None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
IRVIN D. YALOMOnly 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.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
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Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
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One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
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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.
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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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Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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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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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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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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When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
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Living safely is dangerous.
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
IRVIN D. YALOM