Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.

Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.

Crystals reveal their hidden structures only when broken.

A father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life.

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.