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Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.

Erich Fromm

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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Theory
Psychoanalysis
Reality
Subjective
Needs
Essentially
Unconscious
Resistance
According
Strive
Strivings
Expectations
Falsification

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.
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This Marxian sentence, repeated to the point of boredom, is misinterpreted. In reality [Karl] Marx was a religious man.
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In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
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Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.
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Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer.
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Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.
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Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.
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Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
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Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
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Once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything.
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Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
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I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.
Erich Fromm
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We substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow.
Erich Fromm
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A vast sector of modern advertising... does not appeal to reason but to emotion like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually.
Erich Fromm
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[Carl Gustav] Jung was not right when he said that the unconscious message is always written clearly and so there is no need to seek to discover the distortions, because one must recognize that many dreams are more or less distortions.
Erich Fromm
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FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'
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A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.
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The state of sleep is a state of freedom in which man is not occupied with the manipulation of the outside world.
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Education is helping the child realise his potentialities.
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The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high it is the loss of his self.
Erich Fromm