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. YALOMOne reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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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.
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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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.
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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.
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I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
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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.
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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All 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.
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When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
IRVIN D. YALOM