Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psycho-therapy

by Irvin D. Yalom

“We are meaning-seeking creatures,” I wrote, “who must deal with the inconvenience of being hurled into a universe that intrinsically has no meaning.”

First, we invent or discover a life-meaning project sturdy enough to support a life. Next, we must contrive to forget our act of invention and persuade ourselves that we have not invented but discovered the life-meaning project—that it has an independent “out there” existence.

We need art, Nietzsche said, lest we perish from the truth. Hence I consider creativity as the golden path and have turned my entire life, all my experiences, all my imaginings, into some smoldering inner compost heap out of which I try to fashion, from time to time, something new and beautiful.

By allowing the patient to teach him, Dr. Whitehorn related to the person, rather than the pathology, of that patient. His strategy invariably enhanced both the patient’s self-regard and his or her willingness to be self-revealing.

such rigid categorizing of emotional responses leads to a dehumanization of both patient and doctor.

Paula’s golden period was a time for intense personal exploration: she had dreams of wandering through enormous halls and discovering in her house new, unused rooms.

As long as I can remember, I have regarded it as self-evident that religious systems develop in order to provide comfort and soothe the anxieties of our human condition.

They had learned one lesson particularly well: that life cannot be postponed; it must be lived now, not suspended until the weekend, until vacation, until the children leave for college, until the diminished years of retirement. More than once I heard the lament, “What a pity it is that I had to wait till now, till my body was riddled with cancer, to learn how to live.”

“handling” someone is to relate to him or her as an object and, thus, is the antithesis of being with that person.

Question: How do we healers maintain sanity? Answer: Learn to cultivate hypocrisy.

First I learned to muffle my caring—the very beacon that had led me to this calling. Next I mastered the canons of professional survival: avoid involvement—don’t let patients matter too much. Remember they’ll be gone tomorrow. Don’t concern yourself with their postdischarge plans. Remember that small is beautiful—settle for small goals—don’t attempt too much—don’t set yourself up for failure. If therapy group patients learn simply that talking helps, that being closer to others feels good, that they may be of use to others—that’s plenty.

it probably isn’t too helpful for others to tell you things about yourself that you already know.

Above all, they were properly impressed by the spectacle of something emerging from what looked like nothing.

What I could not, or did not, do was bracket all my feelings and have a real encounter with Magnolia—Magnolia the flesh-and-blood person, not the image I had imposed upon her.

have long regarded denial as the enemy, and I challenge it whenever possible in my therapy and in my personal life. Not only have I attempted to shed all personal illusions that narrow my vision and foster smallness and dependency but I encourage my patients to do the same. I am persuaded that although honest confrontation with one’s existential situation may evoke fear and trembling, it is ultimately healing and enriching. My psychotherapeutic approach is thus epitomized by Thomas Hardy’s comment, “If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.”

every therapist is used to patients’ forgetting to mention the good things in their lives.

when two opposing feelings put you in a dilemma, your best recourse is to express both feelings and the dilemma.

The message of these dreams was crystal-clear: danger and decay are inescapable. And I am no savior—on the contrary, I am unreliable and impotent.

Question: Why scratch where it doesn’t itch? Why fan the flame of death anxiety in bereaved individuals already bowed low by loss? Answer: Because the confrontation with one’s own death may generate positive personal change.

Of the eighty bereaved spouses we studied, a significant proportion—up to one-third—reported a heightened awareness of their own mortality, and that awareness was, in turn, significantly related to a surge of personal growth.

“I should simply accept your idea that you and I are just fellow travelers thorough this life, both of us listening to the bell tolling.”

Some part of you wants to be here, and I want to talk to that part today.”

You can’t fling the truth in your patient’s face: the only real truth is the truth we discover for ourselves.

“Evenly suspended attention, young man,” he said firmly. “That’s what you need to give the patient. Evenly suspended attention; words as true now as when Freud first uttered them. That’s what is required of us—to attend to the patient’s words without preformulations, without bias, without personal reactions limiting our vision. It’s the heart and soul of the entire analytic enterprise. Remove that and the entire process goes bankrupt.”

Discovery of another’s original meaning is an illusion,”

“Listening is a creative process.

Love this!

What’s your payoff for that?

He snatched at the life vest that in the stormiest of seas, therapists always have available: process commentary, that is, to comment on the process, the relationship implications, of the patient’s utterance rather than on its content.

I’m struck by your lack of curiosity about yourself. I feel that I have to supply the curiosity for both of us—that I alone must carry the entire burden of our work.”

Ernest looked at her in amazement: this woman was more centered than he could ever hope to be.

“We humans go through life in stages. As very young children, we think about death a great deal; some of us even obsess about it. It’s not hard to discover death. We simply look around and see dead things: leaves and lilies and flies and beetles. Pets die. We eat dead animals. Sometimes we’re privy to the death of a person. And before long we realize that death will come to everyone—to our grandma, to our mother and father, even to ourselves. We brood about this in private. Our parents and teachers, thinking it’s bad for children to think about death, keep silent about it or give us fairy tales about a heaven and angels, eternal reunion, immortal souls.” Ernest stopped, hoping Merges was following his words. “And then?” Merges was following all right. “We comply. We push it out of our minds, or we openly defy death with great feats of daredevilry. And then, just before we become adults, we brood a great deal about it again. Although some cannot bear it and refuse to go on living, most of us blot out our awareness of death by immersing ourselves in the tasks of adulthood—building a career and family, personal growth, acquiring possessions, exercising power, winning the race. That’s where I am now in life. After that stage, we enter the later era of life, where awareness of death emerges again, and now death is distinctly menacing—in fact, imminent. At that point, we have the choice of thinking about it a great deal and making the most of the life we still have or pretending...