Madison

“He who would be everything cannot be anything.”)”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure

“Ask yourself, 'Who are the secure ones, the comfortable, the eternally cheerful?' I'll tell you the answer: only those with dull vision-the common people and the children”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure

“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, Love's Executioner