Psychological Interpretation Quotes

So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. Whenever the Westerner hears the word “psychological,” it always sounds to him like “only psychological.

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

In psychoanalysis as in art, God resided in the details, the discovery of which required enormous patience, unyielding seriousness, and the skill of an acrobat - walking a tightrope over memory and speculation, instinct and theory, feeling and denial.

It's all in the mind.

That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

It is an essential part of the interpretive work that it should keep in step with fluctuations between love and hatred, between happiness and satisfaction on the one hand and persecutory anxiety and depression on the other.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine--to dream about things that have not happened--is among mankind's deepest needs. Herein lies the danger. If dreams were not beautiful, they would be quickly forgotten.

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.

I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them...The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey.

But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.

Now I can do the bolts," she slurred. "I've been trying to focus enough magic all week." The magic shifted and swirled, finally etching a picture in the air. It was a rough picture of Foaly, and he was laughing. I hate you, centaur!" screamed Opal, lunging toward, and then through, the insubstantial image. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and then she collapsed, snoring, on the floor. Artemis straightened his tie. Freud, he was certain, would have a field day with that.

The Freudians describe the conscious as a small lit area, all white, and the unconscious as a great dark marsh full of monsters. In their view, the monsters reach up, grab you by the ankles, and try to drag you down.

For a psychoanalyst to be any good... he'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he'd been inspired to study psychoanalysis in the first place.

The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory.

So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation.

I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.

Perception has always interested me. The idea thatbehind every face, there are a thousand faces. Beneath the placidveneer of middle America, there lies terror.

In the light of her son's comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs Callendar was nice, and then - finding the ground safe - had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.

I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.

Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are