Quote

Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.

Alexander Lowen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Lowen
Age: 97 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 23
Died: 2008
Died: October 28
Psychotherapist
New York City
New York
Level
Potency
Levels
Envious
Wants
Unimportant
Seems
Inferior
Power
Desperately
Possessor
Persons
Inferiors
Mantle
Person
Superiority
Confer
Feels
Sexual
Impotent

More quotes by Alexander Lowen

Image
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
Image
Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.
Alexander Lowen
Image
Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.
Alexander Lowen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Sexuality is not a leisure or part-time activity. It is a way of being.
Alexander Lowen
Image
Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death.
Alexander Lowen
Image
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
Image
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.
Alexander Lowen
Image
Contact with reality is not an all-or-nothing condition.
Alexander Lowen
Image
Everyone who becomes a psychotherapist eventually adopts a theory that suits his needs.
Alexander Lowen
Image
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
Image
Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance.
Alexander Lowen
Image
The feeling of love is a rich feeling, but the expression of love in word or deed is a joy.
Alexander Lowen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Love is the feeling that emanates from the heart and extends through the blood to every cell of the body.
Alexander Lowen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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