Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.
IRVIN D. YALOMYour greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
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If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
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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.
IRVIN D. YALOM






