Irvin Yalom

Irvin Yalom in one of the most widely-read and most influential psychiatrists in the contemporary world. He gave an exceptionally interesting interview to the Director of Radio Art, Mr. Lambros Mitropoulos, which is cited below, right after the provided short information material.  

Short information about Irvin Yalom.

Irvin Yalom through his many books, which are accessible to ordinary readers as well as illuminating for psychotherapists, has provided a guide for living in a perplexing world.   

Rather than positioning himself as a representative of one of the hundreds of “schools” or approaches to psychotherapy, Yalom reaches with his work the heart of psychotherapy. Taking up the central existential concerns of human life, Yalom’s work engages the problems of finding meaning in life and confronting death, concerns that had lain beyond the scope of psychiatry.

Writing in a literary style that reviewers have compared to Freud, Yalom details what actually happens in the intimate human encounter that is psychotherapy. Yalom does not shrink from exposing his own thoughts and feelings about what occurs, he, too, is a vulnerable and searching human being.

He makes his thinking about his patients and his efforts to treat them, transparent, exposing his doubts, reservations and struggles as well as his insights. Across all of this work, he explores the limitless and complex possibilities of the healing inherent in genuine human connection and authentic awareness of the dilemmas of human existence.

Irvin Yalom was born in 1931 in Washington, DC. For 30 years he worked as a Professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, where he still teaches as a Professor Emeritus.

He is the author of “Existential Psychotherapy”, the most accurate and comprehensive textbook on the field. His first book, "Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy", has been translated in many languages and is widely used as a primary teaching textbook in many schools of Psychiatry and Psychology, thus making him a leader in the field of group psychotherapy. 

Yalom has written many more nonfiction books and articles. His involvement with literary fiction started at a rather advanced stage of his life. He has written two short story collections (“Love's Executioner” and “Momma and the Meaning of Life”) as well as three novels (“When Nietzsche Wept”, “Lying on the Couch”, “The Schopenhauer Cure”), all of which have become bestsellers in many countries around the world. The main theme of all his literary fiction books is a set of psychotherapy stories which Yalom himself considers an extension of his teaching work.

In his book “Staring at the Sun” Yalom encapsulates the work and personal experience of a lifetime in a profoundly encouraging approach to the issue of death. Amongst the moving personal stories of people who strive to overcome the dread of death, the reader can find a chapter filled with autobiographical confessions made by Yalom. Through his book, this great psychotherapist proposes various methods that can help us deal with the terror of death. What’s most important is that Yalom urges us to fight for closer connections with other people. 

A more compassionate level of contact combined with the wisdom of great thinkers who themselves struggled with the concept of death, can help us overcome the terror of death, to lead a happier and more meaningful life.

An Interview with Irvin Yalom 

L.M Mr.Yalom, it is a great honour and pleasure to have an interview with you.  

I.Y Thank you.  

L.M We have read most of your books and I do believe that the wisdom included in them is enormous. Are there any moments that you think on how much you have influenced the readers of your books?  Does this influence include a risk and is this a challenge for a writer?  

I.Y Well, I don’t think that it is a risk for a writer. Most of my attention is always on my next book, the one I am going to write or the one I am writing right now. But of course I get lots of reminders, because my books are translated to many languages and each time a new translation appears, I get much email from readers and I am very much aware and very appreciative of letters that I get from writers. So I have some awareness of the fact that my words are useful to very many people and that of course is very gratifying to me.  

L.M The Greek title of your last book “Staring at the Sun” is “in the garden of Epicurus”. I have noted that especially in this book there are many references to Greek philosophers and I am wondering if the people today had a better knowledge of the Greek Philosophers’ sayings, would they be happier?  What do you think?

I.Y Well, I think that the ancient Greek philosophy is something that I love very much. I was really going to write an entire book at first for Epicurus, because unlike philosophers today, he thought that the wall of philosophy was to improve one’s life, was to try to diminish or alleviate human despair. I think there is much wisdom in Epicurus. I have also read very much of Plato and Aristotle and I think that in so much wisdom, there is a lot of relevance for psychiatry and psychotherapy. It’s too little appreciated and I try in my writings to call people’s attention to that. Well, right now I am writing about another philosopher, Spinosa, who drew a great deal from the ancient Greeks and was very familiar with Aristotle and Plato.

L.M What is happiness Mr Yalom? 

I.Y I know that’s a big word right now and it’s a big fad or fashion in their field, because there must be twenty new books out on happiness. Well, Schopenhauer’s definition of happiness was the absence of misery, absence of pain and that’s not a bad definition for me. I think if we can kind of distance ourselves from all the miseries in our life that may be our steady stay there underline state, might be much more tranquil and calm. And this is very much part of a Buddhist thought if we can detach ourselves from our worries and all these unnecessary attachments and possessions that we reach a state of unnatural kind of calmness and peacefulness. I, like most therapists, I know there is a new wave of thinking that; I really work to try to remove pain from people. I don’t think I need to tell them about how to be happy. But that’s not entirely true. Sometimes for example, I was working with the patient yesterday and I spent much of the hour looking if there is a time that he felt harmony with other people (let’s go back to those times) or who can he think of, with whom he felt wonderfully happy and harmonious in their relationship and this was a really very good session.                

L.M Most of the people believe that money and power bring the happiness, maybe in America more than Europe. What is your comment on this?

I.Y That is definitely an error. It does not bring happiness whatsoever and Epicurus knew that very well. He felt that as a way of escaping our terror of death, we try to accumulate more and more money, wealth and we got bigger and more glorious and more famous. There is no evidence whatsoever that happier people are wealthy and unhappy people are poor. Of course, the very poor have a lot of misery, but there are a lot of people, with whom I have worked with, who may have gained some wealth and as I talk to them and look back on their lives and many of them say that they were happier when they were poor. They were happier, when they were younger just starting out and didn’t have any money at all. So wealth does not bring happiness.   

L.M We are trying in Radio Art to play very good music without following the route of Music Industry.   Do you think that good music can play a therapeutic role?

I.Y There is no question about music; it can definitely influence our mood. The movie industry has known this for a very long time. I have an interesting experience of that recently. I have a movie out of my book “When Nietzsche wept”. It’s in English, made in America and it’s a pretty good movie and the person playing Nietzsche is amazing. However, I saw this movie earlier on, when there wasn’t music in it and they played some Mozart in the background and then I show the movie again, when they finally hired an orchestra. It was two different movies entirely. And made me aware more than ever before what an important part music plays and creating the mood of the movie. You know that, we knew that, but I never had it demonstrated to me so clearly, as to see the movie without the right music.

L.M. Apart of great therapist you are also a professor in the School of Medicine in Stanford University. On which philosophical road should education move in an ideal civilized country?

I.Y An ideal civilized country would spend more time teaching people about ancient Greek philosophy. Regarding the education of psychiatrists and doctors right now in America there is such explosion of science and so much to know that people can go to undergraduate school, then college and then go to medical school and do certainly nothing else but sciences and may be only one or two courses on literature at most. I went to school, to premedical school and I only went to college for three years because for some reason I was in a big rash and then I went to medical school and I had virtually no formal education in philosophy whatsoever. It was only afterwards that I began to see how important philosophy was and I began then (after I became a doctor) to take University courses and read a lot about philosophy; I am more self educated about this field. But I wish I had spent a year in my college studying philosophy. It would save me a lot of time. I wish I knew a lot less about the anatomy of a cat, I spent two-three months in medical school dissecting a cat, and I knew a lot more about Plato and Socrates.      

L.M Coming now to your book “Staring at the Sun”, in this book you are giving a courageous look into the abyss of death. How can we avoid the fear of death? 

I.Y In English the subtitle of the book “Staring at the sun” is “overcoming the terror of death”. I am using the word “terror” in English very carefully. I am not saying “overcoming the anxiety or the fear of death”, because I think in many ways that you cannot overcome that. I think that it is hard wired into every living organism, to avoid any danger, to try to persist in one’s own life. So I don’t think that the fear of death can be eliminated. But I think that there is excessive fear of death. I work with patients all the time, who come to see me and they are thinking about death and they are terrified. Nothing in life gives them any happiness because they imagine that it is all going to disappear and go to ashes anyway. So that’s the kind of persons that I work with. There are many ways that we have of dealing with the anxiety of death. I start my book by looking at Epicurus because he had a school and a whole series of arguments that he had his students learned that help us sort of overcome the dread, the terror of death and I quoted three of his major arguments in my book and I have also some more that come from my psychotherapy experience. I first became aware of this reading in another Greek author; in Kazantzakis. In his auto biography, in the “Sequel to the Odyssey” that he wrote, but also in “Zorba the Greek”. Zorba the Greek says “leave death nothing but a burned out castle” and I think that such an important idea; “Leave death nothing but a burned out castle”. In other words you have to live your life very fully and I think that people who have a lot of unlived life inside of them and they know it, they know that they haven’t really stretched their lives; they haven’t really overcome some of their potentials or they haven’t used their potentials in life. They ought to have a great deal more anxiousness about death; they haven’t lived fully.             

L.M Something that touched me very much in your last book are your words   “that some part of ourselves passes on to other people whom we have touched or affected in some way, and that can be passed on to others” and in a way this can calm the fear death; I found this extremely interesting. Could you please comment on this?

I.Y I call that in English “rippling”. When you throw a stone in the pond, you see ripples of water go on and on and on and I feel that that’s true for us, as well. That we are going to leave something for ourselves, may be even this radio broadcast, may be people will hear what we, you and I are saying and they will some way be changed or take something and then unbeknownst to us, we won’t know this, it will pass on to someone else, a friend or a child and that child will take that and pass it on to others and others and I find that very personally, a very important concept, that I ripple on to other people. Not my name; I know that it is going to disappear very soon. Personal identity is very transient. I am a devout existentialist and I know that everything is transit but nonetheless it gives me much satisfaction to think that I ripple on to other people and they will continue to ripple on to others; The chain of life.   

L.M I do believe that a writer is an Artist, what is the role of an artist today? Do people today need art more than in the past? 

I.Y I think that we have perhaps less of it today. We essentially need it more and I think there is a strong human need for artistic expression and of course what is happening in the more high tech world, there is not enough place for us to be able to do music, artists saying or to write poetry when we are deluged every moment of the day with text and reading and newspapers and television of course. Yes, I think I get so much pleasure out of my own art, out of writing, creating sentences and I think too few people really can do that. 

L.M Is there a question to which you would like to have found an answer in your life but you haven’t until today?

I.Y Yes, I have a question. It’s the same question that every philosopher has had; the same question that the ancient Greek philosophers had and no one will ever be able to answer it. The question is why is there something rather than nothing; The basic question that is the heart of the mystery of existence.  

L.M Mr. Yalom, we would like to thank you very much for this interview. It has been a great honour and pleasure for us.

I.Y Thank you. I applaud what you are doing very much. You bring something very important and above all you bring your own enthusiasm and wish to make a difference in the world. Good for you and I congratulate you.    

L.M Thank you very much again and we wish you all the best.