Wilhelm Stekel

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• Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate.
  • Marriage at the Crossroads (1931), p. 73

• 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.
  • Marriage at the Crossroads (1931), p. 144

• Atheism was the main topic of their conversation. Such fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion. The truly convinced atheist does not emphasize his atheism. He does not talk about it and is careful to avoid blasphemies.
  The man was interested in dreams and each morning he related several of his dreams. They were full of religious symbols.
  • American Journal of Psychotherapy Volume II (1948); this has sometimes been quoted as "Fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion."

• The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
  • As quoted in The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger.

• Anxiety is fear of one's self.
  • As quoted in Beyond the Blues: Treating Depression One Day at a Time (2000) by Edward F. Haas, p. 119

• In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings.
  • As quoted in The Book Of Friendship: Making Life Better (2001) by Cyndi Haynes, p. 6

• Many an attack of depression is nothing but the expression of regret at having to be virtuous.
  • As quoted in Sigmund Says : And Other Psychotherapists' Quotes (2006) by Bernard Nisenholz, p. 94

The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel (1950)

The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel : The Life Story of a Pioneer Psychoanalyst (1950) edited by Emil Arthur Gutheil

• Love at first sight is a revival of an infantile impression. The first love object reappears in a different disguise.
  • p. 52

• 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".
  • p. 132

• 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.
  • p. 206

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• An intense, unyielding stubbornness hides behind an apparent obedience...

• 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.

Quotes about Stekel

• Stekel enthusiastically cooperated with Freud in what could be called a symbiotic or antagonistic relationship and was driven out of the psychoanalytic community when he began to question the fundamental inequality of their respective roles.
  • The Self-Marginalization of Wilhelm Stekel : Freudian Circles Inside and Out by Jaap Bos and Leendert Groenendijk, Ch. 1 : Marginalization through Psychoanalysis An Introduction, p. 6

• The student of psychoanalysis can see in Stekel's notes how many of his own complexes remained obscure to him, can detect his unresolved narcissism, his overcompensated feelings of inadequacy; will smile when he reads that the man who was a master in ferreting out other people's repressions believed that he had hardly any himself.
  • Emil Arthur Gutheil, in The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel : The Life Story of a Pioneer Psychoanalyst (1950) edited by Emil Arthur Gutheil, p. 39