Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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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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This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
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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 must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
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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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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.
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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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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