“One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.”

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

The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.

I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.

Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.

There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)

Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.

The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

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.

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.

Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.

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.

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.

This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

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.

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.

Any approach to scientific inference which seeks to legitimize it and answer in reponse to complex uncertainty is,

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

At the end of the day, if I can say that I had a career where I was able to play all different kinds of characters and I’m known as someone who is well-respected for my approach to the craft, that would be a beautiful life.

A way of practicing your approach to life that allows you to keep a healthy perspective on things.

Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

ROH is not a company that says ok we’re going to throw all this money in and let’s just go for it. ROH has the business approach of slow but steady.

Verse 11. (They presented unto Him gifts). The people of the east never approach the presence of kings and great personages, without a present in their hands.

I’ve come to see that I have two choices in how I approach change: I can either resist change or be open to what’s ahead and feel the peace that “all is well in the universe.” When I lean into the latter, I feel excited about the future.