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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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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
Worth
Perhaps
Single
Living
Important
Life
Unexamined
Credo
Therapeutic
More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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
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. Some have expressed the very opposite feeling--the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
Irvin D. Yalom
To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
Irvin D. Yalom
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
If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
Irvin D. Yalom
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
Irvin D. Yalom
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
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
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
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
Irvin D. Yalom
The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. 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. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
Irvin D. Yalom
Mature love is loving, not being loved.
Irvin D. Yalom
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
Irvin D. Yalom
When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
Irvin D. Yalom
... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom
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
One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
Irvin D. Yalom
The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
Irvin D. Yalom
