Irvin D. Yalom Quotes - Page 3

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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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Encounters, Patient, Isolation

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, p.406, Basic Books

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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. And if you do the latter, you're not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Everyday, World, Way

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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. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Loss, Thinking, Numbers

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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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Decision, Anxiety, Path

  Irvin D. Yalom (2011). “The Gift Of Therapy (Revised And Updated Edition): An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients”, p.110, Hachette UK

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• There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?" - Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent. 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

  Thinking, Rivers, Brotherhood

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• If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Firsts, Ifs

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.91, Basic Books

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• 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

  Ignorance, Long, Community

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “The Spinoza Problem: A Novel”, p.84, Basic Books

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• The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Discipline, Creative, Orthodoxy

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.23, Basic Books

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• As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Mind, Age, Looks

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.17, John Wiley & Sons

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• Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door. Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Death, Stress, Doors

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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. I never want to take away something when I don't have anything better to offer him in a way.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Offering, Views, Comfort

  "An Interview with Irvin Yalom, MD on Death Anxiety". Interview with David Van Nuys, www.cascadementalhealth.org.

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• Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life!

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Death, Terror, Dies

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• You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. 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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Book, Home, Writing

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• I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Death, Men, Anxiety

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• If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. 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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Ambition, People, Time On Earth

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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

  Long Ago, Patient, Easier

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• I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Claws

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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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Perspective, People, Rejection

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• Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. 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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Stars, Fate, Power

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, p.127, Basic Books

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• To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience. Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Strong, Groups, Would Be

  Irvin D. Yalom (1983). “Inpatient Group Psychotherapy”, Basic Books

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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.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Issues, Shy, Existential

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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

  Death, Anxiety, Mind

  Irvin D. Yalom (2010). “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”, p.17, John Wiley & Sons

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• Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Dream, Teaching, People

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• If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Struggle, Water, Laughing

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• Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms. 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. 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

  Numbers, Doctors, Anxiety

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