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Life 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. Yalom

Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Absorbed Being Distinction Heidegger Make Thing Way World
Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Absolute Allow Clear Determine Empty Free Friendship Man Premiseble Way
A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
IRVIN D. YALOM

Country Curious Experiment Life Live Message People Person Repeat Same Such Through Way Willing
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Able Accomplish Agree Among Change Great Hardly Men Myself Nature
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Critical Isolation Process Psychotherapy Relationship Terror Therapist
I 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. YALOM

Also Day Decade Distant Feel Future Himself Man One Psychiatrist Spent Strongly
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
I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anything Beter Met never Something Take Way
There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Death Doctor Enter Evidence Example Ned Priest Professional Soldier
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
Mature love is loving, not being loved.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Being Love Loved Loving Mature
If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Goodwill Movie Out People Peron Person Pick Sea Therapist
Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Between Difference Fall Infinite Love Passion People Spark Stand
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. YALOM

Always Deliberately Ensure Life Materialize Meaning Ourselves Phenomena Pursue Sense
Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Field Finish Medicine Other Psychiatry Really Straight Unlike
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

Life 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.

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Life 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.

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