Best Yalom Quotes & Sayings

For one can never really be helped by another; one must find the strength to help oneself. — Irvin D. Yalom

To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience. Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program. — Irvin D. Yalom

A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot. — Irvin D. Yalom

Reading these books. Oh, the endless labor of the intellectual - pouring all this knowledge into the brain through a three-millimeter aperture in the iris. — Irvin D. Yalom

Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish. — Irvin D. Yalom

You say that imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. Tell me about this 'elsewhere.'" "I only know that it does not lie in perishable objects. It lies not outside but within. It is the mind that determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind, that must be altered." "What — 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

One cold winter's day a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order, through their mutual warmth, to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effects of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now, when the need for warmth once again brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so they were tossed between two evils, until they discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the needs for society, which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men's lives, drives them together but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities once more drive them apart. — 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

He who would be everything cannot be anything.) — Irvin D. Yalom

To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise, you'll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It's to produce a creator. — Irvin D. Yalom

During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies. — 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

Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra — 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

Empathy: Looking Out the Patient's Window — Irvin D. Yalom

At other times Betty expressed anger at my forcing her to think about morbid topics. "Why think about death? We can't do anything about it!" I tried to help her understand that, though the fact of death destroys us, the idea of death can save us. In other words, our awareness of death can throw a different perspective on life and incite us to rearrange our priorities. — Irvin D. Yalom

neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain and The Male Brain, which point out that a man has two and a half times as much brain space devoted to sexual pursuit as a woman, while the female brain's empathy system is considerably more active than the male's.3) — Marilyn Yalom

With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels. — 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

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

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living! — Irvin D. Yalom

I dream of a love in which two people share a passion to search together for some higher truth. Perhaps I should not call it love. Perhaps it's real name is friendship. — Irvin D. Yalom

their breasts swelling into powerful, magical globes - when he was overcome by an extraordinary craving to merge with their bodies, to suckle at their nipples, to slip into their warmth and wetness. — Irvin D. Yalom

The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived. — Irvin D. Yalom

From the very early days of seeing patients, I noticed that many of them seemed to be concerned with issues of their mortality, and so the philosophy training I had taken began to seem rather important to me. — Irvin D. Yalom

To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible. — Irvin D. Yalom

Have you ever noticed that the air you breathe in is always cooler than the air you breathe out? — Irvin D. Yalom

At the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and in possession of his faculties, would ever wish to go though it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete nonexistence. — Irvin D. Yalom

I believe that a different therapy must be constructed for each patient because each has a unique story. — 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

Sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past. — Irvin D. Yalom