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
hard realizing ultimate
The ultimate goal of therapy... it's too hard a question. The words come to me like tranquility, like fulfillment, like realizing your potential.
children family full kinds life linked meanings ourselves passing people transcend
I think all kinds of meanings in life transcend your self. They're linked to other generations of people around us, to our children and our family. We're passing on something of ourselves to others. I feel that's what makes our life full of meaning.
persons
Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
tragedy height looks
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
dream disappointment people
The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
memories years people
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?
pain growth want
If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
mean growth love-means
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
heal healer wounded
Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
two darkness sparks
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
decision anxiety territory
The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
self forever treasure
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.
falling-in-love passion love-is
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.
dream two people
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.