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Irvin D. Yalom Biography

Irvin David Yalom (/ˈɜːrvɪn ˈjæləm/; born 13 June 1931) is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction.

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Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

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.

Feelings, Important, Look, Perhaps, Regret

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.

Field, Greatest, Medicine, Self, Understanding

Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.

Death, Idea, Ideas, May, Physicality

Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

Dream, People, Teaching, Work, World

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!

Children, Loneliness, Needs, Germ, Consciousness

To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience. Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.

Difficult, Groups, Prevailing, Strong, Unit, Would Be

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.

Growth, Needs, Pleasure, Transcend, Turn, Wish

Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it's like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.

Long, Different, Needs, Possible

The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.

Come, Door, Doors, Knocks, Pain, Somewhere Else

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.

Community, Ignorance, Long, Teach, World

Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.

Darkness, Identical, Sparks, Two, Voids

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.

Falling In Love, Love, Love Is, Passion, Relating, Standing

Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life!

Death, Terror, Dies, Life

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.

Choose, Person, Persons, Stand, Truth

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

20S, Ambition, Miserable, People, Temper, Time On Earth

To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.

Care, Fully, Individual, Know, Mean

The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.

Creative, Discipline, Disciplines, Orthodoxy

As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.

Age, Downward, Looks, Mind, Path, Reach

Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.

Absolute, Awaits, Fate, Power, Stars, Trick

Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer

Away, Ifs, Nothing, Offer, Offers, Take

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Irvin D. Yalom Biography

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