I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
IRVIN D. YALOMThere is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
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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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Living safely is dangerous.
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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.
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Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
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Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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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.
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It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
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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.
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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.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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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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The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM