What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
IRVIN D. YALOMIndeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.
IRVIN D. YALOM






