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We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.

Psychoanalysts have been occupied for a long time with the difficult question of what the psychological conditions are which determine the form of the neurotic disease to which the individual will succumb. It is as though he had a choice between different illnesses and led by unknown impulses selected one or other of them.

The individual can maintain himself in a society definitely organized only through possessing an equally definite mental and moral constitution. This is what the neuropath lacks. His state of disturbance causes him to be constantly taken by surprise by circumstances.

A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work.

Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be very hard. Who do you share that failure with? That's why their personal lives are often disastrous.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

It was always inevitable that if you get serious trouble in any family then everybody's inclined to look at the head of that family and see if they see any cause or reason to associate it with the head of the, head of the family, why it should be.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.