The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.

The whole nature of the “dialectical” or “poetical” imagination is another problem urgently needing examination; and there is a particular need for psychoanalysis, as part of the psychoanalysis of psychoanalysis, to become conscious of the dialectical, poetical, mystical stream that runs in its blood.

Dreams are certainly an activity of the mind struggling to circumvent the formal-logical law of contradiction.

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of ‘progress,’ but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

The opposite of war, the true war, is poetry.

I’ve been impressed by the extent to which one gets sentenced by one’s own sentences. One explores certain things in play and then in a strange way they become commitments which one has to live. I have gained a deep respect for the demonic power of the word. Words are not idle. They have consequences.

The human ego must face the Dionysian reality, and therefore a great work of self-transformation lies ahead of it. For Nietzsche was right in saying that the Apollonian preserves, the Dionysian destroys, self-consciousness.

The human libido is essentially narcissistic, but it seeks a world to love as it loves itself.

The alternative to dualism is dialectics: that is to say, love.

Compare Nietzsche’s doctrine of the necessary connection between suffering and art: “What must this people have suffered, that they might become thus beautiful.” 6.