Sigmund Freud Quotes

Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly.

Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.

Since I come from a family of mental instability, and I have suffered depression myself, I knew that living in shame is senseless and painful, and that by talking about it, I have come to peace with it. The stigma behind people's suffering needs to end. We as a community need to embrace these disorders, try to understand them (if only just to talk about them) so that we can cease being defined by them.

I don't think I'm fixed. People think that you're like a car in a body shop. You go in, they fix you, and you're out. It takes constant fixing.

People feel like they have to live up to being perfect or have a perfect life or be perfectly happy, and it just makes them more unhappy.

But there are a number of attitudes that should not be emotionally or psychologically ingested by young people.

I think that's the function of a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, is keeping people afloat just long enough for them to get older.

I've had my moments of feeling miserable in my life, as has everyone, but it's not often that you actually get the opportunity to indulge that feeling. Mostly when people are depressed or miserable, they have to snap out of it because it doesn't work. It doesn't suit day-to-day life.

People talk about escapism as if it's a bad thing... Once you've escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills, weapons, knowledge you didn't have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality.

Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it's the happy people who need medication.

I think people who come from abuse and/or people who have mental illnesses, have terrible self-esteem problems.

It's not a very sane thing to try to be great all the time. You want to make something magical; you want to make something wonderful; you want to give to everybody; you want to heal people; you want to still be inspired. That's not easy.

That's why I think some people kind of fall off and they end up going crazy because you don't give yourself time to go crazy. That's what you're supposed to do; you are 20, you are supposed to be a mess because you haven't figured it out yet, and 10 years from now I am supposed to have it all together.

A lot of people ask me if I'm OK. I'm capable of crazy - a lot of people are - but I'm OK.

One of the things that you see ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree on is that strong relationships are a key to happiness, maybe the key to happiness. People who have more strong relationships in their lives just feel happier.

As a whole part of "psychological education" it needs to be remembered that a neurosis can be valuable; also that "adjustment" to a sick and insane environment is of itself not "health" but sickness and insanity.

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.

The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.

Everything but happiness is neurosis.

The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life, until he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible.

The people who believe that their soul is being crushed by playing a particular role need to take a vacation or check into the looney bin for awhile.

Let's get this started, people. It won't be long before we all lose our minds.

The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success.

A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, and must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love.

It's kind of a little fly-on-the-wall look at these people trying to stay sane.