Memory has always fascinated me. Think of it. You can recall at will your first day in high school, your first date, your first love.
Eric KandelRead
Psychoanalysis has a degree of unreliability about it. You will never know whether you've found the truth. You may find a subjective truth, but you don't know.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Psychoanalysis is inherently uncertain, as one may only discover personal truths rather than absolute truths.
This quote by Eric Kandel highlights the fundamental uncertainty that characterizes psychoanalysis. It suggests that while individuals may arrive at a form of subjective truth through introspection and analysis, the ultimate veracity of such truths remains elusive, emphasizing the complex nature of human psychology and the limitations of self-understanding.
Themes
PsychoanalysisTruthSubjectiveUnreliabilityPsychology
In practice
Example use cases
In a psychology class discussing the nature of truth and perception.
More from Eric Kandel
All quotes →You learn emotional experiences as much as you learn cognitive experiences, except that they are more unconscious. Sometimes one represses the cognitive component of it, but it's often more difficult to repress the emotional component.
Eric KandelRead
Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created.
Eric KandelRead
A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, yet they are rarely brought together.
Eric KandelRead
I was interested in the nature of human mental processes, which is what got me interested in psychoanalysis. And it became clear to me after a while that mental processes come from the brain, and in order to understand them, you need to be a biologist of the brain.
Eric KandelRead
In art, as in science, reductionism does not trivialize our perception - of color, light, and perspective - but allows us to see each of these components in a new way.
Eric KandelRead
Similar quotes
At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.
Hakuin EkakuRead
We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.
E. O. WilsonRead
Everything's much too big here,' thought Moominmamma. 'Or perhaps I'm too small.
Tove JanssonRead
For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to “invite Jesus into your life.” Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life is a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static. It’s wild and exhilarating and unpredictable.
Russell D. MooreRead
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
Ogden NashRead
The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.
Dalai LamaRead