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Quote by Sigmund Freud

Work

The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

This book is a seminal work in the field of psychology, compiling the extensive writings of Sigmund Freud, a pioneer in the development of psychoanalysis. It includes his seminal theories on the unconscious mind, dreams, and the structure of the psyche. more

Author

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, in Moravia, and died on September 23, 1939, in London, was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Known as the father of modern psychology, Freud made significant contributions to the understanding of human psychology, introducing concepts such as the unconscious mind, dream analysis, and sexual theory. more

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“A state of consciousness is characteristically very transitory; an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later, although it can become so again under certain conditions that are easily brought about.”

“Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.”

“The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horse back, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces.”

“The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the 'cortical homunculus' of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces”

“When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us.”

“In the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure.”