To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOMWhen 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?
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.
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Psychotherapy 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.
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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.
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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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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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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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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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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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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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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.
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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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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.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
IRVIN D. YALOM