Erik Erikson Quotes

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

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.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, psychoanalysis swept through the intellectual community, and it was the dominant mode of thinking about the mind. People felt that this was a completely new set of insights into human motivation, and that its therapeutic potential was significant.

I don't want to do anything Freudian.

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.

In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.

Very few people have actually read Freud, but everyone seems prepared to talk about him in that Woody Allen way. To read Freud is not as much fun.

I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.

Freud was just a novelist.

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.

Psychoanalysis is the confession without absolution.

Psycho-analyses, how disgusting.

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

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

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

All along, I've been writing about our fears, our longings, our fantasies, our ambivalences. When I decided to study psychoanalysis, I did it because I wanted to understand the psychodynamics of it all. Though far from perfect, psychoanalysis offered me a huge, wonderful window on all that.

The one text that most changed my opinion on criticism was probably Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams,' which I read in college.

Sigmund Freud makes people irritable. Whenever someone mentions Freud, say, at a dinner party, I see eyes roll and listen to the nasty remarks that follow.

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.

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.

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.

I've never gone into analysis. But Freud opened a door, I know.

The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.

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.