staring at the sun overcoming the terror of death

He suggests that what he calls the awakening experience can help us acknowledge, accept, and utilize our fear of death in a very positive manner. At 74, Yalom's new trade book is the climax of his lifework, focusing on the universal human issues of mortality and death. Irvin Yalom is an author whose best-selling trade books and novels tell compelling, dramatic, and illuminating stories that give readers that aha moment where each of us can say yes that's me.I've felt that too.And now I understand something new that brings it all home. These deceptively obvious goals are, obviously, not easily attained: What thinking and feeling person truly lives a life with no regrets? But they are inarguably worthwhile ones.' - San Francisco Chronicle Synopsis key prescriptions are true connections with others, a feeling one has lived well and 'rippling' - having positive impacts and memories live on in others after you die. 'So what to do about the dread of death?. Its lively chapters are populated with patients whose raw angst Yalom refines into vignettes that are always enlightening and often quite moving.' - Washington Post Philosophical it is, but never arid with theory. ' Staring at the Sun is neither textbook nor mere self-help. (Feb.) ( Publishers Weekly, November 5, 2007) Although in the 1980s Yalom, now 76, provided new insights into the human psyche with his innovative method of “existential psychotherapy,” this book recycles well-known philosophical insights, but Yalom's humane, calm voice may bring them to a new audience. In a final chapter, Yalom offers instructions for therapists seeking to help their patients overcome death anxiety. Through such experiences we can transcend our sense of “finiteness and transiency” and live in the here and now. Yet, he says, this anxiety can prompt an awakening to life and help us realize our connections to others and our influence on those around us. Drawing on literature and film, as well as conversations with his patients, Yalom demonstrates how the fear of retirement, concerns about changing jobs or moving to another city, or changes in family status (such as the empty nest) are rooted in our deepest, most inescapable fear: of death. Bestselling psychiatrist Yalom ( Love's Executioner) attempts to put this principle into practice in a sometimes thoughtful, often repetitious book. The philosopher Martin Heidegger once remarked that we can live intensely only if we stare death in the face every moment of our lives. Its lively chapters are populated with patients whose raw angst Yalom refines into vignettes that are always enlightening and often quite moving.' ( Washington Post, February 24, 2008) 'Philosophical it is, but never arid with theory. Rollo May, author, Love and Will, The Meaning of Anxiety, Man's Search for Himself, and The Courage to Create Review 'Irvin Yalom writes like an angel about the devils that besiege us.' 'Yalom is the Scheherazade of the couch, his work a marvelous exercise in storytelling.' Rabbi Harold Kushner, author, When Bad Things Happen to Good People 'One of America's finest therapists guides us through one of life's most challenging tasks in this profoundly helpful book. Andrew Solomon, author, The Noonday Demon, winner of the National Book Award The book is witty and kind and unflinching, a generous meditation that should give comfort to the dying and to those they leave behind.' 'Staring at the Sun looks experientially and psychodynamically at our deepest fear and describes with uncommon eloquence and deep humanity how we may arrive at a form of peace. Christopher Hitchens, author, God Is Not Great

'Staring at the Sun is a thoughtful reinforcement of the stoicism that we all need in a time when babble and denial are all the rage.' Robin Meyers, minister of Mayflower UCC Church of Oklahoma City, and author, Why the Christian Right Is Wrong This is a wise book by a wise man about the most taboo of all subjects. Instead of fearing death, which gave birth to religion itself, we can confront it in a true act of faith and stop denying it through fantasies of immortality. 'This thoughtful treatment of the ultimate fear has much to offer people of faith, especially Western Christians. Erica Jong, author, Fear of Flying, Shylock's Daughter, Inventing Memory, and Sappho's Leap 'Irvin Yalom has written a brave, intelligent book on the last forbidden subject-death.

Staring at the sun overcoming the terror of death