A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
IRVIN D. YALOMAs we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
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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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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 day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.
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Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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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.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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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.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
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As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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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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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
IRVIN D. YALOM