Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“think of sex as the vital antagonist to death—isn’t the orgasm the primal spark of life? I” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Work, worry, toil and trouble are certainly the lot of almost all throughout their lives. But if all desires were fulfilled as… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I've always regarded therapy more as a calling than a profession, a way of life for people who care about others.” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
I think all kinds of meanings in life transcend your self. They're linked to other generations of people around us, to our… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one’s mid-life crisis, to the… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The life of our bodies is only a constantly prevented dying, an ever deferred death…Every breath we draw wards off death that… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“In the first place a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“How shall we live? How to face our mortality? How to live with the knowledge that we are simply life forms, thrown… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Heidegger spoke of two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Should we not create—should we not become—before we reproduce? Our responsibility to life is to create the higher, not to reproduce the… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. Fusion eradicates anxiety in a radical fashion—by eliminating self-awareness. The… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“keep in mind that therapy is a deep and comprehensive exploration into the course and meaning of one’s life; given the centrality… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
One thing I feel clear about is that it's important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“ALAS, IF ALL HUMANS WERE WISE AND HAD MORE GOOD WILL THE WORLD WOULD BE A PARADISE NOW IT IS MOSTLY A HELL” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another. — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
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… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Beginning therapists must learn that there are times to sit in silence, sometimes in silent communion, sometimes simply while waiting for patients' thoughts to… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living! — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms. The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Exactly. We know that the great Goethe carried a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics in his pocket for a year. Imagine that—an entire year! And… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession. Though the public may believe that therapists guide patients systematically and sure-handedly… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
