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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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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
Deeply
Psychoanalysis
Terror
Therapists
Patient
Confrontation
Meaningfully
Relationship
Existential
Cyclical
Process
Encounter
Psychotherapy
Back
Isolation
Relates
Encounters
Therapist
Relate
Strengthened

More quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

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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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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche's message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
Irvin D. Yalom
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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
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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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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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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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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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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
Irvin D. Yalom
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
Irvin D. Yalom