Thursday, September 22, 2016

"The energetic and successful man is he who succeeds, by dint of labor, in transforming his wish fancies into reality" -- Freud

Image result for freud clark university
Not the greatest statue. And certainly not sufficient reason to visit Worcester, Mass. Interesting that Freud gave these lectures at Clark University in 1909 in German -- because all Ph.D. trained persons in the United States at that time could speak German -- how else could you read the scientific literature? But have no doubt, wars settle some things. After 1945, English was well on its way to becoming the global language of science and medicine (and aviation, etc.). What a difference 36 years can make.





Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis
"The deeper you penetrate into the pathogenic of neurotic diseases, the more the connection of neuroses with other products of human mentality, even the most valuable, will be revealed to you. You will be reminded that we men, with the high claims of our civilization and under the pressure of our repressions, find reality generally quite unsatisfactory and so keep up a life of fancy in which we love to compensate for what is lacking in the sphere of reality by the production of wish-fulfillments.  
In these phantasies is often contained very much of the particular constitutional essence of personality and of its tendencies, repressed in real life. The energetic and successful man is he who succeeds, by dint of labor, in transforming his wish fancies into reality. Where this is not successful in consequence of the resistance of the outer world and the weakness of the individual, there begins the turning away from reality. The individual takes refuge in his satisfying world of fancy.
Under certain conditions it still remains possible for him to find another connecting link between these fancies and reality, instead of permanently becoming a stranger to it through the regression into the infantile. If the individual who is displeased with reality is in possession of that artistic talent which is still a psychological riddle, he can transform his fancies into artistic creations. So he escapes the fate of a neurosis and wins back his connection with reality by this round-about way. Where this opposition to the real world exists, but this valuable talent fails or is insufficient, it is unavoidable that the libido, following the origin of the fancies, succeeds by means of regression in revivifying the infantile wishes and so producing a neurosis. The neurosis takes, in our time, the place of the cloister, in which were accustomed to take refuge all those whom life had undeceived or who felt themselves too weak for life."




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