My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
IRVIN D. YALOMA focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
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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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
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Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
IRVIN D. YALOM