Quotes by Women Psychoanalysts

Anna Freud

Julia Kristeva

Lou Andreas-Salomé

Karen Horney

Melanie Klein

Helene Deutsch

Susan Sutherland Isaacs

One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.

It would not be going too far to assert that... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity.

It is interesting to note that in every phase of life feminine masochism finds some form of expression.

Nature is a universal that is shareable by all, males and females, men and women, and can thus be of use in mediating between all. The same does not apply for already constructed worlds and cultures. They are neither universal nor easily shareable.

It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.

A concern with parenting...must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but participation in an interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not.

We can perhaps learn to prepare for love. We can welcome its coming, we can learn to treasure and cherish it when it comes, but we cannot make it happen. We are elected into love.

Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Looking at obesity without preconceived ideas, one would assume that the main trend of research should be directed toward an examination of abnormalities of the fat metabolism, since by definition excessive accumulation of fat is the underlying abnormality. It so happens that this is the least work has been done.

I came to the conclusion then that "continual mindfulness"... must mean, not a sergeantmajor-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to accept whatever came.

Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action.... Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strength--and strength to enhance affiliation.

Jean Baker Miller

The text is a practice that could be compared to political revolution: the one brings about in the subject what the other introduces into society.

Should we not be moved rather than chilled by the knowledge that he might have attained his greatness only through his frailties?

Lou Andreas-Salomé

The only people who are truly happy are the people we do not know very well...

Susan Sutherland Isaacs