50 quotes by Sigmund Freud that answer all questions and help you understand yourself

Sigmund Freud is one of the greatest and most quoted psychologists of the 20th century. He was able to create and popularize a method that is still used today. Yes, we’re talking about psychoanalysis. Freud’s ideas and developments influenced medicine, sociology, anthropology, and literature. He was a real star of his time and a very controversial figure. An innovative scientist, brilliant orator and provocateur – all this about Freud.

His writings and statements were criticized, and he was once received in the highest circles quite skeptically. The controversy surrounding his ideas and Freud’s theories continues unabated even today. Much is being revised and reinterpreted. However, the fact remains that his psychoanalysis works to this day.

How did this great man live and think? We offer to dive into the biography of Sigmund Freud, take his ideas and be inspired by quotes.

Sigmund Freud

Life and formation of Sigmund Freud

At the age of 17, the future Austrian psychologist enters the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. At the first courses Freud could not decide for a long time with the choice of specialization. But he had a special interest in the study of anatomy and chemistry. He was also attracted to zoology. He even managed to conduct research work at the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste. Afterward, he wrote a scientific paper on the sex differences of river eels.

After obtaining a research fellowship at the Institute of Physiology, Freud became fascinated by the psychological ideas of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. He worked hard in the laboratory under his mentor, studying nerve cells in the spinal cord of animals. Freud then decided to devote his life to psychology.

He graduated from medical school and received a doctorate. But he did not want to work in his specialty. In the biography of Freud even has three years of practice in city hospitals, where he, incidentally, showed himself a knowledgeable doctor-neurologist. However, the idea of learning the mysteries and depths of psychology did not leave him.

Freud moved to the psychiatric department, where he continued his research work. He wrote many advanced medical articles and saw patients with various neurological diseases.

Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in the movie A Dangerous Method

While gaining practical skills using hypnosis, he comes to a stunning and revolutionary discovery. According to Freud, people’s actions are based on unconscious motives, and neurosis is the psyche’s defensive reaction to trauma. He also put forward a very controversial and not approved by his contemporaries hypothesis about the influence of sexual dissatisfaction on the development of neuroses.

He described ideas new for his time in the book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. According to Freud’s theories, dreams have explicit and hidden meanings. The first is what a person is ready to share after waking up, but the hidden content is the unconscious. It is about unfulfilled desires, which are transformed into strange dreams.

Sigmund Freud’s innovative ideas brought him recognition in scientific circles. He became one of the speakers at the first international congress of psychoanalysts. However, world fame came to the scientist only in 1930, when he was awarded the Goethe Prize.

The collection of works of the psychologist, doctor of medicine, professor totals 26 volumes. But the main one is still “The Interpretation of Dreams”.

So, below we have collected aphorisms of Sigmund Freud, which will help a little better understand yourself and find answers to a variety of questions.

Quotes about introspection

The mystery of the human soul is contained in the psychic dramas of childhood. Get to the bottom of these dramas, and healing will come.

People find reality unsatisfactory and so live in a fantasy world, imagining the fulfillment of their desires. A strong personality makes these desires a reality. The weak person lives in her own world, and her fantasies become symptoms of various diseases.

All our actions are based on two motives: the desire to become great and sexual desire.

Sigmund Freud

Nothing is accidental. Everything has a root cause.

Illusions attract us because they relieve us of pain and bring us pleasure as a substitute. For this we must accept without lamentation the fact that illusions have the property of shattering when they come into conflict with reality.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate uncertainty.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression and low self-esteem, make sure you are not surrounded by idiots.

The more flawless a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.

Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in the movie A Dangerous Method

Man never gives up anything, he just replaces one pleasure with another.

In all cases the motive of reluctance is at the root of forgetting.

The mind is exactly the same as its owner – it is prone to laziness.

Quotes about love

We do not choose each other at random. We meet only those who are in our subconscious.

How courageous and confident becomes the one who gains confidence that he is loved.

Sigmund Freud

We can be so defenseless when we love, and so hopelessly unhappy when we lose the object of love or love itself.

Why don’t we fall in love with someone new every month? Because we would have to lose a piece of our own heart every time we break up.

In a love relationship, one should not spare each other as this can lead to alienation. If there are difficulties, we must overcome them.

Both in the individual and in the development of humanity as a whole, only love as a cultural factor has contributed to the turn from egoism to altruism.

Sigmund Freud

At the peak of falling in love, there is a danger of blurring the boundaries between self and object. Against all common sense, the lover claims that “I” and “You” are one and the same, and is willing to behave as if they really are.

In order not to become sick, we need to begin to love.

Love itself – as suffering, deprivation – lowers the sense of self worth, but reciprocal love, the possession of the beloved object, raises it again.

Quotes about dreams

We most often dream of exactly what we passionately seek with all our soul.

The more strange the dream seems, the deeper meaning it carries.

In our dreams, we always have one foot in childhood.

Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in the movie “A Dangerous Method”.

What goes into a dream is not what has the most value in thoughts, but what is contained in them repeatedly.

The biological purpose of sleep appears to be rest; its psychological sign is loss of interest in the world. Our relation to the world into which we have so reluctantly come seems to carry with it that we cannot bear it uninterruptedly.

Dreams are a reflection of reality. Reality is a reflection of dreams.

Every dream has at least one place in which it is incomprehensible, so to speak, an umbilical cord by which it is connected to the unknown.

Sigmund Freud

A dream is not like the incorrect playing of a musical instrument which has been touched not by the hand of the musician but by some external force. It is not meaningless, it is not absurd, it does not suggest that part of our soul is asleep and the other part is beginning to awaken. A dream is a complete psychic phenomenon. It is the realization of desire.

Dreams are intimately connected with our conscious life.

In a dream, an idealized world is revealed to us, and the effect of its perception is enhanced by seeing its true, deeply understood essence. Dreaming reveals to us earthly beauty in paradisiacal radiance, endows the sublime with even greater majesty, shows us our everyday fears in their most terrible guise, and what we find funny appears even more comical.

Human Quotes

Every normal person is actually only partially normal.

Most people don’t really want freedom because it involves responsibility, and responsibility scares most people.

Every person has desires that they don’t communicate to others and desires that they don’t confess even to themselves.

We enter the world alone and leave it alone.

Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in the movie A Dangerous Method

It is human nature to consider wrong what one does not like, and then it is easy to find arguments for objections.

The truth will make you free.

The most valuable trait a person can possess is an open and inquisitive mind.

The great question that has no answer and that I am not yet capable of answering, despite 30 years of exploratory soul-searching, is “what does a woman want?”

Cultured man has traded the possibility of happiness for guaranteed security.

In the crowd, every feeling, every action is contagious, and to such an extent that the individual very easily sacrifices his personal interests to the interest of the collective.

Quotes about motivation

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

People find reality unsatisfactory and therefore live in a fantasy world, imagining the fulfillment of their desires. A strong person makes those desires a reality. The weak one lives in her own world, and her fantasies become symptoms of various diseases.

Only the realization of childhood dreams can bring happiness.

Being completely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in the movie “A Dangerous Method”

Acknowledging a problem is half the success in solving it.

The only person you should compare yourself to is you in the past. And the only person you should be better than is you in the present moment.

People are strong as long as they stand for a strong idea.

You don’t stop looking for strength and confidence externally, but you should look within yourself. They have always been there.

The challenge we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

One day, when you look back, the years of struggle will seem the most beautiful.