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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
Ideas
Physicality
Destroys
Save
Though
Idea
Death
May

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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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.
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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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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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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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.
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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)
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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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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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