (p. 85-86)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“La base de la famille des classes moyennes est la relation de type patriarcal du père avec la femme et les enfants. Il est en quelque sorte l'interprète et le symbole de l'autorité de l'Etat dans la famille. La contradiction entre son rôle de subordonné dans la production et de maître dans la famille lui confère l'aspect typique de l'adjudant-chef : servile envers les supérieurs, il s'imprègne de l'idéologie dominante (ce qui explique sa tendance à l'imitation), et règne en maître sur ses inférieurs ; il transmet les conceptions politiques et sociales et contribue à les renforcer. (p. 133-134)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“En ce qui concerne l'idéologie sexuelle, il y a coïncidence entre l'idéologie conjugale de la famille petite-bourgeoise et l'idée de famille en général, c'est-à-dire l'union monogamique définitive. Si misérables et désespérées, douloureuses et insupportables que soient la situation conjugale et la constellation familiale, les membres de la famille sont condamnés à les justifier, à l'intérieur de la famille et vis-à-vis de l'extérieur. La nécessité sociale de cette attitude conduit à masquer la misère et à idéaliser la famille et le mariage ; elle engendre également la diffusion du sentimentalisme familial, avec ses clichés de "bonheur familial", de "foyer protecteur", du "havre de paix et de bonheur" que la famille est censée représenter pour les enfants. Le fait que dans notre société la situation est encore plus lamentable en dehors du mariage et de la famille, où la vie sexuelle perd absolument tout appui matériel, légal ou moral, est interprété à tort comme signifiant que l'institution familiale est naturelle, biologique. La méprise sur le véritable état des choses, ainsi que les slogans sentimentaux qui contribuent à créer l'atmosphère idéologique, sont psychologiquement indispensables, car ils permettent au psychisme de supporter l'intolérable situation familiale. C'est pourquoi le traitement des névroses, balayant les illusions et mettant à nu la vérité des situations, est susceptible de détruire les liens conjugaux et familiaux. (p. 134)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Le but de l'éducation, dès son origine, est d'élever les enfants en vue du mariage et de la famille. (p. 134)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“A l'inhibition sexuelle résultant directement de la fixation aux parents, viennent s'ajouter les sentiments de culpabilité qui dérivent de l'énormité de la haine accumulée au cours d'années de vie familiale.
Si cette haine reste consciente elle peut devenir un puissant facteur révolutionnaire individuel : elle poussera le sujet à rompre les attaches familiales et pourra servir à promouvoir une action dirigée contre les conditions productrices de cette haine.
Si au contraire cette haine est refoulée, elle donne naissance aux attitudes inverses de fidélité aveugle et d'obéissance infantile. Ces attitudes constituent bien entendu un lourd handicap pour celui qui veut militer dans un mouvement libéral ; un individu de ce genre pourra fort bien être partisan d'une liberté complète, et en même temps envoyer ses enfants à l'école du dimanche, ou continuer à fréquenter l'église "pour ne pas faire de peine à ses vieux parents" ; il présentera des symptômes d'indécision et de dépendance, séquelles de la fixation à la famille ; il ne pourra vraiment combattre pour la liberté.
Mais la même situation familiale peut aussi produire l'individu "névrotiquement révolutionnaire", spécimen fréquent chez les intellectuels bourgeois. Les sentiments de culpabilité, liés aux sentiments révolutionnaires, en font un militant peu sûr dans un mouvement révolutionnaire. (p. 140)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“L'éducation sexuelle familiale est condamnée à détériorer la sexualité de l'individu. Si tel ou tel individu réussit malgré tout à accéder à une vie sexuelle saine, il le fait d'ordinaire aux dépens des liens familiaux.
La répression des besoins sexuels provoque l'anémie intellectuelle et émotionnelle générale, et en particulier le manque d'indépendance, de volonté et d'esprit critique. La société autoritaire n'est pas liée à la "morale en soi", mais bien plutôt aux altérations de l'être psychique, qui, destinées à l'ancrage de la morale sexuelle, constituent en premier lieu cette structure mentale qui est la base psychique collective de toute société autoritaire. La structure servile est un mixte d'impuissance sexuelle, de détresse, d'aspiration à un appui, à un Führer, de crainte de l'autorité, de peur de la vie et de mysticisme. Elle se caractérise par un loyalisme dévot mêlé de révolte. La peur de la sexualité et l'hypocrisie sexuelle caractérisent le "bourgeois" et son milieu. Les individus ayant cette structure sont inaptes à un mode de vie démocratique, et annihilent tout effort destiné à instituer et à maintenir des organisations régies par des principes véritablement démocratiques. Ils constituent le terrain psychologique sur lequel peuvent proliférer les tendances dictatoriales ou bureaucratiques de dirigeants démocratiquement élus. (p. 140-141)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“En somme, la fonction politique de la famille est double :
1. Elle se reproduit elle-même en mutilant sexuellement les individus. En se perpétuant, la famille patriarcale perpétue la répression sexuelle et tout ce qui en dérive : troubles sexuels, névroses, démences et crimes sexuels.
2. Elle rend l'individu apeuré par la vie et craintif devant l'autorité, et renouvelle donc sans cesse la possibilité de soumettre des populations entières à la férule d'une poignée de dirigeants.
C'est pourquoi la famille revêt pour le conservateur cette signification privilégiée de rempart de l'ordre social auquel il croit. On s'explique aussi pourquoi la sexologie conservatrice défend si opiniâtrement l'institution familiale. C'est qu'elle "garantit la stabilité de l'Etat et de la Société", au sens conservateur, réactionnaire, de ces notions. La valeur attribuée à la famille devient donc la clé de l'appréciation générale de chaque type d'ordre social. (p. 141)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“La science, dans la mesure où elle est inconsciemment influencée par l'idéologie réactionnaire, formule des thèses destinées à fournir une base scientifique solide à cette idéologie. Bien souvent, elle ne va pas jusque-là, et se contente de se référer à la célèbre "nature morale" de l'homme. Ce faisant, elle oublie son propre point de vue, qu'elle ne manque cependant pas d'opposer à ses adversaires idéologiques, selon lequel la tâche légitime de la science se limite à décrire les faits en dehors de toute appréciation, et à expliquer ces faits quant à leur causalité. Lorsqu'elle veut faire mieux que justifier les exigences sociales par un simple recours aux idées morales, elle use d'une méthode objectivement bien plus dangereuse, car elle dissimule les points de vues moraux derrière des thèses pseudo-scientifiques. La moralité se trouve ainsi "scientifiquement" rationalisée. (p. 148-149)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“L'inconvénient majeur de la liaison passagère, du point de vue de l'économie sexuelle, c'est qu'elle ne permet pas une adaptation sensuelle des partenaires aussi complète que la liaison durable, ni par conséquent une satisfaction sexuelle aussi complète. Du point de vue de l'économie sexuelle, c'est là l'objection sérieuse à la liaison passagère et le meilleur argument en faveur de liaison durable. Les champions du mariage pousseront ici un soupir d'aise, croyant pouvoir réintroduire frauduleusement le moralisme monogamique. Mais nous serons obligés de les décevoir à nouveau : quand nous parlons de liaison durable, nous ne fixons pas de limites de temps ; du point de vue de l'économie sexuelle, il se peut que cet liaison dure des semaines, des mois, deux ans ou dix ans ; et nous ne disons pas non plus que cette relation doit ou devrait être monogamique ; car nous ne fixons pas de normes. (p. 193)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Familia y escuela, desde un punto de vista político, no son otra cosa que talleres del orden social burgués destinados a la fabricación de sujetos discretos y obedientes. El padre, según la imagen tradicional, es el representante de las autoridades burguesas y del poder del Estado en la familia. La autoridad del Estado exige de los adultos la misma actitud obediente y sumisa que impone el padre (…)
La limitación de la libertad de la actividad psíquica y de la crítica mediante la represión sexual es uno de los pilares más importantes del orden sexual burgués.
La intimidación y la atrofia sexuales, así como el despertar en los hijos el miedo a la autoridad por sus deseos, pensamientos y actos sexuales, constituyen el nudo del aparato psíquico con ayuda del cual la familia esclaviza a la juventud al capital”
― Wilhelm Reich, La Lucha Sexual de los Jóvenes

“La liaison sexuelle permanente contient de nombreux germes de conflit, non moins que toute autre type de relation durable. Ce qui nous occupe ce ne sont pas les difficultés humaines générales, mais les difficultés spécifiquement sexuelles qui s'y ajoutent. La plus importante de celles-ci, c'est le conflit entre l'amortissement (temporaire ou définitif) du désir sensuel et l'accroissement de la tendresse pour le partenaire.
Dans toute relation sexuelle en effet, tôt ou tard, souvent ou rarement, apparaissent des périodes de faible attraction sensuelle, ou même d'absence complète de désir. C'est un fait d'expérience sur lequel aucun argument moral n'a de prise ; l'intérêt sexuel ne se commande pas. Mieux les partenaires seront assortis sous le rapport de la sensualité et de la tendresse, moins fréquents et irréversibles seront ces épisodes. Néanmoins toute relation sexuelle est exposée à cet amortissement. Ce fait n'aurait guère d'importance s'il ne s'y ajoutait que :
1. L'affaiblissement peut se produire chez un seul partenaire.
2. La plupart des liaisons sexuelles sont actuellement compliquées de liens économiques (dépendance de la femme et des enfants).
3. Indépendamment de ces difficultés extérieures, il existe une difficulté interne qui rend compliquée la seule solution logique : la séparation et la recherche d'un autre partenaire. (p. 195-196)”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure

“Eu sei, eu sei, tu queres os teus "génios" e estás disposto a homenageá-los. No entanto, tu queres génios simpáticos, bem comportados, moderados, sem nada de insensato, não a variedade não domesticada que derruba a todos os obstáculos e limites. Tu queres um génio limitado, aparado e podado, que possas exibir em desfiles pelas ruas das tuas cidades sem constrangimento”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

Erik Erikson - Quotes

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)

"Doubt is the brother of shame."
― Erik Erikson ("The Problem of Ego Identity," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1956)

"What was Freud's Galapagos, what species fluttered what kinds of wings before his searching eyes? It has often been pointed out derisively: his creative laboratory was the neurologist's office, the dominant species hysterical ladies."
― Erik Erikson (The First Psychoanalyst, 1957)

"The growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience (his ego synthesis) is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1994)

"Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness."
― Erik Erikson (Young Man Luther : A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, 1958)

"It is only after a reasonable sense of identity has been established that real intimacy with others can be possible. The youth who is not sure of his or her identity shies away from interpersonal intimacy, and can become, as an adult, isolated or lacking in spontaneity, warmth or the real exchange of fellowship in relationship to others; but the surer the person becomes of their self, the more intimacy is sought in the form of friendship, leadership, love and inspiration. The counterpart to intimacy is distantiation, which is the readiness to repudiate those forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to one’s own."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1959)

"Despair expresses the feeling that time is short, too short for the attempt to start a new life and to try out alternate roads to integrity. Such a despair is often hidden behind a show of disgust, or a chronic contemptuousness. Integrity, therefore, implies an emotional integration which permits participation by followership as well as acceptance of the responsibility of leadership."
― Erik Erikson (Identity and the Life Cycle, 1959)

"Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom."
― Erik Erikson (Childhood and Society, 1950)

"Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent wishes, in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the beginning of existence. Hope is the ontogenetic basis of faith, and is nourished by the adult faith which pervades patterns of care."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)

"Will, therefore, is the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint, in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy."
― Erik Erikson (The Erik Erikson Reader, 2000)