And one duty: the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 7, “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. ~ Otto Rank, 1929/1978, Truth and Reality, p. 24, “Our [African American] children are not at-risk; they are at-potential in at-risk environments. See more ideas about existential therapy, existentialism, therapy. ~ Rollo May, 1961, “The Meaning of the Oedipus Myth” This is true whether one is constructing things or reconstructing oneself. ), p. 35, “We are quick to debate and assert a correct position, slow to ask questions and seek to understand. ~ Louis Hoffman, 2014, The Proper Use of Tradition and Scholarly Authority, “I find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself: the right to demand human behavior from the other. illustrate certain points, I have employed quotes or references from other writers of existential psychotherapy, some of whom Yalom acknowledges as being important influences in the development of his own theoretical understanding. ~ Nietzsche, 1873/1962, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, p. 83, “…less and less is life animated through personal discovery, intimacy with others, or self-reflection. There has to be complete openness to “True, we must dare look things in the face before we dare think, speak, act, or assume responsibility. ... Existential psychotherapy is the … So it is with absurdity. ~ Lu Xun, 1925/1961 (“On Looking Facts in the Face” in Lu Xun Selected Works, Vol. The conscious choices we make in related to the dynamic, psychobiological forces of the daimonic define our humanity.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1965, A Very Easy Death, p. 60, “Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.” In Existential Psychology East-West (Vol. Anxiety is seen by existential therapists as being a condition of living, naturally arising from a person’s striving to survive. ~ Rollo May, 1981, Freedom and Destiny, p. 230, “Before embarking on a positive voice, freedom needs to make an effort at disalienation.” Before the weapon comes the image. ~ Louis Hoffman, 2014, The Proper Use of Tradition and Scholarly Authority. ~ Paul Tillich, 1961, “Existentialism and Psychotherapy, in Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry, Volume 1, p. 13, “Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals…” Let those who want to ascend to heaven do so! ), p. 85, “In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. ~ James Baldwin, 1962 The Fire Next Time, p. 91, “…despair is suffering without meaning.” We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems.” Yet, he was very critical when people became bound to their ideas. He has many standard texts in this area, some of which are in their double figure editions, so we are dealing with one of the few greats in this field. See more ideas about existential therapy, therapy, me quotes. Freedom is hard to bear. ~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death, p. 196, “…only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 120. ‎”The most important thing… was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.” ~ James F. T. Bugental, Psychotherapy Isn’t What You Think, p. 131, “…the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. ~ Viktor E. Frankl, 2000, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, p. 133, “When you put sugar into bitter tea, the amount of bitterness remains the same, it only tastes a little better than without any sugar at all.” Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre. “…meaning in life is limited and unsustainable without reaching out for something greater and higher than self-interest.” ~ James Baldwin, 1955, Notes of a Native Son (pp. 2), p. 268, “…once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices…. The former concerns itself with how to live, the latter with why to live, the meaning of living. Most therapists do not appear to know how to pinpoint and reverse therapeutic resistance - to head it off at the pass. “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Free Press. ~ Rollo May, 1991, The Cry for Myth, p. 15, “There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.” Viewed in this way, no choice can be mine or yours alone, no experienced impact of choice can be separated in terms of ‘my responsibility’ versus ‘your responsibility’, no sense of personal freedom can truly avoid its interpersonal dimensions.” ~ Nietzsche, 1892/1966, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (W. Kaufmann, Trans. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. ~ Albert Camus, 1955, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays, p. 124, “It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.” Stuart Gilbert), p. 4. Human beings blessed and cursed with consciousness – especially consciousness of their own being – think in terms of names, words, symbols.” In Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 1, p. 44. ~ Lu Xun, 1922/1959, from the preface to A Call to Arms, (in Lu Xun Selected Works, Vol. From phenomenology it borrows the idea that the individual’s immediate experience and personal grasp of reality is primary and the appropriate subject of concern. This section contains pages on important topics in existential-humanistic therapy: Common Misperceptions of Existential-Humanistic Therapy; Key Figures in Existential-Humanistic Therapy; The Existential Givens. The reference for quotes are linked and/or in the references section of this website. ~ Viktor Frankl, 1961, Logotherapy and the Challenge of Suffering, “A paradox arises: the only way to meaning in freedom is through boundaries. For older quotes, I have tried to update them into gender-inclusive language, though sometimes I have also included them in their original. 91-92). Kindle Edition. About the Existential Quotes: This page lists many influential existential quotes, along with some of my favorites. The syndromes we find would then not be confirmations of psychiatric textbook rubrics, but a critique of society. “The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. ~ Nietzsche, 1892/1966, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (W. Kaufmann, Trans. And for me bourgeois society is any society that becomes ossified in a predetermined mold, stifling any development, progress, or discovery. Propaganda precedes technology.” ~ James F. T. Bugental, 1999, Psychotherapy Isn’t What You Think, p, xi, “Our passion for categorization, life neatly fitted into pegs, has led to an unforeseen, paradoxical distress; confusion, a breakdown of meaning. Self-awareness is not only a gift, but it is a responsibility.” Verily, their souls lack more than honey. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, 1998, The Heart of Buddhism, p. 194, “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Problems are the outward signs of unused inner possibilities.” Explore 46 Psychotherapy Quotes by authors including Irvin D. Yalom, Marianne Williamson, and Mark Fisher at BrainyQuote. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.” Communication is an effort to overcome the subject-object split and to open ourselves to the oneness and interconnectedness of all things. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels.” ~ David N. Elkins, 1998, Beyond Religion, p. 81, “Mass communication–wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued–presents us with a serious danger, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country.” ~ James Baldwin, 1962, The Fire Next Time  (pp. But it is most definitely not a free-for-all. 1), p. 138, “…no existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.” ~ Albert Camus, 1955, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays, p. 51, “I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! “The Development of the Self in the Light of the Existential-Humanistic Psychology of Rollo May” In Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 24, 1999, pp. “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. “As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.” ~ Donald Rothberg, The Engaged Spiritual Life, p. 74, “…a psychotherapy that is chiefly concerned with information and a psychotherapy that centers on the actual experiencing of the client in the living moment has great significance for life-changing psychotherapy.” But until now, it has lacked a coherent structure. Free Press. Free Press. ~ Ernest Becker, 1971, Birth and Death of Meaning (p. 130). ― Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy. ~ James Baldwin, 1962 The Fire Next Time, p. 98, “These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl, 1959/1984, Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 134, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. Free Press. “The development of mind, then, is a progressive freedom of reactivity. We name experiences, emotions, and subjective states and assume that what is named is as enduring as its name. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 85, “Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. Yet, many who seek to preserve tradition destroy it by holding on too tightly. In the inescapable interrelationship that exists between ‘a being’ and ‘the world’, each impacts upon and implicates the other, each is defined through the other and, indeed, each ‘is’ through the existence of the other. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.” ~ Paul Tillich, 1957, The Dynamics of Faith, p. 94, “What is the ideal for mental health, then? “To believe that one has a higher reason to take human life, to feel that torture and murder are in the service of a divine cause is the kind of mandate that has always given sadists everywhere the purest fulfillment: they are free to remain on the level of the body, to pillage real flesh and blood creatures, to transact in lives in the service of the highest power.” 2), p. 165, “I undertake to risk annihilation so that two or three truths can cast their essential light on the world.” Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built. ~ Rollo May, 1985, My Quest for Beauty, p. 155. Although this site is owned by Louis Hoffman, this site supports the Rocky Mountain Humanistic Counseling and Psychological Association (RMHCPA), which is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. ~ Lu Xun, 1922/1959, Preface to A Call to Arms (in Lu Xun Selected Works, Vol. ~ Paul Tillich, 1957, Systematic Theology (Vol. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 91. It is very often the case that when the client’s resistance is manifest, an opportunity is presented to get more core issues than when there is unstressed exchange.” “All great reformers, visionaries, or missionaries have a meaning mind-set rather than a happiness mindset…” Life has no meaning a priori… I can endure darkness if I must; but I cannot live without these gifts. “Generally, the more anxious and insecure we are, the more we invest in these symbolic extensions of ourselves. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ), p. 170, “Symptoms, by their very nature, imply over-compressed living space. ~ Albert Camus, 1955, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays, p. 3, “…man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889/1990, Twilight of the Idols, (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans. ~ Stephen A. Diamond, 1996, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic, p. 179. “Today we understand that guilt is due to the human condition, to the sense of being bound, overshadowed, feeling powerless.” ~ David N. Elkins, Beyond Religion, p. 188, “We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.” This is known as ‘existential anxiety’ and is a normal outcome of facing the four ultimate concerns in life: death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute.” ~ James Baldwin, 1962, The Fire Next Time (p. 81). It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. Free Press. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Let the darkness descend. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 129, “What is demanded of man [sic] is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his [sic] incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. Let those whose souls want to leave their bodies expire quickly! Explore 152 Existential Quotes (page 2) by authors including Anne Lamott, Bo Burnham, and Tim Minchin at BrainyQuote. Although he is known more for his critiquing of the culture and ideas of his time, a closer reading shows that he greatly values history and tradition. Existential psychotherapy has to be reinvented and recreated by every therapist and with every new client. “Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.” “The citizens of a city are not guilty of the crimes committed in their city; but they are guilty as participants in the destiny of [humanity] as a whole and in the destiny of their city in particular; for their acts in which freedom was united with destiny have contributed to the destiny in which they participate. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). Free Press. “All power is in essence power to deny mortality.” It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. ~ Paul T. P. Wong, 2010, “Meaning therapy: An integrative and positive existential psychotherapy” (Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 40, 85-93). ~ Rollo May, 1961, “The Meaning of the Oedipus Myth” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889/1990, Twilight of the Idols (Trans. ~ Lu Xun, 1925/1961, (“Sudden Notions” in Lu Xun Selected Works, Vol. “Science is the creation by humans of a particular paradigm and methodology for discovering truth and understanding reality. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. ~ Rollo May, 1975, The Courage to Create, p. 76, “Our old way of thinking–that problems are to be gotten rid of as soon as possible–overlooks the most important thing of all: that problems are a normal way of thinking–that problems are to be gotten rid of as soon as possible–overlooks the most important thing of all: that problems are a normal aspect of living and are basic to human creativity. ~ Ernest Becker, 1971, Birth and Death of Meaning (p. 31). O my body, always make me a man who questions!” ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, 2006, Experiments with Truth, in Sojourners (Nov. 2006), p. 46, “Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.” 2), p. 198, “The world is changing from day to day; it is high time for our writers to take off their masks, look frankly, keenly, and boldly at life, and write about real flesh and blood. ~ Rollo May, 1958, The Origins of the Existential Movement in Psychology, in Existence, p. 27, “…the client will not seek nor likely find “answers” to life issues. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.” Existential therapy background. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, 1948, The Ethics Of Ambiguity, p. 86, “But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. ~ Rollo May, 1975, The Courage to Create, p. 21, “Our greatest challenge today is to couple conviction with doubt. And each time I hear their engines attack the air I feel a certain slight tension, as if I were witnessing the invasion of Death, though this heightens my consciousness of the existence of Life.” We must revere, but not over-revere; we must honor, but not create idols; we must critique, but not destroy; we must preserve, but not stagnate. Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall of relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.” “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. As Rank put it so bluntly: Man creates “out of freedom a prison.” This means everyman, in any society, from the most “primitive” to the most “civilized,” no matter what the child training programs or economic system.” All this gives his life a quality of drivenness, of underlying desperation, an obsession with the meaning of it and with his own significance as a creature. “In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming off the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop off the world-creator, feasting one’s eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis off the coldest emptiest concept off all, the concept of being.” Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance.” ~ Rollo May, 1979, Psychology and the Human Dilemma, p. 56, “But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.” “We cannot be free until they are free.” ~ Nietzsche, 1873/1962, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, p. 83, “Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man’s unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his life in terms of ‘the possible,’ and that this capacity is one aspect of his experiencing himself as a being having a world.”

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