The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
IRVIN D. YALOMIf we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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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.
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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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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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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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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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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.
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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.
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The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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One 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.
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My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
IRVIN D. YALOM