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

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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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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.
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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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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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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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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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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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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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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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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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.
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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
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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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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.
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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.
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