“Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.”

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.

You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.

Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.

Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.

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.

The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.

Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.

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.

To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.

In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.

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.

To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.

Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.

The ambitious will always be first in the crowd; he presseth forward, he looketh not behind him. More anguish is it to his mind to see one before him, than joy to leave thousands at a distance.

Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies.

When by the flood of your tears, the inner and the outer have fused into One, you will find Her whom you sought with such anguish, nearer than the nearest, the very breath of life, the very core of every heart.

If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation?

Complete happiness lies in obedience to Allāh, and anguish is found in disobedience to Him and opposition against Him.

This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.