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. YALOMReligion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
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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.
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
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A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
IRVIN D. YALOM