Wilhelm Stekel Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Many times I had spoken about "mental bipolarity" and proved that our affects are bipolar. Desire and disgust, love and hate, will-to-power and will-to-submission, are composed of negative and positive parts like the current of electricity. My contention was that any human affect has its own counterpart. Later Bleuler described this fact as "ambivalence," a term that was accepted by everybody, whereas previously they had laughed at my discovery, and given me the nickname "Stekel with his Bipolarity".

Wilhelm Stekel
Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate.

Wilhelm Stekel
Love at first sight is a revival of an infantile impression. The first love object reappears in a different disguise.

Wilhelm Stekel
Many an attack of depression is nothing but the expression of regret at having to be virtuous.

Wilhelm Stekel
In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings.

Wilhelm Stekel
Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may constitute a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened.

Wilhelm Stekel
People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.

Wilhelm Stekel
I have always described anxiety as the fear of oneself.

Wilhelm Stekel
Experience shows that this transference very soon becomes the source of resistance. Love is only a seeking for love in return, Do, ut des [I give, that thou shalt give]. If the patient notices that love is not given in return or that it has not reached that degree which he expected, defiance enters in place of the love, which in turn manifests itself as active resistance.

Wilhelm Stekel
Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.

Wilhelm Stekel