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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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Alexander Lowen
Age: 97 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 23
Died: 2008
Died: October 28
Psychotherapist
New York City
New York
Person
Present
Alive
Future
Making
True
Facilitated
Past
Exist
Doe
Cutting
Persons
Growth

More quotes by 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.
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If the ego is inflated it must be gradually deflated.
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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.
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The path to joy leads through despair.
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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.
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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.
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What happened to me is that as I grew up, I found that I was smart. My mother had insisted on that you see. Oh, but I loved to play ball. I loved the physical aspect. So you have one leg in one field, and one leg in the other and you're nowhere.
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Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance.
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Everyone who becomes a psychotherapist eventually adopts a theory that suits his needs.
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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.
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Above all, faith is grounded in one's body, in one's humanity, and in one's animal nature. It is an biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation
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The only way you can make a marriage work is as free, independent people. It needs to be based on the good feelings that you have for each other, not on need.
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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.
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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.
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Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A person does not choose his or her fate he or she only fulfills it. We are bound by our fate as long as we accept the values that determine it.
Alexander Lowen