Valentine’s Day is a strange holiday. It is one of consumption – consumption of chocolate, of gaudy symbols of love, of sex, of vomity greetings cards and, for many, loneliness. So, Why not take refuge in the comforting theories of Sigmund Freud, father of such calming, romantic ideas as ‘you want to sleep with one of your parents and kill the other’, ‘your repressed childhood traumas have shaped your adult sexual desires’, and ‘women and homosexuals are aberrations’. More or less, anyway.
So, who better to brighten up your lovely, snuggly Valentine’s Day with a dose of psychoanalytical magic than the the man himself?
“One is very crazy when in love.”
“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”
“The goal of all life is death.”
“The history of human civilization shows beyond any doubt that there is an intimate connection between cruelty and the sexual instinct.”
“No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in late life.”
“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.”
“A normal sexual life is only assured by an exact convergence of the two currents directed towards the sexual object and the sexual aim, the affectionate current and the sensual one. [...] It is like the completion of a tunnel which has been driven through a hill from both directions.”
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”