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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.

Irvin D. Yalom

One 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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Clear Feel Important Lety Live One Thing
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Belief Children Compulsive Develop Ever Famous Future Grow Large Mpregnable Ourselves Project Protective Rescuer Rich Ritual Through Ultimate
Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Death Destroy Idea Physical Save Through
Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Important Pathology People Relationship Student Teach Work
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Back Bereavement Found Gone Impressive Number Old Rather Simply Study Widow Windower
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cease Climb Enough Height Loo Reach Tragedy Tragic We
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Defense Despite Most Staunch Venerable
Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Always Creep Experience Helplessness Indeed Morality Reality
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Dignity Else Emerence Everything Government Highest More Protection Religion Revelation
Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Death Form Mode Number Other Primary Specialties Take Transcendence
Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Come Despair Dream Even Many More People True
A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Death Deep Dissatisfaction Focus Overcome Point Strat
The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Accept Accuse Act Another Being Fully Oneself Reveal Therapeutic Vehicle
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Creator Death Like More Unlive
Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Die Fullest Life Live Only Then
Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Absolute Always Corrupt Individual Known Power Trick

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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