A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work.

The dream acts as a safety-valve for the over-burdened brain.

We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.

Free sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls" was urgently necessary or society was "doomed to fall a victim to incurable neuroses which reduce the enjoyment of life to a minimum, destroy the marriage relation and bring hereditary ruin on the whole coming generation.

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.