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.

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.

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

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.

Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as ''right'' in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as ''brute force.''

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.

The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness.