The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the… - Sigmund Freud

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The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

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About Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud ([ˈziːgmʊnt ˈfrɔʏ̯t]; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. He was the father of Anna Freud, the grandfather of Sir Clement Freud and Lucian Freud, and the uncle of Edward Bernays.

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Also Known As

Alternative Names: Sigismund Schlomo Freud Sigmund Schlomo Freud Sigismund Freud Freud
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The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.

Additional quotes by Sigmund Freud

we are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay..., from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77)

We obtain our concept of the unconscious, therefore, from the theory of repression … We see, however that we have two kinds of unconscious — that which is latent but capable of becoming conscious, and that which is repressed and not capable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way.

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