A Quote by Sigmund Freud
The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.
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Gangs are a group reaction to helplessness.
Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.
My helpless friend, your helplessness is the most powerful plea which rises up to the tender father-heart of God. You think that everything is closed to you because you cannot pray. My friend, your helplessness is the very essence of prayer.
I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?
The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).
The reaction against your own thought in itself lends life to thought. How this reaction is born is hard to describe, because it identifies with the very rare intellectual tragedies. The tension, the degree and level of intensity of a thought proceeds from its internal antinomies, which in turn are derived from the unsolvable contradictions of a soul. Thought cannot solve the contradictions of the soul. As far as linear thinking is concerned, thoughts mirror themselves in other thoughts, instead of mirroring a destiny.
Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. He hears it from the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness.
On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors.
The reaction to any word may be, in an individual, either a mob-reaction or an individual reaction. It is up to the individual to ask himself: Is my reaction individual, or am I merely reacting from my mob-self? When it comes to the so-called obscene words, I should say that hardly one person in a million escapes mob-reaction.
Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
We like reactions - a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction.
I remember a class I taught at Ohio State where I assigned a Mary Gaitskill story, which really wasn't that bad, and I had this one girl refuse to read it. But better that reaction than no reaction at all.
Without faith there can be no prayer, no matter how great our helplessness may be. Helplessness united with faith produces prayer.
There are two kinds of freedom: one is the freedom from something, which is a reaction; and the other is not a reaction, it is "being free."
Poor Englishwomen! When it comes to their clothes- well, the French reaction is a shrug, the Italian reaction a spreading of the hands and a lifting of the eyes and the American reaction simply one of amused contempt.
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