What Sigmund Freud thinks about happiness
Founder of psychoanalysis (1856 to 1939); physician and psychologist who lived and worked in Vienna until 1938; author of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and The Ego and the Id (1923).
Sigmund Freud did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
5 dated positions, c. 1930, in their own words. Our reading of what Sigmund Freud has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsIt simply cannot be put into execution, the whole constitution of things runs counter to it; one might say the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the scheme of ‘Creation’.
↗Civilization and Its Discontents (tr. Joan Riviere, 1930)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsOur possibilities of happiness are thus limited from the start by our very constitution. It is much less difficult to be unhappy.
↗Civilization and Its Discontents (tr. Joan Riviere, 1930)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWe are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love-object or its love.
↗Civilization and Its Discontents (tr. Joan Riviere, 1930)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Our readingThere is no recipe for happiness that suits everyone; each person must find their own means
Their wordsThere is no sovereign recipe in this matter which suits all; each one must find out for himself by which particular means he may achieve felicity.
↗Civilization and Its Discontents (tr. Joan Riviere, 1930)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Our readingThe price of progress in civilization is paid in lost happiness, through a heightened sense of guilt
Their wordsThis may have spoilt the composition of the work; but it faithfully corresponds to my intention to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the evolution of culture, and to convey that the price of progress in civilization is paid in forfeiting happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.
↗Civilization and Its Discontents (tr. Joan Riviere, 1930)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.