Psychopathology Quotes

Under the heading of "defense mechanisms,” psychoanalysis describes a number of ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself. For example, repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection. These "mechanisms" are often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves "unconscious,” that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to himself. Even when a person develops sufficient insight to see that "splitting", for example, is going on, he usually experiences this splitting as indeed a mechanism, an impersonal process, so to speak, which has taken over and which he can observe but cannot control or stop. There is thus some phenomenological validity in referring to such "defenses" by the term "mechanism.” But we must not stop there. They have this mechanical quality because the person as he experiences himself is dissociated from them. He appears to himself and to others to suffer from them. They seem to be processes he undergoes, and as such he experiences himself as a patient, with a particular psychopathology. But this is so only from the perspective of his own alienated experience. As he becomes de-alienated he is able first of all to become aware of them, if he has not already done so, and then to take the second, even more crucial, step of progressively realizing that these are things he does or has done to himself. Process becomes converted back to praxis, the patient becomes an agent.

There are men who have themselves whipped simply to increase their sexual pleasure. These, in contrast with true masochists, regard flagellation as a means to an end.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

The thought of a comedy with paid prostitutes always seemed so silly and purposeless, for a person hired by me could never take the place of my imagination of a 'cruel mistress'.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

I have also fantasised myself to be his female slave, but this does not suffice, for after all every woman can be the slave of her husband.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

We must bear in mind, however sadly, that psychopathology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the degenerate and perverse. The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra -these are games that anyone can play. Their violence, and all violence for that matter, reflects the neutral exploration of sensation that is taking place now, within sex as elsewere (...). Were all this leads one can only speculate (...). What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations.

Ballard James G.

All our hope rests upon the possibility of a change of the laws which concern it, so that only rape or the comission of public offence, when this can be proved at the same time, shall be punishable.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

He soon recognized the fact that the stimulus proceeded from the idea to be in the power of a woman rather than from the act of violence itself.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Nature has made a mistake in the choice of my sexuality and I must do a life-long penance for it, for the moral power to suffer the unavoidable with dignity is lost.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant.

Kay Redfield Jamison

...American psychology effectively guaranteed its place as a cultural icon by helping to create the pathologies it simultaneously promised to treat. (p. 37)

The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual

C.G. Jung

We shall bear in linea, however sadly, that psychopathology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the degenerate and perverse. The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra- these are games that anyone can play (...) What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations.

Ballard James G.

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules.... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.