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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
-
-
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?
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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)
IRVIN D. YALOM -
You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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 -
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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. YALOM -
There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Living safely is dangerous.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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 -
One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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