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Quotes by Psychologist
"If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being it must be a virtue - and not a vice - to love myself since I am a human being too."
"Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security."
"The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality[,] consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than an abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research."Psychoanalysis and sociology. Pp. 37-39 inCritical theory and society: A reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. New York: Routledge."
"What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make him seek answers in certain directions. Any kind of thought, true or false, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it."
"Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold."
"Jesus and Satan appear here as repre sentatives of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and Man. Jesus is the representative of being, and of the idea that not-having is the premise for being. The world has followed Satan's principles, since the time of the gospels."
"The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself."
"The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears-because the world outside, from which one is separated, has disappeared."
"Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves."
"Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEINGHAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even peopleBEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people."
"To transcend nature, to be alienated from nature and from another human being, finds man naked, ashamed. He is alone and free, yet powerless and afraid."
"Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise."
"It was the irrational doubt which springs from the isolation and powerlessness of an individual whose attitude toward the world is one of anxiety and hatred. This irrational doubt can never be cured by rational answers, it can only disappear if the individual becomes and integral part of a meaningful world."
"There is nothing to indicate any biological need for an exclusive primary bond; nothing to suggest that mothering cannot be shared by several people."
"I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind."
"We are what we do."
"The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness.Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness with God."
"The polarity between the male and female principles exists also within each man and each woman. Just as physiologically man and woman each have hormones of the opposite sex, they are bisexual also in the psychological sense. They carry in themselves the principle of receiving and of penetrating, of matter and of spirit. Man-and woman-finds union within himself only in the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity."
"If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?"
"Progress in social psychology is necessary to counteract the dangers which arise from the progress in physics and medicine."
"So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter."
"What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay."
"Man can attempt to become one with the world by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. In this way, he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself, and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted."
"But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life."
"Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it."
"Giving is the highest expression of potency."
"Human nature, though being the product of historical evolution, has certain inherent mechanisms and laws, to discover which is the task of psychology."
"What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make him seek answers in certain directions. Any kind of though, true or false, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it."
"Man absolutely cannot live by himself."
"What is freedom as a human experience? Is the desire for freedom something inherent in human nature? Is it an identical experience regardless of what kind of culture a person lives in, or is it something different according to the degree of individualism reached in a particular society? Is freedom only the absence of external pressure or is it also the presence of something-and if so, of what? What are the social and economic factors in society that make for the striving for freedom? Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from? Why then is it that freedom is for many a cherished goal and for others a threat?"
"They have their big, ever-changing egos, but none has a self, a core, a sense of identity."
"To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here and now, and not to think of the next thing to be done, while I am doing something right now."
"If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated."
"Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little we did not yet know the human invention of the lie - not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one's voice, one's gesture, one's eyes, one's facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally, to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only "people," but the very people we trusted most - our parents, teachers, leaders."
"Capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labor). Power follows from possession, not from activity."
"We... have created a greater material wealth than any other society in the history of the human race. Yet we have managed to kill off millions of our population in an arrangement which we call "war."
"The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness."
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