The study of dreams may be considered the most trustworthy method of investigating deep mental processes. Now dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright.

Writing was in its origin, the voice of an absent person.

We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.

I think that in general it is a good plan occasionally to bear in mind the fact that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis.

I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new.

If there are quarrels between the parents or if their marriage is unhappy, the ground will be prepared in their children for the severest predisposition to a disturbance of sexual development or to neurotic illness.

One becomes gradually accustomed to a new realization of the nature of 'happiness': one has to assume happiness when Fate does not carry out all its threats simultaneously.