Boris Sidis Quotes

American psychiatrist (1867-1923)

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Boris Sidis (October 12, 1867 – October 24, 1923) was a Ukraine-born American psychologist and psychiatrist who studied under William James at Harvard University. His areas of study included hypnosis, suggestion, and the subconscious; multiple personality, sleep, laughter, and the treatment of psychopathic disease.

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The general tendency of evolution is from structure to function, from bondage to freedom of the individual elements.

The man of genius whether as artist or thinker requires a mass of accidental variations to select from and a rigidly selective process of attention.

A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death.

Psychology is the science of psychic states both as to content and form, regarded from an objective standpoint, and brought in relation to the living corporeal individual.

If ceaseless vigilance is the price of liberty, more so is it true that ceaseless criticism of ever new opinions and ever new views, however distasteful, bizarre, and paradoxical, is the price of truth.

It is time that the medical and teaching profession should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is the result of a defective, fear-inspiring education in early child life.

Mental synthesis of psychic content in the unity of a moment-consciousness is a fundamental principle of psychology.

If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible.

Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.

The main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.

No opinion should be disdained and scorned.