Alexander Lowen Quotes

Without awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body.

Love is the feeling that emanates from the heart and extends through the blood to every cell of the body.

Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance.

Because we are afraid of life, we seek to control or master it.

Despair is the only cure for illusion.

If the ego is inflated it must be gradually deflated.

It is only by making the past alive again for a person that a true growth in the present is facilitated. If the past is cut off, the future does not exist.

The feeling of love is a rich feeling, but the expression of love in word or deed is a joy.

No one is exempt from the rule that learning occurs through recognition of error.

Life is not a mixture of matter and energy but energy in matter, bound in such a way that dissociation is impossible so long as the living process continues.

The path to joy leads through despair.

Above all, faith is grounded in one's body, in one's humanity, and in one's animal nature. It is an biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation

Everyone who becomes a psychotherapist eventually adopts a theory that suits his needs.

The modern individual is committed to being successful, not to being a person. He belongs rightly to the action generation whose motto is do more but feel less.

Contact with reality is not an all-or-nothing condition.

A person does not choose his or her fate; he or she only fulfills it. We are bound by our fate as long as we accept the values that determine it.

I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.

Sustenance for the infant and child is more than alimentary nourishment. The child needs love, security, narcissistic supplies -- however one may describe it.

The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid.

The only way you can make a marriage work is as free, independent people. It needs to be based on the good feelings that you have for each other, not on need.

Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.

The ego exists as a powerful force in Western man that cannot be dismissed or denied. The therapeutic goal is to integrate the ego with the body and its striving for pleasure and sexual fulfilment.

We believe it is bad or dangerous to be carried away by our emotions. We admire the person who is cool, who acts without feeling.