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b89f713
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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96496ed
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.
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life
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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ccefd56
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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5268115
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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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tragedy
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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a66f377
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Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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a468474
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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!
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immortality
future
life
procreation
children
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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5cdc30e
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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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life
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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c0e3da0
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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18159dc
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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life
human-nature
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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2ddca30
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sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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9c28c78
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. Rather, love is a way of being, a "giving to," not a 'falling for"; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person."
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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b298281
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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426f7e4
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What? 'Borderline patients play games'? That what you said? Ernest, you'll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That's exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis. There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can't treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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cde4c3d
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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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fe264d9
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One thing I feel clear about is that it's important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven't really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won't look back upon my forties with regret.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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704e101
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the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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1d486ec
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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jealousy
marriage
possession
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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a986b5b
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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a3d942c
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If Epicurus were speaking to you at this moment, he would urge you to simplify life. Here's how he might put it if he were standing here today : " Lads,your needs are few, they are easily attained, and any necessary suffering can be easily tolerated. Don't complicate your life with such trivial goals as riches and fame: they are the enemy of ATARAXIA. Fame,for example,consist of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life..
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life
yalom
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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b26c282
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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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self-understanding
psychiatry
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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b642f58
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Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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deddf19
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Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can never die at the right time.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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87c3107
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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else...
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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13a94b2
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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7783c58
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It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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488aaef
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Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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f47e2d2
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Dissect your motives deeper! You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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2548865
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There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?" - Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast betwe..
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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4f41c64
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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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illusion
life
truth
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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fb8167c
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To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise, you'll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It's to produce a creator.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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29a69fa
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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
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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b17d83c
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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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6bf6314
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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36b9e44
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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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Irvin D. Yalom |
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1cca4e8
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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677a4a2
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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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a57016e
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Time cannot be broken; that is our greatest burden. And our greatest challenge is to live in spite of that burden.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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18e9e71
|
I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy--I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love's executioner.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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73c1bf6
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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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death
life
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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f0c1515
|
The flower replied: You fool! Do you imagine I blossom in order to be seen? I blossom for my own sake because it pleases me, and not for the sake of others. My joy consists in my being and my blossoming.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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b07bdee
|
eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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5983e7c
|
Ask yourself, 'Who are the secure ones, the comfortable, the eternally cheerful?' I'll tell you the answer: only those with dull vision-the common people and the children
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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1b549ce
|
love obsession often serves as a distraction, keeping the individual's gaze from more painful thoughts.
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Irvin D. Yalom |
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857fd97
|
Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other. We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect--the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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Irvin D. Yalom |