Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005
Astro-Rayological
Interpretation & Charts
Quotes
Biography
Images and Physiognomic
Interpretation
A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.
He does not believe that does not live according to his belief .
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved!
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.
I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
If youth knew; if age could.
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.
Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.
Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
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.
No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.
One is very crazy when in love.
Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
The ego is not master in its own house.
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
The goal of all life is death.
The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"
The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life.
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.
The only bodily organ which is really regarded as inferior is the atrophied penis, a girl's clitoris.
The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.
We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
1856 - 6 May: Sigismund Freud is born (to change his name to Sigmund at 22). According to custom, he is also given a Jewish name: Schlomo. His birthplace is Freiberg (nowadays Pribor) in Moravia (the Czech Republic). His father Jacob is 41 and has two children from a previous marriage: Emmanuel and Philippe. Sigismund's mother is 21 and this is her first born.
1859 - The economic crisis ruins Jacob's business. The family settles in Vienna, in Leopoldstadt, the Jewish neighborhood (February 1860). 1865 - Sigmund is admitted to the Gymnasium (secondary school) a year ahead his time.
1870 - He receives Ludwig Borne complete works; reading these books will influence him greatly.
1872 - He returns to Freiberg to spend his holidays.
1873 - He receives a summa cum laudae award on graduation from secondary school. He is congratulated on his style in German. He is already able to read in several languages. Under his colleague's Heinrich Braun influence, he plans to study law but finally decides in favor of medical school, after having attended a lecture on Goethe's essay On Nature. Start his studies at Vienna University.
1874 - While at university, he discovers anti-Jewish prejudices and declares his place is "with the opposition". Attends Brentano's lectures.
1875 - Travels to Manchester, Britain, to see Philippe and his niece Pauline.
1876 - His first personal research in Trieste, on sexual glands of anguilas. Joins Brucke's laboratory.
1877 - Publishes the result of his anatomical research on the central nervous system of a specific larva.
1878 - His research in Brucke's laboratory bring him to a step's distance from the discovery of the neuron (called as such by Waldeyer in 1891). Becomes a friend of Breuer, his 14 years senior, who provides him moral and material support.
1879 - Attends Meynert's courses in psychiatry. His sole interest is the neurological aspect of issues under debate.
1880 - A year of military service. Breuer provides treatment to Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.). Freud translates 4 essays by Stuart Mills. He is not willing to dedicate himself to medical practice but rather to research or teaching. .
1881 - A delayed award of a doctor's degree in medicine.
1882 - Given the material difficulties he is undergoing, Freud cannot dedicate himself to a career in research. He meets Martha Bernays (of family of Jewish intellectuals) and intends to get married with her. In November, Breuer talks to him about the Anna O. case, which had been interrupted in June.
1883 - Joins Meynert's service in the Psychiatric Hospital.
1884 - Discovers the analgesic properties of cocaine. Carl Koller is the one publishing a successful study in that respect. Freud himself uses cocaine as a tonic but prescribes it to his friend Fleischl who was morphine addicted, thereby aggravating his situation [learn more… ]. He is criticized in medical circles. He starts treating "nervous" disorders by means of electrotherapy and applies W. Erb's method. He at the same time devised a method for coloring neurologic preparations (for the microscope) and publishes an article in that respect as well as a monograph on coke.
1885 - Hold a temporary position in a private clinic where hypnosis is used. He destroys all his documents in April. He is appointed Privatdozent, then is awarded a grant for a study tour and chooses to go to Paris, to visit Charcot at the Salpetriere Hospital. He is able to observe the manifestations of hysteria and the effects of hypnosis and suggestion here. Charcot leaves him with special impression. Freud volunteers to translate his lectures.
His life
He was born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in Freiberg, Moravia (now known as Pribor in the Czech Republic). In 1877, he abbreviated his name from Sigismund Schlomo Freud to .
Little is known of Freud's early life as he twice destroyed his personal papers, once in 1885 and again in 1907. Additionally, his later papers were closely guarded in the Archives and only available to Ernest Jones, his official biographer, and a few other members of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. The work of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shed some light on the nature of the suppressed material.
In 1938 following the Nazi German Anschluss of Austria, Freud escaped with his family to England. He died in England in 1939.
Freud's daughter Anna Freud was also a distinguished psychologist, particularly in the fields of child and developmental psychology. Sigmund is the grandfather of painter Lucian Freud and comedian and writer Clement Freud, and the great-grandfather of journalist Emma Freud, fashion designer Bella Freud and PR man Matthew Freud.
May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist, who became interested in hypnotism and how it could be used to help the mentally ill. He later abandoned hypnotism in favor of free association and dream analysis in developing what is now known as "the talking cure." These became the core elements of psychoanalysis. Freud was especially interested in what was then called hysteria, and is now called conversion syndrome.
Freud, his theories, and his treatment of his patients were controversial in 19th century Vienna, and remain hotly debated today. His ideas are often discussed and analyzed as works of literature and general culture in addition to continuing debate around them as scientific and medical treatises. As one critic put it in 2003, the followers of consider him "... a great medical scientist who uncovered important truths about human psychology...", while others (especially in competing fields such as psychiatry) see him as a "...philosophical visionary who re-imagined human nature and helped us confront taboos, but whose theories, offered as science, fail under scrutiny".
His life
He was born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in Freiberg, Moravia (now known as Pribor in the Czech Republic). In 1877, he abbreviated his name from Sigismund Schlomo Freud to .
Little is known of Freud's early life as he twice destroyed his personal papers, once in 1885 and again in 1907. Additionally, his later papers were closely guarded in the Archives and only available to Ernest Jones, his official biographer, and a few other members of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. The work of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shed some light on the nature of the suppressed material.
In 1938 following the Nazi German Anschluss of Austria, Freud escaped with his family to England. He died in England in 1939.
Freud's daughter Anna Freud was also a distinguished psychologist, particularly in the fields of child and developmental psychology. Sigmund is the grandfather of painter Lucian Freud and comedian and writer Clement Freud, and the great-grandfather of journalist Emma Freud, fashion designer Bella Freud and PR man Matthew Freud.
