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.
IRVIN D. YALOMWe project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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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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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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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
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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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I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
IRVIN D. YALOM