#Neurosis Quotes

“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.”

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

“About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.”

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.”

“Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.”

“Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.”

“Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life.”

“Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.”

“A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.”

“...anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.”