The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman’s belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
So I had a choice between going to a jail or going to a bughouse like a nice young middle-class student. So I chose to go to a very polite mental hospital. When I left eight months later, they said, ‘You were never psychotic. You were just an average neurotic’.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
The “sensitiveness” claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an even increasing amount of attention in themselves.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
There is no such ”condition” as ”schizophrenia,” but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
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.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.
—Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
—Sylvia Plath (1932–63) American Poet, Novelist
Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
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.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient?
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
No further evidence is needed to show that “mental illness” is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French Essayist, Intellectual