He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
IRVIN D. YALOM
Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
IRVIN D. YALOM -
There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
IRVIN D. YALOM -
You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOM -
If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
IRVIN D. YALOM -
Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
IRVIN D. YALOM