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Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

Irvin D. Yalom

If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Choose Growth Pain Pleasure Prepare Some Want
This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Blossom Costly Diminish Existence Forever Knowledge Price Shadow Some Wound
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
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Creative Discipline Member Orthodoxy Outgrow Ultimate
To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Extent Life Alone One Responsible
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Another Crave Dream Love More People Possess
I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Being Call Claws Must No Stop Themselves
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Clear Feel Important Lety Live One Thing
Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Couch Experience Like Long Need Personal Side Therapist
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

Cluster Dead Death Living Memory Person Truly Vanish Wonder
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Awareness Gift Life Precious Self Surprise Treasure
As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Apprehenf As Reach Before Crest Death Downward Life Longer Look Mind Path Slope Toward
To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Acute Best Every Experience Impatient Knowledge Offer Some Therapy
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Accident Existence Let Life Plan Possession
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
Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Being Fall Give Large Limited Love Mode Person Rather Relate Single Way
What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Country Emest Game never People Person Real Said Therapist Think
Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Endlessm Still Greatest Instrument Learn Understanding Work
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

Dignity Else Emerence Everything Government Highest More Protection Religion Revelation
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
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

Approach Death Existence Frestand Issue Ratherminform Separate Theory Therapy
The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Accept Accuse Act Another Being Fully Oneself Reveal Therapeutic Vehicle
Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Attempt Difficult Evidence Grow Health Impatient Indeed Operate Profession Small
… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Better Give Hope Later Past Sooner
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Awareness Earth Finiteness Greater Help Improve Live Really Some Sort
It 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. YALOM

Alleviate Another Bear Child Children Consciousness Gem Life Loneliness Need Provide Purpose Reproduce Sperm Use Wrong
Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Die Fullest Life Live Only Then

Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

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Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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