The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOMOne thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
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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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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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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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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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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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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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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
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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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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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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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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. YALOM