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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
Save
Though
Idea
Death
May
Ideas
Physicality
Destroys

More quotes by 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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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
Irvin D. Yalom
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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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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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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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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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
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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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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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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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 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.
Irvin D. Yalom