The Insanity of Normality Quotes

“All representatives of the ideology of power, which is based on a false conception of the self, fear people who are inner-directed and have contempt for them because it is a fear that cannot be acknowledged. It makes no difference if one is on the right or left politically. What we are faced with on all sides is an obsession with power, rather than an openness to reality with all its rich and vital possibilities.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Conformist thinking is self-defeating because it knows only the categories of punishment and submission, but not the potential that lies in understanding. The image of the enemy must be maintained at all costs; for this reason, the "enemy" must never be humanized. Both the revolutionary and the conformist depend on the image of the enemy; they need it in order to rationalize their violence to maintain their positions.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“It is psychology's task to cast light on what we want to keep concealed.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Autonomy, as I see it, is a condition of integration in which the possibility of living in harmony with one's own needs and feelings is realized. What is meant here are not those feelings and needs artificially produced by the consumer society but those originating in the joy produced by a mother's love for the aliveness of her child or in the sorrow stemming from the lack of this love.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Development is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling alone. If this is the case, helplessness will not be perceived as a total abandonment or condemnation but as a state through pain and sorrow to new strength rather than to destruction. This sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“It is primarily the inability to tolerate feelings that brings about disassociation between thought and feeling. Although this is considered a characteristic of schizophrenic behavior, it is true of us “normal“ people and not of schizophrenics. In the latters’ case, disassociation is an expression of the refusal to produce imposed in the hypocritical feelings. For it is not that schizophrenics are incapable of tolerating real feelings of pain, sorrow, despair, or joy; they simply reject living with the distortions of these feelings. But when “normal“ men and women cannot tolerate helplessness, for instance, they need to seek relief in a “reality“ that is contemptuous of such an experience and that denies its inherent potentiality as a source of genuine strength.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“The insanity masking itself as normality is fundamentally different from what is usually meant by that word; therefore, we need to reformulate the concept of insanity. Schizophrenia--the "recognizable" form of insanity-needs to be seen from a completely different perspective: namely, as the struggle against a much more portentous kind of insanity, one that has the semblance of normality. Here, again, we get a sense of the difficulty of my approach: we are all taken in by the outer appearance of normality, since, under the pressures of our upbringing, we have lost contact with what lies behind this facade.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“The clearest sign of this is the revengeful and reproachful manner in which many people behave, regardless of whether they live in a capitalist or communist country. For revenge and reproach – not freedom Ash have become their goals in life; consequently, the increasingly intensify there dependency and fall prey to the illusion the power is the panacea for all problems.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Our civilization with its demand for obedience is at the root of self-hatred; here lies the source of our malaise and unhappiness. Whenever we avoid facing truth for the sake of those ideologies that sustain our power-based culture, unhappiness will be a constant feature in our lives, no matter what the economic or political character of a given society may be.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Development is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling alone. If this is the case, helplessness will not be perceived as a total abandonment or condemnation but as a state through pain and sorrow to new strength rather than to destruction sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Für jene, die in das Erscheinungsbild ‚normalen’ Verhaltens hineinschlüpfen, weil sie die Spannung der Widersprüche zwischen der auferlegten Realität und ihrer inneren Welt nicht ertragen, für solche Menschen gibt es bald keine wirklichen Gefühle mehr. Stattdessen gehen sie mit Ideen von Gefühlen um, haben keine Erfahrung mehr mit ihnen. Sie präsentieren aufgesetzte Gefühle und sagen sich von ihren wahren Gefühlen los. Je ‚gesünder’ das Image der Identität, das sie angenommen haben, desto erfolgreicher werden sie diese Manipulation vollziehen können. Und es ist Manipulation, da ihr Ziel nicht der Ausdruck ihrer selbst ist, sondern den andern zu überzeugen, dass sie angemessen handeln, denken und fühlen.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness

“Die Lektion des Nazitums ist nicht nur eine Geschichtslektion über Machtpolitik, Gier, Größenwahn und über das Böse, sondern sie lehrt auch, was Männer und Frauen zu tun imstande sind, wenn sie keine Beziehung zu ihrem inneren Sein haben. Dies zu erkennen könnte dazu beitragen, uns heute vor Ähnlichem zu bewahren. Denn solche Menschen sind nach wie vor überall unter uns. Statt politischen Ideologien folgen sie heute zum Beispiel den Gesetzen des geschäftlichen Erfolges.”
― Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness