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Book: Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Quotes of Book: Love's Executioner and Other
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  1. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    To lose a parent or a lifelong friend is often to lose the past: the person who died may be the only other living witness to golden events of long ago. But to lose a child is to lose the future: what is lost is no less than one's life project-what one lives for, how one projects oneself into the future, how one may hope to transcend death {indeed, one's child becomes one's immortality project}.
    book-quotedeathimmortalitychild-loss

  2. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    But he gave no greater gift than the one he offered me shortly before he died, and it was a gift that answers for all time the question of whether it is rational or appropriate to strive for "ambitious" therapy in those who are terminally ill. When I visited him in the hospital he was so weak he could barely move, but he raised his head, squeezed my hand, and whispered, "Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.
    book-quotelifeterminally-ill

  3. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    The last gift a parent can give to children is to teach them, through example, how to face death with equanimity.
    book-quotedeathgiftequanimity

  4. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    I had, once again, fallen prey to the grandiose belief that I can treat anyone. Swept along by hubris and by my curiosity, I had disregarded twenty years of evidence at the outset that Thelma was a poor candidate for psychotherapy, and had subjected her to a painful confrontation which, in retrospect, had little likelihood of success. I had stripped away defenses without building anything to replace them.
    book-quotetreatment

  5. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some reaching down into the very socket of being. John Gardner, in his novel Grendel, tells of a wise man who sums up his meditation on life's mysteries in two simple but terrible postulates: "Things fade: alternatives exclude." Of the first postulate, death, I have already spoken. The second, "alternatives exclude," is an important key to understanding why decision is difficult. 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}. Thus, Thelma clung to the infinitesimal chance that she might once again revive her relationship with her lover, renunciation of that possibility signifying diminishment and death.
    book-quotedeathdecisions

  6. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    Though these tales of psychotherapy abound with the words patient and therapist, do not be misled by such terms: these are everyman, everywoman stories. Patienthood is ubiquitous; the assumption of the label is largely arbitrary and often dependent more on cultural, educational, and economic factors than on the severity of pathology. Since therapists, no less than patients, must confront these givens of existence, the professional posture of disinterested objectivity, so necessary to scientific method, is inappropriate. We psychotherapists simply cannot cluck with sympathy and exhort patients to struggle resolutely with their problems. We cannot say to them you and your problems. Instead, we must speak of us and our problems, because our life, our existence, will always be riveted to death, love to loss, freedom to fear, and growth to separation. We are, all of us, in this together.
    book-quotetogethertherapistpsychotherapy

  7. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    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.
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  8. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer. Beware of stripping a patient who can't bear the chill of reality. And don't exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: you're no match for it. The thirst for religion is too strong, its roots too deep, its cultural reinforcement too powerful.
    book-quotereligionreality

  9. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    Many ultimately come to understand that what has seemed injustice is in reality cosmic indifference.
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  10. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    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 in crammed into language.
    book-quotecommunicationlanguage

  11. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety
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  12. Irvin D. Yalom _ Love's Executioner and Other

    Algumas vezes eu imaginava o sangue enchendo um copo descartável. Eu podia escutar cada esguicho batendo contra as paredes enceradas do copo. Talvez 100 esguichos enchessem o copo; seriam apenas 50 segundos. Então eu pensava em como poderia cortar meus pulsos. A faca da cozinha? Aquela pequena e afiada, com o cabo preto? Ou uma lâmina de barbear? Mas não existem mais lâminas de barbear cortantes; somente aquelas lâminas injetadas, que são seguras. Eu nunca havia percebido o desaparecimento da lâmina de barbear. Acho que é assim que eu, também, desaparecerei. Sem estardalhaço. Talvez alguém vá pensar em mim em algum momento de fantasia, exatamente como pensei na extinta lâmina de barbear. Contudo, a lâmina não está extinta. Graças aos meus pensamentos, ela ainda vive. Sabe, não existe mais nenhuma pessoa viva, agora, que era adulta quando eu era criança. De modo que eu, como criança, estou morto. Em algum dia próximo, talvez em quarenta anos, não existirá mais ninguém vivo que tenha algum dia me conhecido. É quando estarei verdadeiramente morto, quando não existir na memória de ninguém. Eu pensei muito sobre uma pessoa muito velha, o último indivíduo vivo que conheceu alguém ou um grupo de pessoas. Quando essa pessoa velha morre, todo o grupo morre também, desaparece da memória viva. Eu gostaria de saber quem será essa pessoa para mim. A morte de quem me tornará verdadeiramente morto?
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