A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOMOne reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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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.
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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
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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.
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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
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Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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Indeed, 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.
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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
IRVIN D. YALOM