From Chapter 85 of "The Gift of Therapy"
by Irvin D. Yalom
- The active therapist is always evolving, continuously growing in self-knowledge and awareness.
- We are cradlers of secrets. Every day patients grace us with their secrets, often never before shared. Receiving such secrets is a privilege given to very few.
- Those who are cradlers of secrets are granted a clarifying lens through which to view the world - a view with less distortion, denial, and illusion, a view of the way things really are.
- We watch our patients let go of old self-defeating patterns, detach from ancient grievances, develop zest for living, learn to love us, and, through that act, turn lovingly to others. It is a joy to see others open the taps to their own founts of wisdom.
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We belong to the venerable and honorable guild of leaders. We therapists are part of a tradition reaching back not only to our immediate psychotherapy ancestors, beginning with Freud and Jung and all their ancestors - Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard - but also to Jesus, the Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Galen, Hippocrates, and all the other great religious leaders, philosophers, and physicians who have, since the beginning of time, ministered to human despair.(Irvin D. Yalom)
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