If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
IRVIN D. YALOMDeath, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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. YALOM -
Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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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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My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
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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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One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
IRVIN D. YALOM






