Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
IRVIN D. YALOMOne comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
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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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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
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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.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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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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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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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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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
IRVIN D. YALOM






