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Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity in doubt.

Alexander Lowen

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Alexander Lowen
Age: 97 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 23
Died: 2008
Died: October 28
Psychotherapist
New York City
New York
Live
Dare
Seemingly
Play
Putting
Sanity
Roles
Rebel
Question
Insanity
Doubt
Beneath
Values
Depression
Lives
Illness
Fear
Rational
Exterior

More quotes by Alexander Lowen

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Without awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body.
Alexander Lowen
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Bioenergetics is an adventure in self-discovery. It differs from similar explorations into the nature of the self by attempting to understand the human personality in terms of the human body. Most previous explorations focused their investigations on the mind.
Alexander Lowen
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Mature love is not a surrender of the self but a surrender to the self. The ego surrenders its hegemony of the personality to the heart, but in this surrender it is not annihilated. Rather it is strengthened because its roots in the body are nourished by the joy that the body feels.
Alexander Lowen
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It is only by making the past alive again for a person that a true growth in the present is facilitated. If the past is cut off, the future does not exist.
Alexander Lowen
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A person with faith does not question its roots, for he knows that if he subjected it to the critical examination of his intellect, he would end up without faith. The same thing can be said of any feeling. You can analyze any feeling to death, but when you do that, you end up without feeling and without a meaninful life.
Alexander Lowen
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The single factor most responsible for the disruption of the family is the automobile. Its full effect cannot be assessed. Modern life, as we know, would be impossible without the ubiquitous motorcar. It broke up the old family and community.
Alexander Lowen
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Despair is the only cure for illusion.
Alexander Lowen
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We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.
Alexander Lowen
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Life is not a mixture of matter and energy but energy in matter, bound in such a way that dissociation is impossible so long as the living process continues.
Alexander Lowen
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Death is the fate no one can escape. The question, then, is, How does one die? A person can die like a hero or like a coward. The difference is that the hero can face death without fear, whereas the coward can't.
Alexander Lowen
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Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.
Alexander Lowen
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The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid.
Alexander Lowen
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The modern individual is committed to being successful, not to being a person. He belongs rightly to the action generation whose motto is do more but feel less.
Alexander Lowen
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A person who doesn't breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn't move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn't feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body.
Alexander Lowen
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Sexuality is not a leisure or part-time activity. It is a way of being.
Alexander Lowen
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In my opinion the hectic and almost frantic pace of modern living is a clear sign of the fear we have of being and of life. And as long as this fear exists in a person's unconscious, he will run faster and do more so as not to feel his fear.
Alexander Lowen
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Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.
Alexander Lowen
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I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.
Alexander Lowen
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Sustenance for the infant and child is more than alimentary nourishment. The child needs love, security, narcissistic supplies -- however one may describe it.
Alexander Lowen
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The ego exists as a powerful force in Western man that cannot be dismissed or denied. The therapeutic goal is to integrate the ego with the body and its striving for pleasure and sexual fulfilment.
Alexander Lowen