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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!

Irvin D. Yalom

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Irvin D. Yalom
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: June 13
Author
Existential Therapist
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
University Teacher
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Irvin David Yalom
Need
Child
Immortality
Spewing
Children
Though
Provide
Reproducing
Needs
Wrong
Loneliness
Germ
Life
Purpose
Bear
Alleviate
Future
Oneself
Germs
Use
Seek
Copy
Another
Bears
Contains
Also
Consciousness
Copies
Sperm

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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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
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
Irvin D. Yalom
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
Irvin D. Yalom
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If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I'd like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
Irvin D. Yalom
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When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
Irvin D. Yalom
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
Irvin D. Yalom
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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom