Anna Freud Quotes

In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.

All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don't know what this unconscious is.

Freud was just a novelist.

The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this!

Psychoanalysis wants to heal with words and speaking, but sometimes with speaking, you realize nothing.

To probe for unconscious determinants of behavior and then define a man in their terms exclusively, ignoring his overt behavior altogether, is a greater distortion than ignoring the unconscious completely.

I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.

The psychoanalytic method is essentially a historical method.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

The stereotype of psychotherapy portrayed in popular books and movies is lying on the couch and saying whatever comes into your mind, while a kindly psychoanalyst listens and nods knowingly from time to time. After years and years, something wonderful is supposed to happen.

In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.

I'm not that taken with Freudian perspectives. They seem to be overcomplicated.

When I'm saying hysteria, I'm referring to Freud, because all the women were coming to him with symptoms and seeking help, and he just called it hysteria.

Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It had no mother.

Sigmund Freud was very much a creature of his time. He did not 'invent' the unconscious.

Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature.

When I was writing my dissertation, I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification.

Psychoanalysis is the confession without absolution.

Psycho-analyses, how disgusting.

Since Freud, the center of man is not where we thought it was; one has to go on from there.

As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.

I think it's an interesting thing to me, because we have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things.

I went to a psychoanalyst. He explained things about my love life that I found very impressive... almost scary.

People seem to forget that one reason they are now thinking differently is Freud's legacy itself.

I don't want to do anything Freudian.