Living safely is dangerous.
IRVIN D. YALOMLiving safely is dangerous.
IRVIN D. YALOMEvery person must choose how much truth he can stand.
IRVIN D. YALOMIt 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. YALOMMature love is loving, not being loved.
IRVIN D. YALOMAs 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. YALOMAll 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.
IRVIN D. YALOMTo care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
IRVIN D. YALOMLife 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.
IRVIN D. YALOMWhat? ‘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. YALOMWhen we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
IRVIN D. YALOMMy hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
IRVIN D. YALOMPsychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
IRVIN D. YALOMLife is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOMLive your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
IRVIN D. YALOMThere are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
IRVIN D. YALOM