Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
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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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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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It 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!
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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
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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.
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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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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
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There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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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.
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When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
IRVIN D. YALOM