Sigmund Freud Quotes

Quotes by and about Sigmund Freud

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Carl Jung: "Freud is a very neurotic character. ... This makes it hard to determine his type."

Freud: "All my life I have had to tell people truths that were difficult to swallow."

Freud: "[I hear that many people have] a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the [universe]. From my own experience [I do not have] such a feeling. ... There is nothing of which [I am] more certain than the feeling of [my] self, of [my] ego."

Freud: "[My public presentations are] crude stuff meant for the masses."

Freud: "By nature I lack a talent for philosophy."

Freud: "Philosophy with its abstract nature is unpleasant to me."

Freud: "[Unlike Jung and Adler] I so rarely feel the need for synthesis. The unity of this world seems to me something self-understood, something unworthy of emphasis."

Freud: "[Maybe I] have taken too serious and profound a view of details."

Freud: "I know that [my personality] is very favorable for slow succes."

Freud: "My thought ... seems precious to me because they are the result of my own efforts."

Freud: "I cannot imagine life without work as at all comfortable."

Freud: "I am not a great man [and] not a great spirit."

Freud: "I present [my thought] dogmatically as if they were a finished doctrinal edifice. But don't suppose that it immediately came into being that way like a philosophical system. [I] have developed it very slowly, wrestled for a long time for every little piece, [and] modified it continually in constant touch with observation."

Freud: "I certainly have a disposition towards tyranny."

Freud: "[My] growing resentment towards the ... world was no doubt intensified by the necessity of having to be kind and tolerant every day."

Freud: "I am not one who intuitively 'gets' people."

Freud: "[I found that] the personal emotional relation between doctor and patient ... escaped every effort at control."

Freud: "I think I can say in my defence that an intolerant man, dominated by an arrogant belief in his own infallibility, would never have been able to maintain his hold upon so large a number of intelligent people, especially if he had at his command as few practical attractions as I had."

Freud [in a personal letter to a friend:] "You really should know about me that I have always been dissatisfied with my mental endowments and I can give myself a precise account of my deficiencies."

[When confronted with Goethe's collected works at Weimar:]
Freud: "To think he wrote all of that in order not to show himself."

Carl Jung: "[When I met Freud I found him] extremely shrewd, intelligent and altogether remarkable. [But] I could not quite make him out."

Carl Jung: "Freud was always a bit impatient. He always hoped to find some shortcut."

Carl Jung: "[Freud's attitude] always seemed to say: 'If they don't understand me, they must be stamped into Hell.'"

Carl Jung: "I met Freud when he was already a man in his fifties. His general way of living was a genuinely introverted style."

Carl Jung: "I would think [Freud] was extraverted."

Carl Jung: "[Freud's theory] is strictly limited to empirical facts [and] accords the greatest role to sensation."

Carl Jung: "When Freud says that the unconscious is 'only able to wish', this observation contains a large measure of truth for the unconscious of the extraverted type."

Carl Jung: "[In] the Extraverted Rational [i.e. E-J] types ... The judgment [of external objects] would take as its basis the observer's own individual psychology, which would be forcibly imposed upon the observed objects. To my mind, this is the case in the psychologies both of Freud and of Adler."

Carl Jung: "Freud's view is essentially extraverted, Adler's introverted. ... Freud and Adler are equally one-sided as representatives of one type."

Carl Jung: "Freud was not much of a philosopher, he was strictly a man trained in medicine."

Carl Jung: "I always recognized Freud's greatness and genius, but he was extremely headstrong. ... Once he said to me: 'We have to turn the theory of the unconscious into a dogma to make it immovable.'"

Carl Jung: "Freudian explanations are so pseudo-correct that they never fail to have an effect."

Michael Schabad: "To underscore Freud's great superiority to Adler, Jung made a sweeping gesture: 'Adler had only one idea. It was a good idea, but he did not get beyond schoolmaster psychology.'"

Irvin Yalom: "Freud took no pains to conceal his enthusiasm for intellectual solutions. More than one of his former patients have described his habit of reaching for his box of 'Victory cigars' to celebrate a particularly incisive interpretation."

Carl Jung: [Freud] really belonged to the category of a Nietzschean mind."

New York Times: "[Lou Salome describes Freud] as a supremely rational man, blessed with clarity of thought and a wry, self-deprecating humor."

Max Scharnberg: "[Freud] had a markedly deficient awareness of his own ... emotions."

Max Scharnberg: "Freud has a lack of empathy and little self-knowledge."

Anthony Storr: "[Freud's collection of statues] crowd the shelves so closely that not one can be appreciated ... in its own right. [His] interest is in accumulation rather than beauty."

Marilyn Nagy: "Jung openly labels Freud an extravert. ... Jung had Freud in mind when he described the typology of the tough-minded man ... [who] is 'sensationalistic,' giving more value to the senses than to reflection."

Paul Roazen : "[Recalling his meeting with Freud, Henry A. Murray] was still astounded that the first thing that Freud had brought up was: 'Why did Jung, and not me, get an honorary degree at the Harvard Tercentenary' in 1936? (It seemed to me characteristic of Freud, though a frail old man of eighty then, to have been still in need of outside recognition, and also continuing the war with Jung.)"

Paul Roazen: "Murray saw Freud in [his] consulting room. [A room] that Murray described ... as 'sepulchral.' Erik H. Erikson told me essentially the same thing about the feeling tone of the room, filled with antiquities, where Freud worked."

Paul Roazen: "Freud had been offended by the characteristic American 'ageism' [i.e. the tendency to regard youth as everything] on his one trip to America in 1909."

Freud: "Moby Dick is my favourite American novel."

Freud: "[Art] has little meaning."

Paul Roazen: "Freud would never have discussed psychoanalysis 'at the dinner table,' and ... Freud's wife would not [even] have known what the word 'repression' meant."

Paul Roazen: "Jung's behavior during a meal [was so that] he never made the slightest attempt to make polite conversation [but] pursued the debate which had been interrupted by the call to dinner."

Paul Roazen: "Allport had also seen Freud in Vienna; Allport, who was personally very fastidious, somehow found himself, in talking with Freud, remarking on a small tidy boy he had seen on a streetcar in Vienna. 'And you are the small boy?' Freud inquired. Murray thought the story very funny because Allport always told it as a sign of Freud's capacity for being irrelevant; 'Allport still did not get Freud's point.' Murray thought that Freud had succeeded in being remarkably astute about Allport."

Henry A. Murray: "[Having met] Adler, Rank, and Jung ... none of them [had] as good [a] humor as Freud."

American Journal of Psychology: "[Freud was both] the creator and dictator of psychoanalysis."

Henry A. Murray: "Freud knew that he had conquered [early in his career and] innocent of the dread of being wrong, [later in his career] he did not hesitate to publish the most far-fetched conceits of speculation. ... If Freud had been more of a scientist he would have pressed no claims to be one. Dogmatism is anti-scientific; and there are reasons to distrust a 'truth' that forms a sect."

Henry A. Murray: "Freud had been sensitive about his height, and ... in one group photograph Freud was 'standing on a box' next to Jung so as to loom out as the leader of the psychoanalytic movement."

Paul Roazen: "Freud [was] insecurely neurotic with regard to his physical stature. ... When one knows the real heights of the people involved, it is obvious that [in the Weimar photo] Freud was on an extra elevation and that Jung was loyally leaning forward in order to disguise his real size."

Henry A. Murray: "[I am] impressed with how kindly Freud [can] be, [though I know] he was also a great hater; they are not really incompatible traits."

Henry A. Murray: "As far as I could tell, the sexual aspect of Freud's relationship to his wife ended rather early. If it had not been so, maybe Freud would not have needed to make so much of it. Freud needed to tear sex down, by reducing everything about it to the infantile, which is [why he erroneously related] the anus to sexuality."

V. Walter Odajnyk: "[Freud] complained about the American tendency to de-emphasize theory and proceed as quickly as possible to its practical application."

Freud: "I was not cut out for inductive investigation. ... My whole make-up is intuitive, and ... in setting out to establish the purely empirical science of [psychoanalysis] I [have] subjected myself to an extraordinary discipline."

V. Walter Odajnyk: "[Freud] was a Physis type, an Aristotelian."

V. Walter Odajnyk: "Freud was an unabashed elitist who considered the majority of mankind 'trash.'"

[Upon reading Jung's 'Psychological Types':]
Freud: "There [can] be no [variance in] 'objective truth' in psychology because of personal differences in the observer's constitution."

V. Walter Odajnyk: "[As a boy, Freud] did not dream of becoming a writer, a physician, or a scientist. ... He fantasized about becoming a military commander and liked calling himself 'conquistador.'"

V. Walter Odajnyk: "[His] antiquities provided Freud with a sensuous connection to civilizations thousands of years in the past: For him, merely reading about them was too abstract. ... [His] pleasure [in the objects] ... was both sensual and aesthetic."

Peter Gay: "Freud's antique objects gave him sheer visual and tactile pleasure; Freud ... fondled them as he sat as his desk."

Peter Gay: "[Freud possessed] a commanding air ... an air of power disciplined. Even Freud's mustache and pointed beard were subdued to order by a barber's daily attention."

Peter Gay: "[Freud's] heroic effort at self-mastery in the service of concentrated work [made him chain] himself to a ... timetable."

Walter Kaufmann: "[Freud] saw four or five patients in a row from 8 or 9 a.m. till 1 p.m., day after day, and then several more in the afternoon until he had a late supper, and two nights a week he lectured at the university, while Wednesday evenings were reserved for the Psychoanalytic Society. He had no secretarial help, wrote all of his many letters by hand, and [also] wrote a large number of seminal books and essays."

V. Walter Odajnyk: "Freud's daily schedule, leisure time and summer vacations were carefully organized and predictable."

Freud: "I am not in a state to do anything else, except study the topography of Rome, my longing for which becomes more and more acute."

Andreas Mayer: "Freud [had a] lifelong fascination with the city of Rome and its multi-layered history."

Philip Kuberski: "Jung and Freud dreamed of Rome as [a] guardian and archive of the unconscious."

Jeffrey Masson: "When Freud first came across the mystic writing pad, which is also called a magic slate, he found it a good example of the mental apparatus: It illustrates the fact that impressions made on us do not disappear but are indelibly inscribed into the wax, though they have disappeared from the surface."

Paul Roazen: "Freud had been offended by the characteristic American 'ageism' [i.e. the tendency to regard youth as everything] on his one trip to America in 1909."

Freud: "Most of humanity is, according to my experiences, rabble."

Freud: "[In my work] even when I have moved away from observation, I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper."

Freud: "[I have not] found the reading of philosophical authors to be to my taste."

Freud: "I read Schopenhauer [only] very late in my life."

John Kerr: "Quite possibly ... the important step that Jung took [when he introduced introversion/extraversion into psychology] had occurred to him while reading Freud's paper 'Types of Onset of Neurosis.'"

Robert Steele: "Freud saw himself as the lone explorer discovering truth emprically through his observations and their refinement. He sifted through vast amounts of experience in order to extract [the] causal core elements."

Robert Steele: "Freud reduced myriads of material to an interwoven nexus of findings which constitute the central theses of psychoanalysis."

Walter Kaufmann: "That Freud loved Goethe and was steeped in his writings should be obvious to all who study Freud. Goethe is cited and quoted constantly [whereas] Kant, Goethe's great antipode, and Newton ... meant nothing to Freud."

Walter Kaufmann: "[What] Freud associated with academic philosophy and disliked [was] its abstractness. ... Freud had no mind to stray that far from real life."

Walter Kaufmann: "Freud stayed far closer to the problems of human existance than any of the major existentialists."

Freud: "Michelangelo's Moses ... no statue has ever made a stronger impression on me than this."

Freud: "[With his Moses] Michelangelo has created, not a historical figure, but a character-type, embodying an inexhaustible inner force which tames the recalcitrant world."

Horace Gray: "I submit that the superior function is sensation, not intuition, in Michelangelo ... particularly in his Moses which so fascinated Freud."

Martin Buber: "He had a calm ... soul. ... A great tranquil resoluteness and superiority." [Upon meeting Freud around 1903.]

Walter Kaufmann: "Freud ... found peace through his work."

Walter Kaufmann: "Freud ... sets standards [before us] that we can hardly hope to satisfy. ... Jung makes no demands on us. He provides diversions and escapes. ... People prefer stories and fairy tales - soothing diversions - to austere challenges."

Walter Kaufmann: "A cartoon once showed a patient lying on a couch, who says: 'I am Napoleon.' The analyst sitting behind him replies: 'I am Freud.'"

Walter Kaufmann: "Far from being able to identify with Freud, many people feel threatened by him. ... He is a quintessential father figure. ... Many people see themselves as rebels against authority and ... tend to identify with the people who rebelled against him."

Walter Kaufmann: "Freud ... considered Shakespeare a being of a higher order."

Freud [in a personal letter to his wife:] "Do you know what Breuer said to me one evening? ... He said that he had found out that there was concealed in me under the shroud of shyness an immeasurably bold and fearless human being. I have always believed this myself and never dared to tell anybody. ... But I could not give expression to my ardent passions ... so I have always suppressed myself, and that, I think, must show. Such stupid confession I make to you, sweet treasure, really for no good reason, unless it is the cocaine that makes me talk."

Freud: "Let us hasten to add that [my work] did not take the first step. Famous philosophers can be cited as predecessors. ... [My work] has gone only a step further."

Walter Kaufmann: "[In praising his predecessors] Freud is rather too generous. ... [He] softens the blow [of his thought] by insisting that some writers who are already admired and respected have really said much the same thing before."

John Beebe: "[To Freud] our libidinal energies are like a migrating people, who, having once occupied a place, not only never entirely leave it, but also return to that place if they find they need to."

Hanns Sachs [in 1944:] "Freud was not dazed by the brilliant gift of intuitive understanding of the products of the unconscious."

Freud: "I learned to restrain speculative tendencies and ... looked at the same things again and again until the things themselves began to talk to me."

Freud: "[Jung is far from] my intellectual constitution. ... He comes to me only against great inner resistances."

Paul Roazen: "Despite how hardworking he was ... and the importance he attached to good practical results, it is all too easy for people nowadays to think of Freud as a closet philosopher thinking up his ideas independently of concrete, practical pressures."

Paul Roazen: "Freud admitted being angry about how mankind as a whole failed to live up to the most elementary standards of decency that he thought should be reasonably expected of people."

Paul Roazen: "[To Freud] phony spiritualism was no sort of reliable help, and just misled the unwary about what could be expected in life."

Paul Roazen: "Inevitably Freud tended to universalize insights that were in fact personal. All of psychoanalytic theory can be seen as Freud's autobiography writ large."

Paul Roazen: "A remarkable strain of consistency runs through all Freud's thinking, and there never was a time, at least when anyone I encountered knew him, when Freud was not working from a well-thought out system of ideas. It is not as if ... [he was] fumbling around in the dark."

Paul Roazen: "One sometimes thinks that all Freud's cautiousness can get swamped in the idealism that he bequeathed to his professional descendants."

Paul Roazen: "Whatever Freud may have sometimes made it sound like, practical results did matter to him."

Paul Roazen: "As a therapist ... Freud could be giving with one hand while taking away with the other; he offered the ideal of autonomy and self-determination at the same time as he was laying down [rigid] rules for the procedure of psychoanalysis."

Paul Roazen: "[He had a] most genuinely humble spirit."

Bob Fancher: "[Strangely, reading up on Freud's life] offers no sense of the genuinely awe-inspiring intellect that radiates from the pages of most of Freud's work."

Sharon Heller: "[To Freud] clothes were basic to self-respect, and he insisted that his children be well-dressed. He once commented: 'The good opinion of my tailor matters to me as much as that of my professor.'"

Sharon Heller: "[Freud had a] sharp memory ... [and was like] a master detective."

Freud: "[I] accept life with cheerful humility."

[Asked if he did not wish to be immortal:]
Freud: "I do not rebel against the universal order."

Don McGowan: "Freudians are notorious for saying that if we have a dream that does not fulfill a wish, that dream fulfills the wish of having a dream that does not fulfill a wish."

Freud: "Jung was again magnificent and did me a lot of good. I poured out my heart about many things. ... I am convinced more than ever that he is the man of the future." [Upon meeting Jung in 1910.]

Christopher Badcock: "[Freud's letters] show a humane, forbearing and profoundly decent person who was a loyal and responsive friend to colleagues who ... did not always treat him with the consideration and care that he had for them."

Freud: "Only with great difficulty can I, myself, take a position with respect to the question of the value of my works and their influence on the shape of future science. Sometimes I believe in it, sometimes I doubt it."

[Asked if he was a pessimist:]
Freud: "I am not. I permit no philosophic reflection to spoil my enjoyment of the simple things in life."

[When asked why he had not broken with Jung earlier:]
Freud: "I was a sentimental donkey."

J.H. van der Hoop: "[Compared to Jung] Freud's standpoint seems to me to be more cautious and more thorough."

Ernest Jones: "Jung sweeps over the canvas like a Rubens, [Freud] draws with the accuracy and close feeling of a Del Sarto."

Sonu Shamdasani: "Freud's failing was that he could never see beyond his own conception, which he took to be universal."