Psychological Epigrams (weiter erweitert)

From random reading, things worth noting -- things worth quoting.

(Plus some of them I made up myself.)

(0)

If analysis worked, the Japanese would long ago have adapted it, and flooded the market …

-- Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985; 2^nd edn. 1993), p. 205

(1)

The self-betrayal of another  is sucked in through all our pores.

-- Theodor Reik, The Search Within (1956)

(2)

In localities where people belch at meals,

it is unwise to ask after the womenfolk;

and in localities where people are asking after the womenfolk,

it is unwise to belch at meals.

-- Eric Berne, Games People Play (1964)

(3)

Fat people  are more inclined to eat their object  than to bite it.

-- Theodor Reik, The Search Within (1956)

To appreciate the epigrammatic force of this,  you need to know that, in psychoanalytic parlance, “object” refers, not to an object,   but to a human being.  -- The basic idea behind the epigram, is that of Caesar:  “Let me have men about me that are fat / bald-headed men, such as sleep o’ nights …”

(4)

The dream is not prophetic of ill  but is ill itself.  It is bad to dream certain things.

-- Jonathan Towers, characterizing shamanism; in Io viii (1971)

(5) Re joining the “Magic Mountain” sanatarium for consumptives, Hans Castorp (etwa the naïf of the novel) observes:

Manche gewöhnen sich nie, sagte mein Vetter mir gleich, als ich ankam.  Aber man gewöhnt sich daran, daß man sich nicht gewöhnt.

-- Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (1924)

 (6)

The quicker  second childhood kicks in,

the happier U will B.

-- Bozo the Button Buster

(7)

Prostitution ist ja eine Angelegentheit,  bei der

es einen grossen Unterschied macht,

ob man sie

von oben sieht ….

od-er    von ….

un-ten  betrachtet …

-- Robert Musil, Der Mann ohneEigenschaften (vol. I: 1930)

*

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(8)

Observe the curious working of history:  Archimedes’ death is familiar  because of Plutarch’s interest in Marcellus;  of Marcellus  it is generally remembered  only that  one of his soldiers  murdered Archimedes.

--  James R. Newman, ed. World of Mathematics (1956), p. 179

(9)  Freud on Nacktheitsträume and the origins of Paradise:

Diese  der Scham entbehrende  Kindheit 

erscheint unserer Rückschau später  als ein Paradies,

und das Paradies  selbst

ist nichts anderes

als die Massenphantasie  von der Kindheit des einzelnen.

-- Die Traumdeutung (1899)

Actually, if that were true, you would expect an individual’s conception of Heaven to correlate strongly with his personal experiences in early childhood;  but seemingly they do not. 

I myself, for example, had quite a nice childhood, with storytime and Pooh-bear and my very own coonskin cap.   But my idea of the Afterlife  is purely that of doing math, with the insight of angels.

~

Was für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?

Schauen Sie mal!

Sigmund Freud und Sherlock Holmes

~

(10)  

Civilization consists in progressive renunciation;

 contrariwise  the superman.

-- Sigmund Freud, letter to Wm Fliess, 1897.

(Note:  Very early in his career;  don't call him on this.)

(11) Finally, one perhaps pardonable autocitation:

Every normal male must repeatedly withstand the beckonings of his testes, and is the better for having learned to do so.  Yet some of those who do not share his natural inclinations,  are proceeding extraordinarily far in punishing and repressing that inborn bloom, on the strength of which -- and without which, not -- civilization has managed to survive and thrive, through wind and wars and pestilence.

-- Dr J, Looking at Someone Up and Down