Quotes from Theodor Reik

Women in general want to be loved for what they are and men for what they accomplish.

The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-forgetting.

Romance fails us and so do friendships, but the relationship of parent and child, less noisy than all the others, remains indelible and indestructible, the strongest relationship on earth

To express unafraid and unashamed what one really thinks and feels is one of the great consolations of life.

We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death.

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.

The repressed memory is like a noisy intruder being thrown out of the concert hall. You can throw him out, but he will bang on the door and continue to disturb the concert. The analyst opens the door and says, If you promise to behave yourself, you can come back in.

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.

Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream world into reality.

Women in general want to be loved for what they are and men for what they accomplish.

The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-forgetting.

if you cannot hate you cannot love. If you cannot bite you can not kiss. If you cannot curse you cannot bless. Who cannot be a good hater will be a poor lover.

Women see through each other, but they rarely look into themselves

The fear to love reaches sometimes the depth of a panic, resembles sometimes the fear to die.

In our civilization men are afraid they will not be men enough, and women are afraid they might be considered only women.

He who licks his wounds cannot be affectionate

It was strange to find that love does not spring from abundance and richness of the ego, but is a way out of inner distress and poverty. We were surprised to discover that our first love is not directed either to another person or to ourselves, but to an imaginary ideal ego, to an image of ourselves as we would like to be. There are stranger discoveries awaiting us the more deeply we grope in the dark and the further we intrude into the secret places of the human heart.

The original restrictive meaning of sexual aberration which derives satisfaction from a passive relation to the partner has been retained. Masochism, however, has come to mean also a particular attitude toward life or a definite type of social behavior: of enjoying one's own suffering or one's own helplessness. The word has outgrown its narrower, sexual meaning and become desexualized.

Anybody possessing analytical knowledge recognizes the fact that the world is full of actions performed by people exclusively to their detriment and without perceptible advantage, although their eyes were open

There are recurring cycles, ups and downs, but the course of events is essentially the same, with small variations. It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.

Even the wisest men make fools of themselves about women and even the most foolish women are wise about men.

In our civilization men are afraid they will not be men enough and women are afraid they might be considered only women.