Great literature survives, as Freud pointed out in his discussion of Oedipus Rex,18 because something in the reader leaps out to embrace its truth. The truth of fictional characters moves us because it is our own truth.
We need art, Nietzsche said, lest we perish from the truth.
Irv, of course you’re upset by the review. Thank God for it! If you weren’t so sensitive, you wouldn’t be such a good writer.
Indeed, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession.
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.
I knew this was an important issue, and that we would return to it. Otto Rank described this life stance with a wonderful phrase: “Refusing the loan of life in order to avoid the debt of death.
Penny’s fear of her own death, while not explicitly emerging in our therapy, manifested itself indirectly. For example, she was greatly concerned about “time running out” – too little time left to get an education, to take a vacation, to leave behind some tangible legacy; and too little time for us to finish our work together.
It is far preferable to employ terms like “distanced,” “shut out,” or “disconnected”; they give voice to your wish to be closer, more connected, and more engaged, and it is difficult for our clients to take umbrage at that.
Let me adapt some of Nietzsche’s words and say this to you: “To become wise, you must learn to listen to the wild dogs barking in your cellar.
If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only.
The joy of being observed ran so deep that Breuer believed the real pain of old age, bereavement, outliving one’s friends, was the absence of scrutiny – the horror of living an unobserved life.
Who can comprehend my torment, my sleepless nights, my flirtation with suicide? After all, haven’t I everything one could wish: money, friends, family, a beautiful and charming wife, renown, respectability? Who will comfort me? Who refrain from asking the obvious question: “What more can you want?
Each person fears death in his or her own way. For some people, death anxiety is the background music of life, and any activity evokes the thought that a particular moment will never come again. Even an old movie feels poignant to those who cannot stop thinking that all the actors are now only dust.
Everyone needs to believe that there are truly wise men and women out there. I sought out such when younger, and now I, elderly and prominent, have become the suitable vessel for others’ wishes. I believe that our need for mentors reflects much about our vulnerability and wish for a superior or supreme being.
I often urge patients to project themselves into the future and to consider how they can live now so that five years hence they will be able to look back upon life without regret sweeping over them anew.
Sometimes I gaze so far into life that I suddenly look around and see that no one has accompanied me, and that my sole companion is time.
How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tasted it?
Mourning is the price we pay for having the courage to love others.
If parents teach the child that all free impulse expression is undesirable and all counter will is bad, the child suffers two consequences: suppression of his or her entire emotional life, and stunted, guilt-laden will. The child then grows into an adult who suppresses his or her emotions and regards the very act of willing as evil and forbidden.
Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.’” “Is that any different from ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead’?” “A big difference. In death there is no ‘you.’ ‘You’ and ‘dead’ cannot coexist.