#psychoanalysis

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#consciousness #discourse #failure #freudian-slips #lacan

I dreamt that I took William Burrough’s penis and tied it up with piano wire. I hung him like a Chagall painting…In the next part J.G. Ballard swam through streets of female urine. The girls read his book Crash and then mowed him down with their Volkswagen, crushing his chest slowly against a brick wall. As he screamed in agony larger than representation can accommodate, they referred to his text and had orgasms. Later, they jumped up and down yelling, ‘You’re not a hero. You’re not a hero. You’re not. You’re not. You’re not.’ “ “How do you analyze that part of the dream, Anna?” …”I guess I’m nervous about my birthday. ↗

— Sarah Schulman

#dreams #j-g-ballard #psychoanalysis #sexism #william-burroughs

If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing, and it is at this specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience and the language of literature meet. ↗

— Cathy Caruth

#freud #literature #psychoanalysis #trauma #experience

My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#delusions #drugs #funny-quotes #mother #psychiatrist

I've always thought that Freud's theory of penis envy was fairly ridiculous -- but I'm absolutely certain that if you put a piece of bread in your mouth and suck on it you'll go to heaven. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#psychoanalysis #imagination

To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown. ↗

— Karen Horney

#psychoanalysis #life

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#psychiatry #psychoanalysis #psychology #love

In psychoanalytical theory there is a phenomenon called transference. The therapist becomes a blank screen, onto which the patient projects some incident or feeling that began in childhood... it would not be a far reach for someone to look at my feelings for Jess and assume that, in the context of our relationship as tutor and pupil, I am not in love. I'm just in transference. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#psychoanalysis #therapist #transference #love

Ljubav se stalno menja zato što se mi stalno menjamo. Stoga romantična ljubav, sama po sebi, donosi nestabilnost. Čini nas nezadovoljnim onim što imamo time što nas uvek usmerava ka nečemu što ne posedujemo u potpunosti, ili posedujemo u nedovoljnoj meri, ili pak u čije smo posedovanje suviše sigurni. ↗

— Stephen A. Mitchell

#psychoanalysis #love

A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#philosophy #psychoanalysis #psychology #experience