Irvin D. Yalom Quotes & Sayings

If we hope for more significant therapeutic change, we must encourage our patients to assume responsibility - that is, to apprehend how they themselves contribute to their distress. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

A nightmare is a failed dream, a dream that, by not "handling" anxiety, has failed in its role as the guardian of sleep. — Irvin D. Yalom

Nietzsche claimed that a philosopher's system of thought always arises from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapists - in fact, for anyone who thinks about thought. At a conference approximately — Irvin D. Yalom

Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said that if he had eight hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend several of these hours sharpening his ax. — Irvin D. Yalom

When you meet someone, you know all about him. On subsequent meetings, you blind yourself to your own wisdom — Irvin D. Yalom

The thoughts haunted him. He hated them: they robbed him of his peace; they were alien, neither possible nor desirable. Still, he welcomed them: the only alternative- banishing Bertha from his mind-seemed inconceivable. — Irvin D. Yalom

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. Though — Irvin D. Yalom

Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door. Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

But the problem with crests is that they lead downhill. From the crest I can see all the rest of my years stretched out before me. And the view doesn't please me. I see only aging, diminishment, fathering, grandfathering." "But, — Irvin D. Yalom

It has often been noted that three major revolutions in thought have threatened the idea of human centrality. First, Copernicus demonstrated that Earth was not the center about which all celestial bodies revolved. Next, Darwin showed us that we were not central in the chain of life but, like all other creatures, had evolved from other life-forms. Third, Freud demonstrated that we are not masters in our own house-that much of our behavior is governed by forced outside of our consciousness. There is no doubt that Freud's unacknowledged co-revolutionary was Arthur Schopenhauer, who, long before Freud's birth, had posited that we are governed by deep biological forced and then delude ourselves into thinking that we consciously choose our activities. — Irvin D. Yalom

Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning? — Irvin D. Yalom

But you, like me, have good eyes. You looked too far into life. You saw that it was futile to reach wrong goals and futile to set new wrong goals. Multiplications of zero are always zero!" Breuer — Irvin D. Yalom

Some people are wish-blocked, knowing neither what they feel nor what they want. Without opinions, without impulses, without inclinations, they become parasites on the desires of others. — Irvin D. Yalom

Too often, we therapists neglect our personal relationships. Our work becomes our life. — Irvin D. Yalom

Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means "slay," as in homicide or suicide). — Irvin D. Yalom

To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone. — Irvin D. Yalom

Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world. And if you do the latter, you're not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy. — Irvin D. Yalom

I'm listening. Sometimes I see better with closed eyes. — Irvin D. Yalom

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair. — Irvin D. Yalom

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws. — Irvin D. Yalom

Look out the other's window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it. — Irvin D. Yalom

The ultimate goal of therapy ... it's too hard a question. The words come to me like tranquility, like fulfillment, like realizing your potential. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

Client-therapist disagreement about the goals and tasks of therapy may impair the therapeutic alliance. This issue is not restricted to group therapy. Client-therapist discrepancies on therapeutic factors also occur in individual psychotherapy. A large study of psychoanalytically oriented therapy found that clients attributed their successful therapy to relationship factors, whereas their therapists gave precedence to technical skills and techniques.84 In general, analytic therapists value the coming to consciousness of unconscious factors and the subsequent linkage between childhood experiences and present symptoms far more than do their clients, who deny the importance or even the existence of these elements in therapy; instead they emphasize the personal elements of the relationship and the encounter with a new, accepting type of authority figure. — Irvin D. Yalom

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

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

Existential isolation, a third given, refers to the unbridgeable gap between self and others, a gap that exists even in the presence of deeply gratifying interpersonal relationships. — Irvin D. Yalom

Breuer gestured towards the bouquets of fresh-cut flowers that lay before many graves. "In this land of the dead, THESE are the dead, and THOSE"
he pointed to an old untended and abandoned section of the cemetery
"those are the truly dead. No one now tends their graves because no one living has ever known them. THEY know what it means to be dead. — Irvin D. Yalom

Should we not create - should we not become - before we reproduce? Our responsibility to life is to create the higher, not to reproduce the lower. — Irvin D. Yalom

I should have become an "I" because I became a "we". — Irvin D. Yalom

Every act is not necessarily a message about the relationship. — Irvin D. Yalom

Some believe in the merits of the enterprise and devote their careers to ever greater nosological precision. Others, and among them I include myself, marvel that anyone can take diagnosis seriously, that it can ever be considered more than a simple cluster of symptoms and behavioral traits. Nonetheless, we find ourselves under ever-increasing pressure (from hospitals, insurance companies, governmental agencies) to sum up a person with a diagnostic phrase and a numerical category. Even — Irvin D. Yalom

I often feel caught in a dilemma: on the one hand I wish to be more natural with you and yet, on the other hand, because I feel that you're easily wounded and that you give my comments inordinate power, I feel I must consider my wording very, very carefully. — Irvin D. Yalom

Too many people are overly respectful, braying, 'You're so brave' and Irv fell smack into that trap. After all what's so courageous about having cancer? Once we have it, what choice do we have? But the worst thing of all - and thank God Irv doesn't do this, at least not yet - is all this nonsensical talk about a patient's courageous struggle with cancer that all too often ends in defeat. How many obituaries do you see stating that so-and-so lost their courageous battle with cancer? I hate that! I absolutely hate it! If someone put that in my obituary, I'd come back and kill him! — Irvin D. Yalom

Sex as the vital antagonist to death - isn't the orgasm the primal spark of life? I know of many instances in which sexual feelings arise in order to neutralize fears of death. — Irvin D. Yalom

I don't want to be idealized by a patient because of what I've written. — Irvin D. Yalom

Spinoza was the supreme rationalist. He saw an endless stream of causality in the world. For him there is no such entity as will or will power. Nothing happens capriciously. Everything is caused by something prior, and the more we devote ourselves to the understanding of this causative network, the more free we become." ... "I'm sure he would have said that you are subject to passions that are driven by inadequate ideas rather than by the ideas that flow from a true quest for understanding the nature of reality." ... "He states explicitly that a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a more clear and distinct idea of it
that is, the causative nexus underlying the passion." p.269 — Irvin D. Yalom

What? 'Borderline patients play games'? That what you said? Ernest, you'll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That's exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis. There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can't treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17) — Irvin D. Yalom

Each time a goal is attained, it merely breeds additional needs. Thus more scurrying, more seeking, ad infinitum. — Irvin D. Yalom

What has been given is a new perspective on living life, and what has been taken away is the illusion of limitless life and the belief in a personal specialness exempting us from natural law. — Irvin D. Yalom

Someone's got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see? — Irvin D. Yalom

Winnicott also cites the hostile lullabies mothers sing to babies, who fortunately do not understand the words. For example: Rockabye, Baby, on the treetop, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all. — Irvin D. Yalom

This world is supposed to have been made by a God? No, much better by a devil! — Irvin D. Yalom

It's the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals - my professional rosary. — Irvin D. Yalom

As long as he denies his own agency, real change is unlikely because his attention will be directed toward changing his environment rather than himself. — Irvin D. Yalom

You wonder about a conversation with nothing concealed - its real name is hell, I believe. To disclose oneself to another is the prelude to betrayal, and betrayal makes one sick, does it not? — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

And what is the most terrible thing about boredom? Why do we rush to dispel it? Because it is a distraction-free state which soon enough reveals underlying unpalatable truths about existence - our insignificance, our meaningless existence, our inexorable progression to deterioration and death. — Irvin D. Yalom

That was the first important discovery I made about Betty: she was desperately isolated, and she survived this isolation only by virtue of the sustaining myth that her intimate life was being lived elsewhere. Her friends, her circle of acquaintances, were not here, but elsewhere, in New York, in Texas, in the past. In fact, everything of importance was elsewhere. It was at this time that I first began to suspect that for Betty there was no "here" there. — Irvin D. Yalom

It is noteworthy and remarkable to see how man, besides his life in the concrete, always lives a second life in the abstract ... (where) in the sphere of calm deliberation, what previously possessed him completely and moved him intensely appears to him cold, colorless, and distant: he is a mere spectator and observer. — Irvin D. Yalom

But surely," Breuer — Irvin D. Yalom

There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?" - Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn't. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel. — Irvin D. Yalom

Freedom as a given seems the very antithesis of death. While we dread death, we generally consider freedom to be unequivocally positive. Has not the history of Western civilization been punctuated with yearnings for freedom, even driven by it? Yet freedom from an existential perspective is bonded to anxiety in asserting that, contrary to everyday experience, we do not enter into, and ultimately leave, a well-structured universe with an eternal grand design. Freedom means that one is responsible for one's own choices, actions, one's own life situation. Though the word responsible may be used in a variety of ways, I prefer Sartre's definition: to be responsible is to "be the author of," each of us being thus the author of his or her own life design. We are free to be anything but unfree: we are, Sartre would say, condemned to freedom. — Irvin D. Yalom

I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit. — Irvin D. Yalom

I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of all, I hate that at the end of my life I feel compelled to ask, "How'd I do, Mama?". — Irvin D. Yalom

She may have played her role, but you, what role did you play? Were you, and I, so different from her? Did you see her? Or did you, instead, see only prey--a disciple, a plowland for your thoughts, a successor? Or perhaps, like me, you saw beauty, youth a satin pillow, a vessel into which to drain your lust. — Irvin D. Yalom

Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation. A — Irvin D. Yalom

Like you, I have often wondered why fears reign at night. After twenty years of such wondering, I now believe that fears are not born of darkness; rather, fears are like the stars - always there, but obscured by the glare of daylight. "And — Irvin D. Yalom

Hair and hole, horn and teeth - hedgehog, walrus, ape, Josef Breuer. He — Irvin D. Yalom

Freedom means that one is responsible for one's own choices, actions, one's own life situation. Though — Irvin D. Yalom

To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another. — Irvin D. Yalom

Perhaps," said Nietzsche, "only by being a man does a man release the woman in woman. — Irvin D. Yalom

One must learn to live with the living before one can learn to live with the dead. — Irvin D. Yalom

Every person must choose how much truth he can stand. — Irvin D. Yalom

Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us. — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it. — Irvin D. Yalom

[T]he act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help. — Irvin D. Yalom

Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind. — Irvin D. Yalom

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner. — Irvin D. Yalom

You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there. — Irvin D. Yalom

Absolutely, bring any kind of carrot cake you wish. — Irvin D. Yalom

The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street. — Irvin D. Yalom

From the beginning, of course, I had known that the pure forcefulness of my argument would not penetrate deep enough to effect any change. It almost never does. It's never worked for me when I've been in therapy. Only when one feels an insight in one's bones does one own it. Only then can one act on it and change. Pop psychologists forever talk about "responsibility assumption," but it's all words: it is extraordinarily hard, even terrifying, to own the insight that you and only you construct your own life design. Thus, the problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. It is only when therapy enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change. And powerlessness was — Irvin D. Yalom

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. — Irvin D. Yalom

Eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever. — Irvin D. Yalom

If you make a mistake, admit it. Any attempt at cover-up will ultimately backfire. At some level the patient will sense you are acting in bad faith, and therapy will suffer. Furthermore, an open admission of error is good model-setting for patients and another sign that they matter to you. — Irvin D. Yalom

Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one's midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone.
This comforting illusion may be shattered by some urgent irreversible experience ... None more potently confronts us with finiteness and contingency than the imminence of our own death. — Irvin D. Yalom

Mature love is loving, not being loved. — Irvin D. Yalom

If it weren't for errant passion, death, despair, and loss, the great bulk of art would never have been born. — Irvin D. Yalom

The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness - domains soaked in anxiety. — Irvin D. Yalom

The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines. — Irvin D. Yalom

It's no great mystery. If no one will listen, it's only natural to shout! — Irvin D. Yalom

Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. — Irvin D. Yalom

Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude. — Irvin D. Yalom

I should have become an "I" before I became a "we". — Irvin D. Yalom

More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each one of us must die alone- no one can die our death with us or for us. The shunning of the dying by the living prefigures final absolute abandonment — Irvin D. Yalom

I always imagined that you might write something about me. I wanted to leave an imprint on your life. I don't want to be "just another patient". I wanted to be "special". I want to be something, anything. I feel like nothing, no one. If I left an imprint on your life, maybe I would be someone, someone you wouldn't forget. I'd exist then. (Marge's letter to Yalom) — Irvin D. Yalom

I'm looking for me in you, that my hollowness makes it impossible to identify my needs and my desires, — Irvin D. Yalom

Let this idea take possession of you, and I promise that it will change you forever.
Do you love the idea or hate it?
Live in such a way that you love the idea.
Nietzsche's wager.
Consummate your life.
Die at the right time.
The courage to change your convictions!
This life is your eternal life. — Irvin D. Yalom

The flower replied: You fool! Do you imagine I blossom in order to be seen? I blossom for my own sake because it pleases me, and not for the sake of others. My joy consists in my being and my blossoming. — Irvin D. Yalom

If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I'd like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting. — Irvin D. Yalom

Some said living with cancer had made them wiser, more self-realized, while others had reordered their priorities in life, grown stronger, learned to say no to activities they no longer valued and yes to things that really mattered - such as loving their family and friends, observing the beauty about them, savoring the changing seasons. — Irvin D. Yalom

more commonly death anxiety surfaces in nightmares. A — Irvin D. Yalom

So the highest and the happiest of endeavors is to be a philosopher ? Doesn't it seem self-serving for a philosopher to make that claim? — Irvin D. Yalom