Facing Death: Staring at the Sun (III) Dr. Yalom

http://www.yalom.com/

To live life fully, one must accept that it ends,
says the existential psychoanalyst. "Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful? That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die." -- Yudhishtara answers Dharma, from "The Mahabharata"

it is not just love that we look for in all the wrong places. If Irvin Yalom is right, it is life itself. By denying death, the psychoanalyst suggests, we misdirect our search for happiness. The true meaning of life, his work suggests, lies in engaging what we most fear.

Yalom has the credentials to make such a claim. He is the author of the highly regarded 1980 textbook, "Existential Psychotherapy" and his bestselling work "Love's Executioner" shows how such neuroses as eating disorders can be alleviated by bringing patients' death-anxieties to the surface. His novel "When Nietzsche Wept" is a thought-provoking exploration of how psychology might have fared had it been invented by the Ur-existential thinker Nietzsche rather than Freud. His new novel, "Lying On The Couch," will be published next month.

I spoke with Yalom in the office he has built next to his comfortable home on a peaceful street in Palo Alto. A quiet man, he exudes an air of mild anxiety oddly appropriate to the existential realities -- death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness -- of which he writes. He becomes passionate mainly when affirming his strong belief in science and his skepticism about non-material or spiritual understandings of life.

"[There is] a juncture to which full awareness inevitably leads. One stands before the abyss and decides how to face the pitiless existential facts of life. Of course, there are no solutions. One has a choice only to be 'resolute,' 'engaged,' courageously defiant, stoically accepting or to, in awe of mystery, place one's trust in the providence of the divine." -- "Love's Executioner"

Well, did the last 5 billion years bother you? I mean, it seems to me that what happens after we die is not really the problem. It is a kind of peace. The challenge for us is how we live between now and then, whether we have the courage to stop denying it and use our anxieties to live more authentic, meaning-filled and purposeful lives.

Salon interview with Yalom

http://www.salonmagazine.com/weekly/yalom960805.html

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
Ernest Becker

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Science & Technology

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