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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.

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
May
Ideas
Physicality
Destroys
Save
Though
Idea
Death

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

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I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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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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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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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
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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
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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
Irvin D. Yalom
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A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
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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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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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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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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
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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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Live your life to the fullest and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind.
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