Quotes About Neurosis

In other words, we have once more come unawares upon the riddle which has so often confronted us: whence does neurosis come—what is its ultimate, its own peculiar raison d'être ? After tens of years of psychoanalytic labours, we are as much in the dark about this problem as we were at the start.

All we need to do is to make a slight modification in our description of their determinant of anxiety, in the sense that it is no longer a matter of feeling the want of, or actually losing the object itself, but of losing the object's love. [...] it appears probable that, as a determinant of anxiety, loss of love plays much the same part in hysteria as the threat of castration does in phobias and fear of the super-ego in obsessional neurosis.

As the neurosis proceeds, we often find that the endeavour to undo a traumatic experience is a motive of first-rate importance in the formation of symptoms.

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.

Mi-am pierdut, în contact cu oamenii, toat? prospeÅ£imea nevrozelor. (Silogismele amaraciunii)

A civilization develops from agriculture to the paradox. Between these two extremities occurs the struggle between barbarism and neurosis: resulting in the unstable equilibrium of creative epochs. This struggle is reaching its end: All horizons are opening without any being able to excite a curiosity at once weary and awakened. It is then up to the disabused individual to flourish in the void, up to the intellectual vampire to lap up the tainted blood of civilizations.

The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.

In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself.

Some of us shorten our names or our noses or both... We Jews can be extremely neurotic and are inclined to become easily depressed. Most Jews seldom say, 'Have a nice day' or even have one. To be honest, I've never heard a Jew say that. We're just not that optimistic. Life is neither a bed of roses nor a bowl of cherries.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

No wonder I'm anxious: I'm like Woody Allen trapped in John Calvin.

There is no denying that we are suffering from a collective neurosis and the novel which does not face this is not a novel of our time.

I've done it with all my films. I always keep an eye on the first time I show it because... I don't know. Neurosis.

Albert Hofmann once put it . . . All attempts today to make amends for the damage through environmentally protective measures must remain only hopeless, superficial patchwork, if no curing of the "Western entelechy neurosis" ensues. . . . Healing would mean existential experience of a deeper, self-encompassing reality.

I swim in a pool of my own neurosis. I carry love, grief deeply, like an Irishman.

As a form of neurosis, race-conscious nationalism almost always ignores logic and knowledge: In the East European civil wars between 1918 and 1920 Jews were slaughtered for a variety of contradictory reasons, as capitalists and as communists, as friends of the Ukrainians, as Polonophiles, as pro-German-just as it suited the circumstances.

Well I gave a lot of time to women and if I had my time again I don't think I would do it that way. I was letting my neurosis monopolise my life.

I believe that even the worst people on the planet believe that they are somehow justified in their neurosis.

Paradoxically, it is the so-called pleasure-chasers—the men who seemingly live for nothing but the sensation of the moment, who are concerned only with having a good time—who are psychologically incapable of enjoying pleasure as an end in itself. The neurotic pleasure-chaser imagines that, by going through the motions of celebration, he will be able to make himself feel that he has something to celebrate.

If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.

I might not seem like the type who could sit at an outdoor cafe drinking a latte, but I am. Why? No motion required. It's just sitting. Sitting and sipping. I can't imagine a neurosis that would prevent one from raising one's arm to one's mouth while holding a cup, though given time, I'm sure I could come up with one.

Un neurótico no necesita un terapeuta que le cure ni un padre que le cuide. Todo lo que necesita es un maestro que le muestre en qué punto del camino se perdió.

He belongs, as I do, to those who seek after meaning and he had discovered that meaning was no more than a gilded statue, a seven-day wonder, and a rather tasteless statue at that. … Meaning is a compulsive neurosis. It is only when the neurosis goes away, or we are cured of it, that we can live.

The neurotic opts out of life because he is having trouble maintaining his illusions about it, which proves nothing less than that life is possible only with illusions.