Quotes from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever 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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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. I hate to be love’s executioner.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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 through predictable stages of therapy to a foreknown goal, such is rarely the case: instead, as these stories bear witness, therapists frequently wobble, improvise, and grope for direction. The powerful temptation to achieve certainty through embracing an ideological school and a tight therapeutic system is treacherous: such belief may block the uncertain and spontaneous encounter necessary for effective therapy. This encounter, the very heart of psychotherapy, is a caring, deeply human meeting between two people, one (generally, but not always, the patient) more troubled than the other. Therapists have a dual role: they must both observe and participate in the lives of their patients. As observer, one must be sufficiently objective to provide necessary rudimentary guidance to the patient. As participant, one enters into the life of the patient and is affected and sometimes changed by the encounter.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Παρόλο που η ψευδαίσθηση συχνά αναπτερώνει και ανακουφίζει, στο τέλος πάντα αδυνατίζει και περιορίζει την ψυχή.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“The human being either asserts autonomy by heroic self-assertion or seeks safety through fusing with a superior force: that is, one either emerges or merges, separates or embeds. One becomes one’s own parent or remains the eternal child.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life fully. A good working formula is: the more unlived life, or unrealized potential, the greater one’s death anxiety.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“People who feel empty never heal by merging with another incomplete person. On the contrary, two broken-winged birds coupled into one make for clumsy flight. No amount of patience will help it fly; and, ultimately, each must be pried from the other, and wounds separately splinted. The”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“In general, e mai bine sa nu ataci un mecanism de aparare, decat daca acesta creeaza mai multe probleme decat solutii si daca ai ceva mai bun de pus in loc.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Translation error is compounded by bias error. We distort others by forcing into them our preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes: We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Four major existential concerns—death, meaning in life, isolation, and freedom—play a crucial role in the inner life of every human being and”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Asa-zisa „psihologie pentru mase” bate intr-una moneda pe „asumarea responsabilitatii”, dar nu sunt decat vorbe goale: este extraordinar de greu, ba chiar terifiant, sa accepti ideea ca tu si numai tu esti acela care iti construiesti viata, felul in care o traiesti. Ca urmare, problema in psihoterapie consta intotdeauna in a sti cum sa treci de la o apreciere in plan intelectual, care se dovedeste ineficace, a unui adevar despre tine insuti la un mod saul altul de a-l simti in plan emotional. Abia din clipa in care terapia mobilizeaza emotii profunde, incepe sa devina o forta redutabila in favoarea schimbarii.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Ubijeđen sam da su, u tim zanosima prvih susreta, Dan i žena pogrešno tumačili ono što u vidjeli jedno u drugom. Svako od njih je vidjeo odraz sopstvenog preklinjanja, ranjen pogled i pogrešno ga protumačio kao želju i ispunjenost. Oboje su bill ptići sa slomljenim krilima, koji su tražili da lete privijeni uz drugu pticu sa slomljenim krilima. Ljudi koje se osjećaju isprazno nikada se ne izliječe stapanjem sa drugom nepotpunom osobom. Naprotiv, dvije ptice sa slomljenim krilima spojene u jednu će letjeti nespretno. Nikakva količina strpljenja im neće pomoći da lete; i, konačno, svaki mora biti poduprt različitim stvarima, a rane se stavljaju u odvojene udlage.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes over flow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“though the fact, the physicality, of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“The more the therapist is able to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, the less need there is for the therapist to embrace orthodoxy.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Therapists have a dual role: they must both observe and participate in the lives of their patients. As observer, one must be sufficiently objective to provide necessary rudimentary guidance to the patient. As participant, one enters into the life of the patient and is affected and sometimes changed by the encounter. In”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“How disquieting to realise that reality is an illusion, at best a democratisation of perception based on participant consensus.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues - all are lost when image is crammed into language.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“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, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Όποτε ο ασθενής αρχίζει ν' αναπτύσσει συμπτώματα στη σχέση του με τον θεραπευτή, τότε έχει πραγματικά αρχίσει η θεραπεία, και η εξερεύνηση αυτών των συμπτωμάτων θ' ανοίξει το δρόμο για τα κεντρικά του ζητήματα.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

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Popular quotes

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None when they fall out of love.
I'm glad the water does not move
under the colourless ice of the river.

And I'll stand - God help me! - on this ice,
however light and brittle it is,
and you...take care of our letters,
that our descendants not misjudge us,

That they may read and understand
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In your glorious biography
No row of dots should stand.

Earth's drink is much too sweet,
love's nets too close together.
May my name be in the textbooks
of children playing in the street.

When they've read my grievous story,
may they smile behind their desklids...
If I can't have love, if I can't find peace,
give me a bitter glory.


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