Psychotherapist Quotes

“Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.”

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

“Nature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the whole human world.”

“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

“Hitler is a shy and friendly man with artistic tastes and gifts.”

“In the end, the only events of my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world erupted into this transitory one All other memories of travels, people and my surroundings have paled beside these interior happenings But my encounters with the 'other' reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved on my memory. In that realm there has always been wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost importance by comparison.”

“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.”

“The totality of the psyche can never be grasped by the intellect alone.”

“For better to come, good must stand aside.”

“At present we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit had been acquired. ... Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things.”

“One must be able to let things happen.”

“As soon as the dialogue between two people touches on something fundamental, essential, numinous, and a certain rapport is felt, it gives rise to a phenomenon which Lévy-Bruhl fittingly called participation mystique. It is an unconscious identity in which two individual psychic spheres interpenetrate to such a degree that it is impossible to say what belongs to whom.”

“Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?”

“Never do human beings speculate more, or have more opinions, than about things which they do not understand.”

“Somewhere, right at the bottom of one’s own being, one generally does know where one should go and what one should do. But there are times when the clown we call “I” behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice cannot make its presence felt.”

“As one grows older one must try not to work oneself to death unnecessarily. At least that's how it is with me... I can scarcely keep pace and must watch out that the creative forces do not chase me around the universe in a wallop.”

“The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols.”

“Without freedom there can be no morality.”

“We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow.”

“Consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking.”

“The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.”

“Everyone can afford to give away a smile.”

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”

“The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”

“Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man - his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life.”