Wilhelm Stekel

“ Are there not queens in the world of arts? Do they not rule like real queens their willingly humble subjects? Haven’t they everything that a queen has: Gold, fame, honour, recognition, admiration, envy? Almost every girl goes through this stage. She wants to become a great artist. A prima donna such as the world has never yet known; a danseuse, who shall have the tumultuous applause of houses filled to the last seat; a celebrated actress whose finger-tips princes shall be permitted to kiss; a violinist whose bow shall sway the hearts of men more than the golden sceptre of a queen ever could. ”

“ In our thoughts we build a small skiff that will take us out of the narrow channel of our homes into the vast sea; we battle on the prairie with the brave and crafty Indians; we seek out the sun-burned gold-fields in the new world; we put a hurried girdle round about the earth, and—when at top speed—we would even attempt a flight to the moon.
Nothing that makes an impression on the human mind is ever lost. Our youth with its fantasies and childish desires exerts an important influence on us all our life. Henceforth all our excursions are journeys into the realm of youth. ”

“ At home it must happen now and then that the walls which separate the inmates from one another fall, the wrappings that encase our inmost being burst, and soul speaks to soul. At home it is possible to devote the time to the nobler delights that life has to offer. At one time there can be—as there was in your own parents’ home—a reading, on another occasion singing or music. And would it be such a terrible misfortune to spend one’s holiday with one’s family, to be one with them, reviewing the week that is past or playing with the children and being a child again? ”

“ Just at present darkness surrounds us. The mysteries of the soul are barred to us. Its depths are unfathomable. Even if we have illumined some hidden corner and brought something that was long concealed to the light of consciousness, it is only like a drop snatched from the infinity of the ocean. The real reason why we travel can be told us only by our “other self,” that “other one” whom we buried in our remote youth. Whither we travel is quite clear. Large and small, young and old, fools and wise men—all journey to the realm of youth. ”

“ And how often is a child admired and worshipped to such an extent that it really imagines itself the hub of its little world! All the boundless overvaluation of the world, of one’s surroundings, the striving for public recognition, for reputation, for honour emanate from our childhood years. We ought to make it our object to bring about just the opposite. The child should be brought up to be modest, to learn that happiness lies in the feeling of having done one’s duty, in the quiet joys of life, in work, in a capacity for enjoyment. ”

“ All life is a continual game between hope and fulfilment, between expectation and disappointment. And therein lies our good fortune—that we can still be deceived. Were we in possession of all truth and all knowledge, life would lose its value and its charm. Only because, in a certain sense, we all stand outside, because the fullness of life and “the thing itself” will continue to be a riddle, are we capable of continuing on our journey and approaching erectly the valley of death in which the shades dwell.
“Father, the show is over!” A child’s sweet voice wakes me from my revery. ”

“ A book that he reads alone, understands alone, enjoys alone, may be more dangerous to you than the most ardent glances of a wanton rival. Art must never become the man’s second world. No! It must become the child of both the lovers if the beats of their souls are to be harmonious.
True friendship is so lofty, so exalting, because it is dependent upon a congruence of the second spheres. Love is a linking of the first worlds and if it is to be permanent it must journey forth into the second world. Genuine friendship is born in the second world and affects the first world only retroactively. ”

“ But the dead have clung to me. They live with me, feel with me, and speak to me. When the noise of the day dies out and when the bells within begin to ring, when shapeless forms emerge from the unconscious with strange questions and uncanny gestures, when I turn from the world of reality into that of mystery, then my dead friends are with me and I hold converse with them. With every question I wish I had asked another, and I get the conviction that this other one would have answered my question, or, that other one would have understood me. ”

“ It is our duty to limit the child’s vanity, to restrain his ambition, and to train him to be self-reliant. One who has learned to consider contentment with oneself—not self-satisfaction based on vanity and arrogance—as worth more than what people say about one has found the way to health and happiness.
Who would deny that a mirror has its uses? Who does not know that it is necessary occasionally to observe ourselves in the mirror of the body and the soul so that we may recognize our shortcomings, remove our blemishes, and make ourselves better and more beautiful? ”

“ Of course we are very careful to conceal this delusional greatness from the rest of the world. We all have our secret chapels in which we offer daily prayers and into which no one, not even our nearest, is permitted even to glance. In this chapel our idol sits enthroned, the prototype of majesty, “our ego,” before whom we bend our knees in humble supplication. But out there—in the world without—it is different. There we play the role of the humble, respectful, subservient fellow. We swear allegiance to alien gods and mock our ego and its powers. ”

“ But will life be more worth living when there will be no more jealousy? We gladly put up with jealousy if only our costly treasure of love continues secure. Would a life free from all jealousy and pain, a life without passions, be worth while? Is it not a fact that our possessions are most highly valued by us at the moment when we fear to lose them?... The sweetest harmonies are to be found only in contrasts. The wagon of life rolls with greater tempo over the endless lonely roads when it is harnessed to the passions. ”

“ Here the child’s fantasy has ample room. It is a soldier, king, and robber, cook, and princess; it rides through a wide world on steaming express trains, it battles courageously with dragons and giants, it snatches the treasures of the earth from their guardian dwarfs, and even the stars in the heavens are not beyond its reach in its play. Then comes the powerful dictum called education and snatches the child out of its beloved second world and compels it to give heed to the first world and to learn things necessary to it in its actual life. ”

“ How few of the things we have been dreaming of does life fulfil! Wish after wish, stripped of its purple mantle, sinks to the ground in a state of “looped and windowed raggedness,” till the last wish of all—the longing for peace, eternal peace—puts an end to the play.
Our childhood wishes determine our destiny. They die only with our bodies. They go whirling through our dreams, are the masters of our unconscious emotions, and determine the resonance of the most delicate oscillations of our souls. ”

“ We can discover all the puzzling roots of love, even in the friendships of children, e.g., sympathy, cruelty, desire, humility, and subjection.
It is my belief that we adults cannot love with the love we were capable of in childhood. We cannot hate so, cannot be so resentful, and cannot be so self-sacrificing. Alas! even our emotions become pallid with the years and can make a show of colour only with the aid of memory.
Let us watch a child that has entered into a close friendship. Is it not playing the same game that we adults later on designate as love? ”

“ But always in conflict with ourselves, in conflict with the beast, in conflict with the savage within us. Even to this day the whole world belongs to each one of us. Our desires extend our property to infinity. What would we not own? What do we not desire? The wealth of the rich, the honour of the distinguished, the triumphs of the artist, to say nothing of his sexual triumphs. The less we can fulfil these desires the more do we cling to what we have, or, somewhat more accurately, could have had. For jealousy does not concern only what one actually possesses. ”

“ Blessed time, in which we do not yet feel the hot breath of burning desires when the arm of a beloved being entwines us, in which the threatening fist of Destiny does not pin us to the ground at the moment when we think we are plucking down the sky! The mirror of our soul still reflects pure innocence; we do not yet suspect that the passions that set the waters in motion must also stir up the muddy ooze that lies at the bottom.
Childhood friendship is the school of love. ”

“ It is for all the world as if the neurotic’s soul were covered over with some dangerous adhesive material. Everything sticks to it and does not permit itself to be loosed from it, becomes organically united to it, wraps itself up in it, blinds his clear vision and cripples his freedom of motion. This not getting done with the past betrays itself also in his inability to forgive, in his craving for revenge and in his resentments. A neurotic is capable of reproaching one for some trifling humiliation or for some unconsidered word many years after the event. ”

“ There are persons who spend their entire lives under the tyranny of the mirror. From early morning to late at night they are thinking, “How do I look to-day?” The mirror follows them into their dreams and shows them their ego horribly distorted and grotesquely transformed, or it annihilates the imperfections which make them so unhappy. Everybody has a tremendous interest in his personal appearance, an interest which may assume such proportions as to amount to self-love, to being in love with one’s bodily ego, or to hatred of one’s self, disgust with one’s own appearance. ”

“ Marriage is the rock on which most friendships split. What was formerly a question for two is now a question for three. And if the friend too marries it becomes a question for four. But how difficult it is to find four persons whose hearts beat harmoniously! What new elements now enter into the previous requirements “to understand each other!” Vanity, jealousy, envy, disfavour.
And thus we lose one friend after the other. And one day we find ourselves in an all-souls’ mood, and place wreaths on the graves of the dead who are dead to us. ”

“ Success does not pacify the roaring of our megalomania. Success goads it with a thousand lashes of the whip so that it becomes restive and escapes from the security of the preserves of the soul. Is this still a healthy manifestation? Or are we already in the realm of the pathological? Is it the first delusion or the ultimate wisdom?
The delusion of greatness penetrates whole classes of humanity, infecting them like a subtle poison against which there is almost no immunity. ”

“ There is but one time that resembles this friendship:—the time when a happy love makes a wooer a sweet child again.
Even in a child’s soul the hunger for love cries aloud and will not be stilled. For a love that is more than a love of parents, for a love that is touched with that dark power which at a later period shapes the life of man to its will. ”

“ Have any of you an idea how many of our actions have their origin in ‘unconscious’ motives? All our life our shadow, our other self, walks by our side and has its say in everything we do. As long as it is only a shadow it is not dangerous. But, woe, if the shadow materialises, as the spiritualists say. The tourist makes a false step and falls into an abyss. Who or what guided his foot? Was it chance—or the unacted wish that slumbered so long beyond the threshold of consciousness? ”

“ The Bible, ancient legends, the folk-songs, and the proverbs of all nations, ancient and modern, bewail man’s ingratitude. It is “the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin.” A trait that is so widely distributed, investing the egoist with the glory of supreme worldly wisdom and branding the altruist as half a fool, must be founded deep in the souls of men. It must be an integral part of the circumstances conditioning the life of the individual. It must send its roots down into the unconscious where the brutal instincts of primal man consort with humanity’s ripened instincts. ”

“ Every time that one of the portals that had been locked from our youthful eyes opened, every time longing became fulfilment, we became one pleasure poorer and one disappointment richer. Only with the aid of the stilts supplied us by philosophy can we rise above the depressing disillusionment of experience. Or, in playing our part in the great drama of life, we cling to the one role we have studied and keep on repeating it to ourselves until we, too, almost believe it. ”

“ When we are mature enough to know what we really want to become it is usually too late. Then we are children no longer. But then we would love to be children again and shed a furtive tear for the beautiful childhood that’s dead.... If we could be children again we’d know what we would like to be. No illusory wish would then tempt us from the right path, luring us like a will o’ the wisp into the morass of destruction. ”

“ Socialism is the triumph of identification and the death-knell of individualism.
The most beautiful instance of identification is furnished by love. One who is in love has completely identified himself with the beloved. “Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one.” Has not Rückert designated his beloved as his “better self”? (Or Kletke’s very popular song: “What is thine and what is mine?”) A lover almost literally transfers his whole ego into another’s soul. ”

“ He will always make reservations leaving himself some sphere of activity in which he is king. That constitutes a man’s secret pride: the sphere in which he thinks he excels all others. This self-consciousness, this exaggerated apperception of the ego is a natural basis of life, a protective device of the soul which makes life bearable, which makes it easier to bear our fardels and endure the pricks of destiny, and which compensates us for the world’s inadequate recognition of us and for the failure of our efforts which must inevitably come short of our intentions. ”