24 quotes
Unlike a human smile, purring cannot be, as far as anyone knows, faked.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)
The idea, to a cat, that somebody else owns him is ludicrous.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)
"Every day I get many calls, from all over the world about how awful you are. How awful this article is. How bad it all is for psychoanalysis."
Almost all analysts in America are physicians and psychiatrists, and the medical profession is layered into a strict hierarchy. Every psychiatrist in a hospital is chief of some service, or head of some department.
The cat does not merely experience contentment, he exudes it. You cannot be in the presence of a contented cat and not have some of that contentment rub off on you. Which surely is a good part of the reason we love cats so.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)
I was thrilled. I loved the idea of opening everything up, of making old and secret documents available to anybody who wished to see them.
To me, looking at other people in terms of what is wrong with them —these gradations of disturbance— was and is distasteful. Always implicit in the doctor's view is, of course, how much more "healthy" you are than they. And this is almost never the case.
Khan told me: "Nobody wants to say anything publicly because I know too much about all of them. If we were all to be honest with each other, that would be the end of British psychoanalysis."
I called Anna Freud in London to tell her what was about to happen. It was a strange, honest conversation.
I liked the idea of representing nobody but myself. No affiliation, no ties, no loyalties.
Humans are great lovers of consistency, and it annoys us that cats have different rules. Even if a cat is willing to give up her life for you, that does not mean that she is willing to change her mind at your request.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)
Those who live with pigs often speak of them as we normally speak of dogs—intelligent, loyal, and above all, affectionate. Each one, I am continually reminded by people who know them, is a complete individual, like no other pig.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003)
But Eissler also knew how the very people making the complaints and demanding my dismissal for what was, after all, a disagreement about the history of psychoanalysis, were guilty of extraordinary breaches of ethical conduct.
There are many people who have undergone great suffering who seem to possess knowledge of the deepest recesses of human emotion unavailable to the rest of us. They may want to impart it, but we often cannot hear. Strangely enough, farm animals strike me in the same way.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003)
Cats do not give us too many chances. Abuse a cat's trust twice and you could be history, for cats are much less forgiving than dogs and will often lose their trust in you should you behave badly. A dog gives you infinite slack; not so a cat.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)
… of all animals their flesh most resembles human flesh, which is somewhat disconcerting when you consider that more than 40 percent of all meat raised in the world is pork.
Eissler's rage knew no bounds. He did not like being harrassed by other analysts. "Just today Masud Khan called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives. The board members, all of them, or at least most of them, are asking for the same."
When I talk to farmers about how they treat the animals on their farms, I come up against a strange fact: while the general public and most research scientists all acknowledge that farm animals suffer, the farmers responsible for them have a tendency to deny it.
The Face on Your Plate (2009)
Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper and even scream knows. The experimenters dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalising. Descartes lives on.
When Elephants Weep (1994)
[About pigs] … of all animals their flesh most resembles human flesh, which is somewhat disconcerting when you consider that more than 40 percent of all meat raised in the world is pork.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003)