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It is impossible to talk about self-knowledge without remembering the existential psychotherapist and popularizer of psychology Irvin Yalom. We have selected eight quotes from his novels and memoirs, which we offer as a possible guide in finding yourself.
Irvin Yalom is an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist, one of the founders of the school of existential psychotherapy, bestselling author, translated into more than 20 languages. He turns 2021 in 90. And in the same year, his book was published in Russian, written jointly with his wife Marilyn Yal, “Questions of death and life.”
The couple started working on it when Marilyn was diagnosed with cancer. The psychotherapist, accustomed to counseling his patients, for the first time had to give advice to himself. Irvin Yalom had to go through a difficult test: to watch the closest person in the world fade away and learn to live without a loved one. The couple, who have lived in perfect harmony for 65 years, share their experience with us, tell us what it is like to live and love without regrets.
We recall the wise words of Irvin Yalom from this and his other books.
About Solutions
Although I pretend to accept without judgment any decision of a person, I secretly divide them into copper, silver and gold. Some people are driven all their lives by the thought of the triumph of revenge; others, full of despair, dream only of peace, detachment and freedom from pain.
Some people dedicate their lives to achieving success, wealth, power, justice; others are in search of self-improvement, plunging into various forms of being: love or divine essence. At the same time, another group of people find the meaning of life in self-realization or creative self-expression. (“Mommy and the Meaning of Life”)
About courage
Of all the ideas with which I have tried to alleviate the fear of death in my patients, none has been more powerful and attractive than the idea of living without regrets. My wife and I do not regret anything – we lived fully and boldly. We did not miss a single opportunity to learn something new and took everything we could from life. (“A Matter of Death and Life”)
About the preciousness of life
Often I resort to a visual exercise – I ask the patient to draw a line on a piece of paper, and then I say: “Let one end of this line symbolize your birth, and the other end your death. Now please put a mark on this line indicating where you are now and reflect on it.”
For almost everyone, this exercise brings about a deeper awareness of the precious transience of life. (“How I became myself. Memories”)
About relationships
It sounds paradoxical, but we grieve more not for the loss of those with whom we had fulfilling relationships, but for the loss of those with whom there was a lot of dissatisfaction and unfinished business in relationships. (“We are all creatures for a day”)
About Freedom
… From an existential point of view, freedom is inextricably linked with anxiety, since it implies, in contrast to everyday experience, that we do not come into a world created once and for all according to some grandiose project.
Freedom means that a person is responsible for his decisions, actions, for his life situation. Although the word “responsibility” can be used in different ways, I prefer Sartre’s definition: to be responsible means “to be an author”, that is, each of us is the author of our own life plan.
We are free to be anything but not free: in the words of Sartre, we are sentenced to freedom. In fact, some philosophers make an even stronger claim that the structure of the human psyche determines the structure of external reality, the very forms of space and time.
It is precisely in the idea of self-creation that the danger that causes anxiety lies: we are beings created according to our own design, and the idea of freedom frightens us, because it suggests that below us is emptiness, absolute “groundlessness”. (“Cure for Love”)
About being true to yourself
When at times I felt unhappy, it was because I took myself for someone else, and not for who I really am, and mourned the grief and misfortune of another person.
Remember, if you are persistent, the same people who once laughed at you will later admire you … Remember that if in order to please someone, you are carried away by the external, this is a sure sign that you have changed given path. (“Schopenhauer as medicine”)
About the causes of problems
As long as you think that the cause of life’s problems lies outside of you, there will be no favorable changes in your life. As long as you shift responsibility onto others who supposedly treat you badly – this may be a rude husband, or a demanding boss who does not want to enter your position, or bad heredity, or overwhelming pressure – you will remain in a dead end. .
You and only you are responsible for the key aspects of the life situation, and only you can change them. Even when experiencing the strongest external restrictions, you are still free to choose how to perceive them. (“Peering into the sun. Life without fear of death”)