A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOMA sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe 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.
IRVIN D. YALOMPerhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
IRVIN D. YALOMIf we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D. YALOMPsychotherapy 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.
IRVIN D. YALOMWere 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. YALOMI must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
IRVIN D. YALOM… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOMYou 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.
IRVIN D. YALOMI dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOMTo the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOM…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOMDoes a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
IRVIN D. YALOMMy hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
IRVIN D. YALOMIt is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
IRVIN D. YALOM