This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"Psychoanalysis has changed American psychology from a diagnostic to a therapeutic science, not because so many patients are cured by the psychoanalytic technique, but because of the new understanding of psychiatric patients it has given us, and the new and different concept of illness and health." -
"The use of religion, psychoanalysis, or the mass media, as instruments by which people are helped to adjust to a dehumanizing social order without being challenged to change it, is essentially a betrayal of man." - Richard Shaull, fully Reverend M. Richard Shaull
"The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness." - Fritz Perls, fully Friedrich "Fritz" (Frederick) Salomon Perls
"Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Incidentally, psycho-analysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease - lots of different spirits etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air ; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment..." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"The threat of coercion is part of the authorization we give to the traffic police, for example, to prevent accidents at dangerous intersections. Not only do we want that threat to inhibit the impulses of other drivers, we also look to it at times to bridle out own." - Ronald A. Heifetz
"Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"It must be admitted that women have but little sense of justice, and this is no doubt connected with the preponderance of envy in their mental life." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an "unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young—-a human activity which developed late." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Thought is action in rehearsal." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"It is sometimes asserted that a surgical operation is or should be a work of art ... fit to rank with those of the painter or sculptor. ... That proposition does not admit of discussion. It is a product of the intellectual innocence which I think we surgeons may fairly claim to possess, and which is happily not inconsistent with a quite adequate worldly wisdom." - Wilfred Trotter, fully Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl