Anna Freud Quotes

I think there is something about... unless you come from a really evolved family that allowed you to talk about your feelings and felt like a safe environment, then you aren't really prepared to do that when you grow up.

I've never been to a shrink. But my parents were very psychologically literate - my father had undergone Freudian analysis - and we often talked about other people in psychological terms, so I picked up a lot of that.

I think women are really self-analytical in a way that men aren't.

Girls enjoy complex social interaction. Their verbal skills - and their delight in using them - develop earlier than boys'.

If you can fight directly with your mother, you can save a fortune in psychiatrist's bills.

Because I've spent most of my life with such a beautiful, talented, challenging female, I feel I've gained - and am still gaining - a great deal of knowledge about the feminine mystique and about personal relationships - knowledge which is so important to a writer.

I have so much advice for men. They need to know that their mother is not their wife... and their wife will never be their mother.

My job gives me the permission to ask really great questions, like, 'Are you sure you're not pissed at him?' or, 'Is the eating really about food, or does it have something to do with your mother?' or, 'How is your sex life? I mean, I know we're here talking about your job, but I can tell this has to do with your sex life.'

I see my husband and the way he is with his daughters, responsive and alive and sensitive in ways my father would have liked to be. My father would have loved to be a man like that, and he surrounded himself with men like that, but he couldn't be.

I'm at my best when I'm talking about relationships, talking about women, talking about situations and stories.

Psychology is simply great because it helps you better understand all kinds of people.

I'm somebody who's super into psychology and analysis and the human psyche and the human experience.

I wasn't very good a communicating as a kid. I wasn't very good at speaking my mind, and I went through some challenges as a kid with my family, as we all do.

I was raised by a single dad, and I've always kind of liked things that are typically more guy-oriented.

When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.

The emotions have been seen as the center of woman's soul. For that reason, emotional formation will have to be centrally placed in woman's formation.

Some characters think more like me than others; some think more like my dad or someone else. It certainly is made up of my experiences, things I've heard, things I think are funny, things I think are sad. There's sort of a strange, blurry version of yourself in there.

I think therapy can be very revealing and useful for actors. You start to dig deep and understand certain mechanisms that you hadn't been aware of before and, you know, meanings behind things.

I've long believed that if you understand how conversational styles work, you can make adjustments in conversations to get what you want in your relationships.

Parenting makes us better in so many regards.

Any human being is this wonderful conglomeration of experiences and behaviors, if you like - some of them healthy, some of them not so healthy.

The mind shapes the body, and the body shapes the mind.

What I continue to learn as a parent is to be mindful of the fact that I am responsible for being the parent that my children need me to be and not necessarily the parent I want to be.

All the women in my family are very dramatic by themselves. They make the biggest things out of nothing. I think that's where I learned a lot about being emotional.

I have learnt that women are superior beings. They have a higher threshold of pain and are more understanding and accepting than men. Also, if you listen to them, you'll understand them better.