Sigmund Freud Quotes

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story's just a story

Human writing reflects that of the universe; it is its translation, but also its metaphor: it says something totally different, and it says the same thing.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

Everything for me becomes allegory.

The sponsors of this bill obviously have an unresolved Oedipal complex.

We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

'The Pink Lady' rides the Freudian wave. You know, the big lady, the relationship to mom - those things are obviously part of that piece.

A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal people. The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psycho-analysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences.

I've been dreaming of mirrors. Millions of mirrors, reflecting people to death.

But what Freud showed us… was that nothing can be grasped, destroyed, or burnt, except in a symbolic way, as one says, in effigie, in absentia.

I think there's a whole book being written about it in the UK. I don't know if you can get it here. It's about all the hidden messages and meetings in this and the fact that it is about women and the fact that this cave is full of blood and all this kind of stuff. And when I was making it, I didn't make it with that specifically in mind, but I always had it in the back of mind and I thought, 'Let's just throw it in there and see what people make of it.' And people seem to be making quite a lot of it. So I don't want to spell it out or say this, that or the other.

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

The metaphor is the story, not the character.

This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant.

I have always said to my pupils: "Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it when you are analyzing a dream."

Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral.It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases.

Abysmal vermin that I am, I couldn't of course tell her that it was her incredible mother that I wanted to see again… I knew only as I drove through the cold, night autumn air that somewhere Freud, Sophocles and Eugene O’Neill were laughing.