Quotes About Neurosis

le n**** esclave de son infériorité, le Blanc esclave de sa supériorité, se comportent tous deux selon une ligne d'orientation névrotique.

The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.

Nothing is a blinding as neurotic self-pity. We walk around in a fog.

Self-rejection is simply seen as the neurotic expression of an insecure person. But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voics that calls us the Beloved.

I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important... I simply can't think about anything else, that's all. If I could fall in love with a woman that might help some. But I can't find a woman who interests me.

as Sylvester says, a man who has never been afflicted with a neurosis does not know the meaning of suffering.

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

Often we take personally the slings and arrows of our 'abusers'. But frequently we are merely the interchangeable pawns of their own neurotic dramas. Anyone else in your position would have received the same treatment. There is nothing especially noxious or negatively noteworthy about you.

The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious.

As so often in neurotic phenomena—or is it always?—we find that the patient's reasoning, conscious or unconscious, is flawless, but rests on false premises.

when he [the neurotic] becomes aware of his despair he usually cannot account for it. He will be likely to ascribe it to various external factors, ranging from his job or his marriage to the political situation. But it is not due to any concrete or temporary circumstance. He feels hopeless about ever making anything of his life, ever being happy or free. He feels forever excluded from all that could make his life meaningful.

We can say this much, however: a normal [inner] conflict can be entirely conscious; a neurotic conflict in all its essential elements is always unconscious. Even though a normal person may be unaware of his conflict, he can recognize it with comparatively little help, while the essential tendencies producing a neurotic conflict are deeply repressed and can be unearthed only against great resistance.

If, however, we look upon introversion (or, as I prefer to call it, neurotic detachment) as a means of evading conflicts that arise in close contact with others, the task is not to encourage more extraversion but to analyze the underlying conflicts. The goal of wholeheartedness can be approximated only after these have been resolved.

It is impossible to present the basic conflict by simply showing it in operation in a number of individuals. Because of its disruptive power the neurotic builds a defensive structure around it which serves not only to blot it from view but so deeply imbeds it that it cannot be isolated in pure form. The result is that what appears on the surface is more the various attempts at solution than the conflict itself.

The neurotic's desire is not his or her "own" in the first place, for it has never been subjectified. Subjectfication is the goal of analysis: subjectification of the cause-that is, of the Other's desire as cause.

Therapists tend to have very little appreciation for the fact that other people function in radically different ways from themselves, even when both patient and therapist are neurotic!

Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective. So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle everyday? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything anther than galloping neurosis?

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.

Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.

For you become your own audience, in some respects a very lax one, in some respects very exacting, when you become involved in psychologically stylistic subterfuges for presenting your own case to yourself in sympathetic terms (and even terms that seem harsh can often be found on closer scrutiny to be flattering, as with neurotics who visit sufferings upon themselves in the name of very high-powered motives which, whatever their discomfiture, feed pride).

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.

Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.