Irvin D. Yalom
Irvin D. Yalom
Irvin David Yalomis an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth13 June 1931
CountryUnited States of America
government ideas childhood
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.
long needs sides
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.
issues shy existential
One doesn't do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
dream teaching people
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.
anxiety greater
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
claws
I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
loss thinking numbers
In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
self medicine understanding
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.
pain somewhere-else doors
The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else...
offers ifs
Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
trying world looks
Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
long-ago patient easier
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)
firsts ifs
If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
ideas may physicality
Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.