Quotes About Instinct

It is a characteristic common to all perversions that in them reproduction as an aim is put aside.

Man seems not to have been endowed, or to have been endowed to only a very small degree, with an instinctive recognition of the dangers that threaten him from without.

The stronger the constitutional factor, the more readily will a trauma lead to a fixation and leave behind a developmental disturbance; the stronger the trauma, the more certainly will its injurious effects become manifest even when the instinctual situation is normal.

In studying the phenomena which testify to the activity of the destructive instinct, we are not confined to observations on pathological material. Numerous facts of normal mental life call for an explanation of this kind, and the sharper our eye grows, the more copiously they strike us.

At any rate, we can see that repression is not the only means which the ego can employ for the purpose of defence against an unwelcome instinctual impulse. If it succeeds in making an instinct regress, it will actually have done it more injury than it could have by repressing it. Sometimes, indeed, after forcing an instinct to regress in this way, it goes on to repress it.

We should be quite wrong if we pictured the ego and the id as two opposing camps and if we supposed that, when the ego tries to suppress a part of the id by means of repression, the remainder of the id comes to the rescue of the endangered part and measures its strength with the ego. This may often be what happens, but it is certainly not the initial situation in repression. As a rule the instinctual impulse which is to be repressed remains isolated.

The aggressive impulse flows mainly from the destructive instinct; and we have always believed that in a neurosis it is against the demands of the libido and not against those of any other instinct that the ego is defending itself.

What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as we like, who can go outside whenever we wish, and run free - we who have no master constantly needling to be pleased, or obeyed.

believe we must all retain, throughout our whole lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return.

The only animal that commits suicide is also the only animal that weeps.

It is widely believed that although animals don't know that one day they'll die, many of them do know when they're actually dying. So at what point does a dying animal become aware of what's happening? Could it possibly be a long time before? And how do animals respond to aging? Are they completely puzzled, or do they somehow intuit what the signs mean? Are these foolish questions? I acknowledge that they are. And yet they preoccupy me.

There is an animal in all of us who knows how to survive.

Dogs know things. They know and know and know.

Why is it that animals instantly recognize the human beings who find them most repellent, and immediately focus all their attention on those poor unfortunates?

There is no such thing as maternal instinct: the word does not in any case apply to the human species. The mother's attitude is defined by her total situation and by the way she accepts it.

Every act should be considered from the point of view not of its object but of its impulsion. The question is not 'What is the aim?' It is 'What is the origin?

But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit. It is the natural instinct of the once-antinomian prodigal who, when awakened, thinks in terms of working his way back into the favor of his father.38

This same distortion appears when the gospel is preached to the natural man. Boston was all too familiar with the instinct of the awakened individual to say, "I will now try much harder, and I will do better." It seems logical: I realize I have failed. I must reverse this failure by doing better. But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit.

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.

Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it.

Step #1. Identify how a bad vibe feels in your body. Pay attention to how you physically sense bad vibes, such as when someone is lying or misleading you, or when something does not feel right

I've never felt so bereft and panicky. What do I do without my phone? How do I function? My hand keeps automatically reaching for my phone in its usual place in my pocket. Every instinct in me wants to text someone, 'OMG, I've lost my phone!' but how can do that without a bloody phone?

Every instinct in me wants to text someone OMG, I've lost my phone! but how can I do that without a bloody phone?

But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what's important in life. And I have this very strong gut instinct that what I've done is the right thing. Maybe not the easy thing—but the right thing.