Karl Abraham Quotes

I tend to look for pathologies everywhere.

Hysteria is something that I've been interested for a very long time. I thought I might have it, but it seems that it's unlikely.

Only the emerging specialty of psychoanalysis seemed to understand that mental maladies are not fully analogous to physical disease. They resist classification, and might better be known by their symptoms and the individualized sufferings of patients than by assigned names.

Even in my first analysis of a depressive psychosis, I was immediately struck by its structural similarity with obsessional neurosis.

The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

Sometimes it's said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.

Psychoanalytic investigation has shown that in mental patients excessive affection often turns to violent hostility.

I was never in a mental institution for a long time. I was in psych wards.

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed.

The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.

I deal with the human psychology and evil. They are my twin issues.

We live in a culture that is much happier talking about organic brain disease than about psychic illness because the former suggests that something that is physically wrong in a brain is wholly unrelated to that person's upbringing or experiences in the world, but that is not necessarily true.

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.

We're all controlled neurotics.

I think that there are cancers of the body, but I think they are what I would call cancer of the emotional system, too. These are the kind of diseases or illnesses or sicknesses of the emotional system that are as incurable as cancer.

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.

I was told that I had very likely been clinically depressed for a long, long time, probably since I was 15, or even 14. It explained, to me at least, a lot of my behaviour over the years.

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that.

Repression in the human psyche is tightly bundled. When it has been pulled out of the sprung package so often it is perhaps difficult to push it back in the box.

Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.

The idea that our mental life is affected by hidden causes is a mainstay of psychology.

Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses.

As far as I am concerned, virtually all psychological diseases have their origin in our conscious minds. And that is not what we are taught.