Neurotic Quotes

“Neurotic, ha!" I let out a scornful laugh. "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.”

“The fascist authoritarianism, characterized by sado-masochism and destructiveness, had a function which is comparable psychologically to a neurotic symptom - namely, fascism compensated for powerlessness and individual isolation and protected the individual from anxiety-creating situations. If one compare fascism to a neurotic symptom, it can be said that fascism is a neurotic form of community.”

“There is a difference between a psychopath and a neurotic. A psychopath thinks two and two are five. A neurotic knows that two and two are four but he worries about it.”

“The line between 'normal' and 'neurotic' begins to appear when any activity becomes compulsive - that is, when the person feels pushed to perform the act because it habitually allays his anxiety rather than because of any intrinsic wish to perform the act.”

“Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.”

“The tenacity with which the neurotic adheres to any attitude is a sure indication that the attitude fulfills functions which seem indispensable in the framework of his neurosis.”

“Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.”

“In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.”

“In his fight against the powers of the surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived from the over-estimation of the individual’s own intellectual operations, from the belief in the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, which, incidentally, we come across again in our obsessional neurotics.”