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. 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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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!
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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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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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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.
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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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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.
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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
IRVIN D. YALOM