When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
IRVIN D. YALOMWhen people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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.
IRVIN D. YALOMI feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
IRVIN D. YALOMDespite 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. YALOMI never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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. YALOMThough the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOMIf we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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.
IRVIN D. YALOMLife as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.
IRVIN D. YALOMI dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOMLiving safely is dangerous.
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. YALOMReality 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. YALOMAll these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.
IRVIN D. YALOM