quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

"Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has eve 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?"
— Irvin D. Yalom (Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy)

"Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)"
— Irvin D. Yalom (Lying on the Couch: A Novel)

"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 (Lying on the Couch: A Novel)

"من نیز با پیروی از فروید اغلب رؤیاپرداز را کوتوله ی فربه و سرحالی تصور می کنم که در دل جنگل دندریت ها و اکسون ها، زندگی خوبی برای خود دست و پا کرده است. روزها می خوابد ولی شب ها، با وزوز و همهمه ی سیناپس ها سر از نازبالشش برمی دارد، نوشابه ی عسلی اش را می نوشد و با تنبلی، رشته ی رؤیاهای میزبانش را درهم می تند... به قصه های مضحک پریان شبیه است. درست همان انسان انگاری رایج قرن نوزدهم. همان خطای متداول فروید در عینی نمایاندن ساختارهای انتزاعی ذهن و مبدل ساختنشان به جن و پری هایی مستقل و مختار. فقط کاش من هم باورش نداشتم! "
— Irvin D. Yalom (Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy)

"Obwohl uns die Physikalität des Todes zerstört, rettet uns die Idee des Todes."
— Irvin D. Yalom (In die Sonne schauen. Wie man die Angst vor dem Tod überwindet)

"He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)"
— Irvin D. Yalom (Lying on the Couch: A Novel)

"A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves"
— Irvin D. Yalom (The Theory and Practice Of Group Psychotherapy)