At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.

To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

We should picture the instrument that carries our mental functioning as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus.

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

Obsessional prohibitions are extremely liable to displacement. They extend from one object to another along whatever paths the context may provide, and this new object then becomes, to use the apt expression of one of my women patients, 'impossible' - till at last the whole world lies under an embargo of 'impossibility'.

All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it.