When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.

The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life, which are as common as they are important, and to find a place for them in the framework of science.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.

The analytic psychotherapist thus has a threefold battle to wage -- in his own mind against the forces which seek to drag him down from the analytic level; outside the analysis, against opponents who dispute the importance he attaches to the sexual instinctual forces and hinder him from making use of them in his scientific technique; and inside the analysis, against his patients, who at first behave like opponents but later on reveal the overvaluation of sexual life which dominates them, and who try to make him captive to their socially untamed passion.

Sexual morality - as society in its extreme form, the American, defines it - is contemptible. I advocate an incomparably freer sexual life.

There is a powerful force within us, an un-illuminated part of the mind - separate from the conscious mind that is constantly at work molding our thought, feelings, and actions.