Quote

Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Irvin D. Yalom

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Therapeutic
Worth
Perhaps
Single
Living
Important
Life
Unexamined
Credo

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

Image
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
Image
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Image
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Live your life to the fullest and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind.
Irvin D. Yalom
Image
Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
Irvin D. Yalom