Neurosis Quotes

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

  Sigmund Freud

  Talking, Complaining, Lioness

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.

  Erich Fromm

  Children, Fighting, Scar

  Erich Fromm (1947). “Man for Himself”

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• Experience teaches that for most people there is a limit beyond which their constitution cannot comply with the demands of civilization. All who wish to reach a higher standard than their constitution will allow, fall victims to neurosis. It would have been better for them if they could have remained less "perfect".

  Sigmund Freud

  Fall, Civilization, People

  Sigmund Freud, Philip Rieff (1997). “Sexuality and The Psychology of Love”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.

  Carl Jung

  Spiritual, People, Personality

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• Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

  Sigmund Freud

  Creativity, Ideas, Innovation

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

  Carl Jung

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Carl Gustav Jung (1969). “Psychology and religion: west and east”

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• To me, acting is the most logical way for people's neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves.

  James Dean

  People, Acting, Needs

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Intelligence

  Enemies of Promise ch. 13 (1938)

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• It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Writing, Energy, Novel

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• Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relation between the ego and the external world.

  Sigmund Freud

  Psychosis, Ego, World

  Sigmund Freud (1973). “Abstracts of the Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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• We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.

  Sigmund Freud

  Hysteria, Artistic Creation, May

  Sigmund Freud (2009). “Totem and Taboo”, p.96, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Even in my first analysis of a depressive psychosis, I was immediately struck by its structural similarity with obsessional neurosis.

  Karl Abraham

  Psychosis, Analysis, Firsts

  Karl Abraham (1988). “Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, M.D.”

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• Far more unwaveringly, the neurotic keeps before his eye his God, his idol, his ideal of personality and clings to his guiding principle, losing sight in the meanwhile of reality, whereas the normal person is always ready to dispense with this crutch, this aid, and reckon unhampered with reality.

  Alfred Adler

  Fiction, Medical, Crosses

  "The Neurotic Constitution: Outlines Of A Comparative Individualistic Psychology And Psychotherapy".

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• The search for safety takes its clearest form... in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis... to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear.

  Abraham Maslow

  Order, Safety, Insecurity

  Abraham H. Maslow, Deborah C. Stephens (2000). “The Maslow Business Reader”, p.260, John Wiley & Sons

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• Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.

  Lionel Trilling

  Judgment, Ends, Form

  "Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition", ed. William Philips, 1985.

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• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Psychosis, Doubt, Problem

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1973). “The second sin”, Anchor

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• Education, like neurosis, begins at home.

  Milton Sapirstein

  Home, Parenting, Inspire

  Milton R. Sapirstein (1955). “Paradoxes of Everyday Life: A Psychoanalyst's Interpretations”

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• The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

  William Styron

  Writing, Age, Young Writers

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources.

  Twyla Tharp

  Giving, Wish, Resources

  Twyla Tharp, Mark Reiter (2003). “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”, Simon and Schuster

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• Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

  Anatole France

  Inspirational, Acceptance, Risk

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• A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.

  Sigmund Freud

  Degrees, Psychologist, Certain

  "Analysis with Freud" by Joseph Wortis, 1954.

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• My work is not about my life history. It's not about the story of my neurosis

  Anish Kapoor

  Stories

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• National isolation breeds national neurosis.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Isolation

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• Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Worry, Anxiety

  Charles Dickens (1845). “The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year in”, p.114

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

  Kenneth Tynan

  Keeping Secrets, Sanity, Knows

  "The Life of Kenneth Tynan". Book by Katharine Tynan, p. 188, 1987.

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