Winnicott once referred to depression as the ‘fog over the battlefield’.

It is, of course, Wilde’s point that socialism interferes with sociability.

Morality born of intimidation is immoral.

We can only be really realistic after we have tried our optimism out.

Kindness consistently preoccupies us, and yet most of us are unable to live a life guided by it.

A story is told of Alfred Adler, one of Freud’s early followers, who once interviewed a prospective patient at great length, taking a detailed family history, and getting as elaborate an account as possible of what the man was suffering from. At the end of this three-hour consultation Adler apparently said to the man, ‘What would you do if you were cured?’ The man answered him, and Adler said, ‘Well, go and do it then.’ That was the treatment.

When God is dead, kindness is permitted. When God is dead, kindness is all that people have.

So there are three consecutive frustrations: the frustration of need, the frustration of fantasized satisfaction not working, and the frustration of satisfaction in the real world being at odds with the wished-for, fantasized satisfaction. Three frustrations, three disturbances, and two disillusionments. It is, what has been called in a different context, a cumulative trauma; the cumulative trauma of desire. And this is when it works.

Satisfaction is no more the solution to frustration than certainty is the solution to skepticism.

Everything depends on what we would rather do than change.