Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
In the utopian aim of removing all power and aggression from human behavior, we run the risk of removing self-assertion, self-affirmation, and even the power to be.
Human dignity is based upon freedom, and freedom upon human dignity. The one presupposes the other.
Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
Our particular problem in America at this point in history is the widespread loss of the sense of individual significance, a loss which is sensed inwardly as impotence.
It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
It is an obvious fact that when an age is torn loose from its moorings and everyone is to some degree thrown on his own, most people can take steps to find and realize themselves.
Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
Psychoanalysis - and any good therapy - is a method of increasing one's awareness of destiny in order to increase one's experience of freedom.
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.
The striking thing about love and will in our day is that, whereas in the past they were always held up to us as the answer to life's predicaments, they have now themselves become the problem.
Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.
I believe that the therapist's function should be to help people become free to be aware of and to experience their possibilities.
Problems are the outward signs of unused inner possibilities.
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.