"Experience shows that this transference very soon becomes the source of resistance. Love is only a seeking for love in return, Do, ut des . If the patient notices that love is not given in return or that it has not reached that degree which he expected, defiance enters in place of the love, which in turn manifests itself as active resistance."

“People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.”

“In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings.”

“Anxiety is fear of one's self.”

“Many times I had spoken about "mental bipolarity" and proved that our affects are bipolar. Desire and disgust, love and hate, will-to-power and will-to-submission, are composed of negative and positive parts like the current of electricity. My contention was that any human affect has its own counterpart. Later Bleuler described this fact as "ambivalence," a term that was accepted by everybody, whereas previously they had laughed at my discovery, and given me the nickname "Stekel with his Bipolarity.”

“Love at first sight is a revival of an infantile impression. The first love object reappears in a different disguise.”

“Many an attack of depression is nothing but the expression of regret at having to be virtuous.”