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Sigmund Freud

Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie

Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer (1920)

Berlin, Verlag Volk und Welt, Bd.1, S.116-238 (1988)

Quotes

"All those who want their conduct to be more noble than their constitution will permit will become victims of neurosis; they would have been healthier if it had been possible for them to behave worse."

"Everything which damages sexual life, represses sexual activity, distorts its aim, has to be seen as a pathogenic factor of psychoneurosis."

"Only a minority will be able to successfully sublimate, to divert sexual impulses from the sexual aim to higher cultural aims. And even this minority will succeed in doing so only for certain periods of time, least of all during the phase of ardent youthful vitality."

"Obviously we may surmise that, under the pressure of a cultural sexual morality, the health and vitality of the individual can be subject to such injuries, and the injuries suffered by the individual from the imposed sacrifices can accumulate to such an extent, that the final cultural aim is imperilled, too.

Culture may traumatize and hurt the individual. In so far as we are able to assess this damage, its cause must be sought in the repression of the sexual life of the civilized nations dominated by this 'cultural' sexual morality"

The restriction of sexual activity in a nation is accompanied by a general increase in fear of living and presentiment of death."

(pp. 128, 124, 130, 120, 123, 139, cited by Brongersma 1990, p.178)