Karl Abraham Quotes

Both dreams and neurotic dream-states have as their function the avoidance of displeasure, but the dream-states also serve to provide a positive pleasure gain.

Even in my first analysis of a depressive psychosis, I was immediately struck by its structural similarity with obsessional neurosis.

When the depressive psychosis has become manifest, its cardinal feature seems to be a mental inhibition which renders a rapport between the patient and the external world more difficult.

The onset of mania occurs when repression is no longer able to resist the assaults of the repressed instincts.

The myth is a surviving fragment of the psychic life of the infancy of the race whilst the dream is the myth of the individual.

A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work.

In neurotics, worm phobias are usually found as well as snake phobias.

Psychoanalytic investigation has shown that in mental patients excessive affection often turns to violent hostility.

Whereas the melancholic exhibits a state of general inhibition, in the manic patient even normal inhibitions of the instincts are partly or wholly abolished.