Quotes

"A real appreciation for human nature, in the face of our inadequate education today, will be gained only by one class of human beings. These are the contrite sinners, either those who have been in the whirlpool of psychic life, entangled in all its mistakes and errors, and saved themselves out of it, or those who have been close to it and felt its currents touching them."

 

"We are hardly in a position to completely illuminate the dark recesses of the problem of the psychic life, and understand it thoroughly, since we can not escape from the meshes of our own relationships."

 

"Imagine a man alone, and without an instrument of culture, in a primitive forest! He would be more inadequate than any other living organism. He has not the speed nor the power of other animals. He has not the teeth of the carnivore, nor the sense of hearing, nor the sharp eyes, which are necessary in the battle for existence. Man needs an extensive apparatus to guarantee his existence. His nutrition, his characteristics, and his style of life, demand an intensive program of protection."

 

"They conceive of the necessary obligations of life more as difficulties than as stimuli. Soon a gulf, which is continually widened because of their hostility to their fellows, builds itself between them and their environment. Now they approach every experience with an exaggerated cautiousness, removing themselves farther and farther from the truth and actuality with every contact, and succeed only in continually making fresh difficulties for themselves."

 

"The identical effect may be produced by unthinking parents, educators, or other adults, who teach children that love and tenderness are improper, ridiculous, or unmanly, by impressing some pernicious motto upon them. It is not so seldom that we find that a child is taught that tenderness is ridiculous. This is especially the case among those children who have often been ridiculed. Such children are veritably afraid of showing emotions or feelings because they feel their tendency to show love toward others is ridiculous and unmanly."

 

"One can often observe how one of several children seeks the limelight through particular unruliness, while another, being shrewder, attains the same goal through particular virtue."

 

"A real understanding of the behavior of any human being is impossible without a dear comprehension of the secret goal which he is pursuing; nor can we evaluate every aspect of his behavior until we know that his whole activity has been influenced by this goal."

 

"those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence."

 

"This leads to an enormous amount of mischief, especially in the pernicious activities of the telepaths and hypnotizers. These gentlemen commit such arrant crimes against mankind that they are quite capable of utilizing any instrument appropriate to their nefarious purposes."

 

"The public wants to be fooled. It wants to swallow every bluff without subjecting it to rational examination. Such activity will never bring any order into the communal life of mankind but will lead only, again and again, to the revolt of those who have been imposed upon. No telepath nor hypnotizer has had luck with his experiments for any great length of time."

 

"Any man who is accustomed to living rationally, who makes his own decisions, who does not swallow anyone's word uncritically, is naturally not to be hypnotized, and will, therefore, never be able to show any telepathic powers."

 

"This is possible only because we do not test anything, but receive, transform, and assimilate all perceptions in the shadow of our own conscious, or the depths of our unconscious."

 

"Personal power or economic interest have influenced the division of the field of labor by reserving all the better positions for individuals of certain classes, that is, those affording the greater power, while other individuals, of other classes, have been excluded from them. The recognition of these numerous factors in the structure of society enables us to understand why the division of labor has never proceeded smoothly. Forces continually disturbing this division of labor have created privilege for one, and slavery for another."

 

"The universal result of this fallacy is that both sexes have finally fallen into the hasty pudding of prestige politics, and each tries to play a role for which he is not suited. What happens? Both their lives become complicated, their relationships are robbed of all candor, they become surfeited with fallacies and prejudices, in the face of which all hope of happiness vanishes."
"At the very least it determines the fact that we frequently must seek extenuating circumstances for our actions. Herein originates the special technique of life, of thinking and acting, which causes us to wish to remain constantly in rapport with the social feeling, or at the very least, to delude ourselves with the semblance of social connectedness. In short, these explanations show that there is something like a mirage of the social feeling, which acts as a veil cloaking certain tendencies."

 

"In the more difficult situations the optimists remain quiet in the conviction that mistakes can always be rectified....Quite a different type are the pessimists..... They are much more conscious of the difficulties of life than are the optimists, and it is easy for them to lose their courage."

 

"They exhibit their vanities as though they were actually conquerors, yet the obviousness with which they do all this, and the superfluity of their movements, not only causes a disharmony in their relation to the world, but also betrays their whole character, an artificial superstructure based upon an insecure shifting foundation....In their persistent efforts to win the upper hand, they soon find themselves in conflict, especially with others of their own type, whole competition they awaken."

 

"Translated into the language of Individual Psychology, the choleric individual is one whose striving for power is so tense that he makes more emphatic and violent movements, feeling that he is forced at all times to produce evidence of his power. He is interested only in overcoming all obstacles in a straightline aggressive approach. In reality, the more intense movements of these individuals begin early in their childhood, where they lack a feeling of their power, and must demonstrate it constantly to be convinced of its existence."

 

"At this point science enters the lists and declares: "Temperaments are dependent upon the glands of internal secretion....These glands have no ducts but pour their secretions directly into the blood. The general impression is that all organs and tissues are influenced in their growth and activity by these endocrine secretions which are carried by the blood to every single cell in the body."

 

"Quite beside the fact that vanity leads an individual to all kinds of useless work and effort which is more concerned with the semblance of things than with their essence, and beside the fact that it causes him to think constantly of himself, or at the most only of other people's opinion of him, its greatest danger is that it leads him sooner or later to lose contact with reality....No other vice is so well designed to stunt the free development of a human being as that personal vanity which forces an individual to approach every event and every fellow with the query: "What do I get out of this?""
"Vanity very soon prevents an individual from playing the game according to the rules. Much more frequently it causes him to be a disturber of others so that those individuals who are excluded from the satisfaction of their own vanity are often to be found striving to prevent others from the full expression of their lives."

 

"Children whose vanity is in process of growth exhibit their valor in dangerous situations and like to show weaker children how powerful they are."

 

"Since no one is entirely free of vanity, everyone has a certain amount of it."

 

"The development of vanity is constantly threatened by choice logical objections which develop out of the communal life."

 

"The deprecation tendency is an attempt to create the feeling of superiority by the degradation of one's fellows. The recognition of another's worth is equivalent to an insult to the vain one's personality."

 

"Consequently among adults we will find people who are anxious to have their own way much more frequently than those who desire to help their fellows. Some go so far in their vanity that they are incapable of doing anything which another has suggested to them, even though this is the most self-understood procedure in the world, and really signifies their own happiness."

 

"It is quite a diffe ent thing when the reputation of a man is justified by his services to others. His honor then comes to him of itself, and if it is opposed by others, their Opposition has little weight. He can remain quietly in the possession of his honor because he has not staked everything upon vanity."

 

"The acquisitive man, whose look is never directed toward the necessities and needs of others, and to whom the misfortune of others is a joy, has no place in his system for reconciliation and peace with life. He demands the unbending submission of others to laws which his egoism has dictated. He demands a different heaven from the one which exists, a different way of thinking and feeling; in short, his dissatisfaction and immodesty are as execrable as everything else which is characteristic of him."

 

"The various ornaments which such individuals carry indicate their vanity just as much as so many standards, belligerent emblems, or weapons, whose purpose, when rightly understood, is to scare off the enemy. Sometimes this vanity is expressed by erotic emblems, or by tattooing which seems frivolous to us."

 

"Shameless behavior lends the feeling of greatness and superiority to some; others again have this same feeling when they appear hard, brutal, stubborn, or isolated. In reality these may be individuals who are closer to tenderness than to bad manners, whose quondam brutality is but a pose."

 

"Italian criminal psychologist has said, "when the ideal attitude of a human being goes beyond a certain degree, when his philanthropy and humanity assume conspicuous proportions, we may well be distrustful.""

 

"We have already noted that vanity likes to mask itself. Vain people who would like to rule others must first catch them in order to bind them to themselves. We must not, therefore, allow ourselves to be entirely duped by the amiability, or friendliness, and willingness to make contacts, which a Person may show; nor must we be deceived into believing that he may not nevertheless be a belligerent aggressor who is looking for conquests, and to the maintenance of his personal superiority."

 

"It is very interesting to see how in fairy tales, as well as in the overheated psychic striving of vain individuals, the striving for power assumes the expression of a desire for the ideal of God-likeness. One does not have to search far to find that a vain person acts exactly as though he were God (which happens in the most serious cases) , or he behaves himself as though he were God's lieutenant, or again, he expresses wishes and desires which only God could fulfill."

 

"The Bible, to be sure, is a wonderful work which one can constantly read and reread with astonishment at its perspicacity, after one's judgment has matured. But let us not teach it to children, at least not without a commentary, to the end that a child may learn to be content in this life, without assuming all manner of magical powers, and demanding that everyone be his slave, ostensibly because he was created in the image of God!"

 

"In the even tenor of life it may often not be evident, yet when a man suffers, or feels himself oppressed, or lacks for money, food, dress, or warmth, when his hope for the future is darkened, and he sees no way out of his unfortunate situation, then envy appears."

 

"One speaks of "green" or "pale" envy, pointing to the fact that envy influences the circulation of the blood. The organic expression of envy is found in the peripheral contraction of the capillary arteries."

 

"Anyone who has been envious all his life is useless for communal life. He will be interested solely in taking something away from another, in depriving him in some fashion, and in disturbing him Simultaneously he will have the tendency to fix alibis for the goals which he has not attained, and blame others for his failures....He will not be moved by the fact that someone else suffers because of his actions. Envy may go so far as to lead a man to feel pleasure in the pain of his neighbor."

 

"It bears witness to the speaker's lack of empathy in judgment and critique of others, when he answers every question with a catch-word phrase, or a slang expression, and thinks and acts according to the cliches of the tabloids and the movies. Needless to say there are many people who cannot think in any other way, and in this way, give evidence of their psychic retardation."

 

"There are some among them who are childishly jolly, and have something very touching in their childishness They approach their tasks not by evasion, but in a certain playful, childish way and solve them as though they were games or puzzles. There is perhaps no type which is more sympathetic and beautiful in its attitude."

 

"It is quite natural that so deeply rooted a phenomenon as an affect or an emotion, shows its effect upon the body, since body and soul are so intimately alloyed. The physical phenomena which accompany the presence of affects and emotions are indicated by various changes in the blood vessels and in the respiratory apparatus, as in the appearance of blushing, pallor, rapid pulse, and variations of the respiratory rate."

 

"Anger is an affect which is the veritable epitome of the striving for power and domination. This emotion betrays very dearly that its purpose is the rapid and forceful destruction of every obstacle in the way of its angry bearer."

 

"The affect of sadness occurs when one cannot console himself for a loss or deprivation. Sadness, along with the other affects, is a compensation for a feeling of displeasure or weakness, and amounts to an attempt to secure a better situation."