A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
IRVIN D. YALOMHe 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)
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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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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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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I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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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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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.
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Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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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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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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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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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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.
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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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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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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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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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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?
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Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.
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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.
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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.
IRVIN D. YALOM