“Beginning therapists must learn that there are times to sit in silence, sometimes in silent communion, sometimes simply while waiting for patients'… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I often urge patients to project themselves into the future and to consider how they can live now so that five years… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Were you really, truly, helpful to your patients? Maybe you've just learned to pick patients who were going to improve on their… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“There is one true property of romantic love: it never stays - evanescence is a part of the nature of an infatuated… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“{B]eware of empty compliments - make your support as incisive as your feedback or interpretations.” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“[T]echnique has a different meaning for the novice than for the expert. One needs technique in learning to play the piano but… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I must assume that knowing is better than not know, venturing better than not venturing; and that magic and illusion, however rich,… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“We humans appear to be meaning-seeking creatures who have had the misfortune of being thrown into a world devoid of intrinsic meaning.… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I believe "technique" is facilitative when it emanates from the therapist's unique encounter with the patient. [E]very course of therapy consists of… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The therapist's worldview is in itself isolating. Seasoned therapists view relationships differently, they sometimes lose patience with social ritual and bureaucracy, they… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“Friendship between therapist and patients is a necessary condition in the process of therapy - necessary, but not, however, sufficient. Psychotherapy is… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“A great many of our patients have conflicts in the realm of intimacy, and obtain help in therapy sheerly through experiencing an… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients,… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“I have always found quite useful Freud's formulation that the dream borrows building blocks from the day residue, but that for images… — 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
Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“It's not ideas, nor vision, nor tools that truly matter in therapy. If you debrief patients at the end of therapy about… — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The establishment of an authentic relationship with patients, by its very nature, demands that we forego the power of the triumvirate of… — 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
“Sometimes I simply remind patients that sooner or later they will have to relinquish the goal of having a better past.” — Irvin D. Yalom Copy Share Image
“The idea of using current distortions to re-create the past was part of an old, now abandoned, vision of the therapist as… — 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
