Irvin Yalom || Existential Psychotherapy

Foundations Fund Prize in Psychiatry. His textbooks in Patient Group Psychotherapy and Existential Psychotherapy are classics and have influenced me personally deeply. Doctor Yalm lives in Palo Alto, California. Hey, thank you so much for being on the Psychology Podcast today. Hi, welcome. When I announced on Twitter that you were going to be my podcast, everyone was freaking out. You know, this is this is such a such a delight. You're you're

such a legend in the field. And I really want to capture today if anyone can capture the essence of a person or of a life, you know, I want to see how much I can capture that today. And and uh, you're really you're really truly special. So do you mind if we start a little bit in your childhood, because when I was looking into that, I read that you grew up in a segregated city in Washington, d c. In a poor black neighborhood, and that you said that

life on the streets for you were perilous. Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood there and how you took refuge in books? Well, I I my father had a little grocery and liquor story. He had come over from ah that's little Russia named Steltz, and I lived there the first fourteen years of my life. There were no other white people there except for a few store owners. Like the barber of few doors down was white. He always he always greeted me, hey you boy,

every morning. And I had to walk a couple of blocks to my school. I was just on the edge of the school, so I bite your walk to school. I played with some of the black children in the neighborhood, but my parents would let me allow a little bit and allow me to bring them into the house. I spent a lot of time in the library. I went there weekly, took home all of us. I was permitted maybe six, right, I don't remember. I did a lot of reading at that time, and my parents were hard workers.

They were in the store from eight in the morning to eight at night and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. So they had a very hard life. And that's that's where I grew up. At fourteen, my mother decided that she wanted a better home. She went out and bought a home. My father never even solid till we got there, and we moved into the nicest section of town. Which where And that was where I met my wife at the age of fourteen. Yeah, so you were in the chess club, right, You were a big nerd in school,

is that right? And you right? The only thing I did with my parents that I really enjoyed and loved was Sunday mornings playing chess with my father. It was a pretty good chess player, and I did that every morning, every every Sunday. That was a real treat for me, and I got to when I got to high school, there was a chess team playing out of the high schools. So I was a member of the team for three years and played the last year and a half or

so at first board. Right, and around fourteen fifteen, I mean you described yourself as a bit of a shy kid. But you said when you met your wife at a party, can you kind of tell me about that? You said you went right, something came over you, like you were extroverted all of a sudden or something. Well. I met

someone one of the at the Bowling Alley. It's kind of one of the bowling alley bombs there, and I enjoyed gambling with him and playing in bowling, and he said there's a party over Maryland Conning Towns afterwards you you'd like to come. I didn't know who that was, but I went with him. It was a few blocks walk from the bowling Alley and there's a huge mob of children trying to get to the front door. He said, let's go in through the window. So I opened the

window and I crawled through and houses right right. But I saw Marylin across the I thought she was very beautiful. She's tiny, she's under five foot tall, never weighed more than a hundred pounds. And went after her and I I told her that I just called through your window, can't big anything else to say. I got her phone number and we had my first date. It was something called the Hot Chops in Washington. And two later and over hot French Sunday, she told me that she had

not been to school that day. She skipped school. And I said, you skipped school? How could you do that? Because what I really liked about her was that she was so much in love with books like me. She said, she read Going with the Window and kept her up all night long. She just stick together to go to h to go to school. I think I was. I was absolutely implored by this and someone who loved books as much as I did. And I never looked over after that. You were married more than sixty five years?

Is that right? Yes? For sixty five I married. Let's see, I was in I was in medical school, so yeah, at least sixty five years. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's rare. I went to medical school at George Washington. She went to Wellesley. I had I'd heard. I looked into it. There was an open spot and at Boston University of Medical School. You usually they're not transfer medical schools, but I heard there was an extra spot and uh, and they accepted me at Boston University too, so I

could be here in Maryland. And so that's that's why I at one year at GW in three years at bu AW. I didn't know those details. Uh so you were also, you know, at a very young age. I guess death was something that you saw close right to both your parents deaths. You were present at both of them, Is that right there? Quite unexpected? Yeah, I was. I was president of both my parents. That that's right. My I was president. Also. My father's a severe caronary when I was a teenager and we we all had to

wait to the middle of that. I to a position hanging by doctor Manchester. Uh. He was. He was very nice to me, rubbed my hair, took care of my father, released some of his pain, and my father lives for a few more years, although he was very limited in what he could do. But I think it was at that point that I decided to become a physician. Like to someone else, what the kind of relief that he gave me by appearing in that house and being kind

to me. Did you have a fear of mortality? Did you did these preoccupations concern you as a child, Like when did they start really coming to uh to the fore in your consciousness? Preoccupations at that not? Not for some period of time. No, I wasn't aware of that, uh very much at that time, although I you know, it was with my with with my father when he died, but no, it was later on in life and that

I had a lot of turns about about that. Mhm. Roughly, when in your career did you pivot to you know, I'm trying to I want to see the origin story of the founding of this existential psychotherapy field that you have contribute to so much. You know what, what were some of the you know why, like why you were? Why were you? How did you become interested in those issues? Well, personally I was. I was a massive reader and everything that I could find at that point when I started, uh,

when I started my my residency at Johns Hopkins. I think that was when I wade into roll a Mazed, roll a Maze book on exist existence. I have that on my shelf somewhere, uh, and I read that from cover to cover, and I was absolutely persuaded. Mhm. If I were going to do what I wanted to do in this field, I had to learn something about philosophy.

I had zero courses in college and that nothing but pre made so as a as a first year resident, I enrolled in a basic philosophy course at g W and I went three eatings the week uh to to introduce myself to philosophy. So that was that was first my real beginning with that. And then coincidentally Roll may move to California and you were able to get psychotherapy with him. Right. Well, what happened was that I got drafted.

Every every MD was was you have to signed if you want to go to medical school, to sign a statement you will go into the service. Afterwards, I went for two years. The Army sent me. At first I was going to Germany, and then the last moment a

spot opened up in Hawaii that they needed someone. So it was a great blessing for me, so I want So I went to Hawaii then and after I planned to go back to Washington, and my wife leaned on me pretty heavily, and she both of us wanted to say in Hawaii it was lovely and San Francisco was as close as we could get to Hawaii. So I for positions at UCSF and at Stanford, and to Stanford first. I liked that so much I did didn't continue. I got offered a position there at Stanford, so I took

that position. I also had a ticket to Illinois. I was going to go visit Carl Rogers is another place to say as to see, but I never took that trip because I got a very good position at Stanford. And when I was at Stanford, I had a tremendous amount of freedom. I could do what I wanted to do. And I began starting being interested very in group therapy.

And one time I saw a woman there who had metastatic breast cancer, and she came to see me and asked me if I could leave a group of patients like her, and I found her very persuasive and I did, and I lived this group for many years. Everyone in the group died and new members came into the group died, But eventually it stirred up a lot of death anxiety for me, for a young young resident to be saying

this much as much death. And I learned that Rollo May had just moved to California, and so I started seeing him. It was very helpful to me. I met with him in pres about a year and a half. I think I was helped by that. Afterwards, I became close friends with him, very close friends, and we met often. I was with him when he died. As a matter of fact, but he did tell me a few years later that although he had helped my death anxiety, I

had made his a lot worse. He was about twenty two years older than I was, or I was facing these issues are far bi long before I did. So that was my first contact. I started doing other groups groups to breed people also during during that time, other groups, all sorts of different groups. Then and eventually started textbook about groups therapy. Well you did you know the theory and practice of group psychotherapy is a classic. Why do you think that book did so well? I don't know.

I spent a lot of time a pretty good I wrote it six different times. I try to get a lot of stories in there and stories there. Maybe it was the stories that but the last vision was that I did with a co the co therapy is a co leader and they Mullen Lesh as the president of the Group Therapy Association there now. But it was something like eight hundred and fifty pages and a couple of thousand references. It's a backbreaking test to do that six times.

Although he did a lot of the hard work heavy lifting this last time, Well you have said, I have a quote from me here. He said, I have an insatiable thirst for stories, especially those that I can use in my teaching and writing. You know, So what led up to the writing of Love with Executioners, which was an international bestseller and and had really riveting stories about your therapy practice? Like why do you decide to write that book? I don't remember that. I don't remember how

I started doing that. I wish I undoubtedly I wrote it when I was on sabbatical. I took it for advantage of very possible sabbatical. We could went to some far off place. Once we went to the Tavistat Krank when I was writing the group therapy book. I went there because of the group program there. Other times I went to desert islands. I liked to do underwater scoo diving and spear finishing. So Marilyn, my wife, she she

was a Frankophile. I got a PhD in French and German literature, so she always chose to go to Paris her half the year. So we'd split the year half in Paris, half on a on a desert island. So let's talk a little bit about this chestnut. Do you remember that one you talking here about four givens of human existence, freedom, isolation, meetinglessness, and death. Do you mind just wow Copperate in nineteen eighty So I was born one year before this came out in nineteen seventy nine.

Could you go through the four and I'd love to hear it in the legend's own words, the description of what they mean to you, each of these four givens. Oh, I wrote that book alone. I'm ago. So we certainly everybody's dealing with death, everyone's thinking about it, and everyone's right now. But I have worked with a lot of people with death anxiety, and so that's the one that I started with, and I had my own experience with it.

When you think of my death anxiety and leading all these groups and seeing so many patients die, my father, I, my mother, I, I was with them at the time. So I've been working with a lot of people who have a great deal of death anxiety. In fact, over the last couple of years, been an enormous number of people. I'm doing these single profession consultations, and a significant number of them have to do with people who are loaded

up with death anxiety. The formula has evolved for me which is that I think there seems to be a good relationship, a strong relationship rather between the amount of death anxiety that you have in the amount of regrets you have about the way you've lived your life and the people that I see very often who are way down with death anxiety. I have a lot of regrets about what they've done and what they've not done with

their life, and there seems to be a relationship. So I often look at that very much and look at what's stopping them even now from trying to do what they really wanted to do in life. And I think that's certainly been very true for me. The time I've faced death the most by far was when my wife died right in front of me, and I've been in grief about her death ever since the last year and

a half. But I know that one of the things that I did after my wife died was light down in my bedroom and I sort of looked at all the books on my bookshelf, so all the books I've written, and began reading them the first time. I read them one by one, every single one of them, and it was very very good therapy for me. Was I was very pleased with those with those books and a lot of pride in them. Uh, this is one you you were reading, right, Yes, I was certainly one staring at

the sun. But it's a it's a motifa a lot of the books of stories as well. In fact, I came across one story, almost to my surprise. I looked at a story called Mama and the Medium of Life. I started to read that. Into my shock, I came across the story maybe second or third story, which was, uh, eight Advanced Lessons in the Therapy of Grief. And I had absolutely forgotten that I written that story. Uh. And

I read that with tremendous interest. And it was a story about a very angry, damnure professor whose husband had died and before that, up too long before that, her brother had died too. And we did a lot of arguing, and she'd sit there and say, oh, you're sitting there and that like this nice pink striped shirt of yours, nothing ever happens to you. You know, you don't know what I'm feeling. And I'd argue with her and say, oh, I got to be depressed. To work with a press patient,

I schizophrenic. To work with the schizophrenic so we'd be almost yelling at each other after a while. But she got better. Took her well over a year, but I was able to help her. Although now as I read that story and go back to our therapy, well I think she was right. You know, I didn't know how she felt. Now I do after having gone through this kind of numbness and loss of the absolute center of my vitality. So that was very very helpful to me.

I'm rambling here. Where were be back when we go back to where you were with your question what are the forgivens of human existence? But you know you were talking about death. That you started with death. You know, if you get your villa going about death, you can go a long time on that topic. The idea of meaning of I've that interesting quite a bit some time teaching at Stanford in Vienna and I met Victor Frankel.

Had a very very long and strong encounter with Victor Frankel, and it was very interested in his book about meaning the meaning of life. And he was a tortured soul. Yeah, he was a tortured soul. He had gone through just what he had gone through was so awful, and he he was struggling all the time to recover and to make himself well known amount to Stanford. Uh And he did some lectures in my department. But he never felt very strong about himself. He always felted himself a great

deal and he was he was tortured to the end. Mhm, someone who lived through that horrific thing. Let's see. Also, I'm cus, I'm just curious that you know the other other humanistic psychology legends. Who else did you cross paths with? Did you? Did you ever meet Carl Rodgers? Oh? Yes, I met Carl Rodgers and spent some time with him down in southern in southern California. I like Carl Rodgers very much. A fine man. Ah maybe a little too much wine sometimes, but a very fine man. I admired

him terribly. Uh And I spent some time I met uh well, John John Balby, John Bowlby, and I switched offices when I went to have a stock. He came to the US and I had some overlap time with him, and he was a he was a fine man. And Freud's daughter just down the street and uh and Freud was just down on the street from the tennis stock. So I attended almost weekly her her seven hours and got to know her a little bit. She was an amazing,

amazing lady. Roger. Did you re meet Karen Horney? No? No, I I would have liked to have known her me too. I like her work very much. I I uh, I think the two people I read with the most interest during my residency training were, uh, We're called where Karen Horney? And oh who else? My memory is taking away? And Sarah Harry sax Sullivan. It takes me about Harry sax Sullivan was very important to me. He's a terrible writer,

but what he had to say was important. He so he and Kary Horner and I both introduced me to the interpersonal model, which is so absolutely crucial when you're doing group therapy and you're you're working hard on how these eight people this you're relating to one another. The group therapy really is an interpersonal kind of approach to therapy. So I think these are the There's also a teachers who told stories and Hopkins and I loved listening to the story. But I don't think I'm going to get

this one, so the next stands are no problem. Hey, did you ever meet Abraham as well? No, no, I never did. What do you to do? You would have liked to write? Did? Did you like his work? Did you you know? Did it influence you at all? I didn't bring He was not one of my favorite writers, but I did like his work. I read it, but I didn't reread it, and don't remember too much of it. Now. Well, he wasn't a clinical psychologist. I don't think he ever did clinical work. But you know self, the ideas of

self actualization obviously we're big in the sixties. I had a good chairman at Hopkins when I was a resident named John Whitehorn. And another man that influenced me a great deea was Jerome Frank Jam Frank was a wonderful person. He's certainly introduced me to group therapy. I'd had written the book about the group therapy early on, so I considered him my mentoring group therapy, and the residents all watched his group for the first three or four weeks

of their residency, but I found it so interesting. I watched him for several months, and he invited me to come in and co lead the group with them, So I considered him my group my group therapy teacher. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, there's the people that field I've known very well. So death, meaninglessness, then isolation, isolation. You talk about existential isolation. Can you can you just talk a little about how what what

is existential isolation? Well, you know, I know I've never used a term in later years, tell me what I wrote about it. It's so long ago. You you made a distinction between uh having loneliness, uh, the kind of loldliness that you have from a partner, you know, uh, or not having a lot of partners around. But existential illness is also feeling a strange from yourself, you know, like being uh not really in touch with your your existence. Yeah, yeah, yes,

I I take that one very seriously too. And Rollo ma was was my my favorite discussing about these issues and existential is a fine man. Mm hmm. He's I mean, he's he's one of my heroes. I put him up there with you in terms of my heroes. You were there at Rolla means deathbed. I mean that's incredible. What was did he say? What were his like last words? I mean, like what was he? What was he? You know, what kind of state was he was? He? A lot of a lot of death anxiety, wasn't speaking when I was.

When I was there, he was in he was in a coma. I was with his wife, Georgia, and he had had a looks like he had severe cv A and and didn't speak. And uh, I did my best to help Georgia get it through this. He's still alive and it is in a residential establishment for the elderly in Palmata, very near me. I've seen her from time to time. Wow, do you remember her? Do you remember your last conversation with Roald? Do you remember one of

your last conversations with him? What you guys talked about? Yeah? Long ago? Fair enough. I don't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. So look, it's okay, no worries, uh and the other I just think it's Look, you have to understand from my perspective, like rolld May is my heir, you're my hero. Role May is my hero. To hear about YouTube talking to me is a big deal. So I'm like, give me, give me gossip all those I do know that when I did something with Rollald May,

that when I when I saw him, I take the sessions. Wow, and you still have the tapes. That's another that's another story. But anyway, I taped the sessions because I had a long drive there. It was an hour drive. Uh. And the next week, on my way to there, I listened to the type of the previous session. I thought that was a wonderful way to use therapy because it really made it almost a continuous process. Asked patients to do

that too. I had all the tapes in a in my studio and went away to London or went away somewhere for a year sabbatical. It came back and somebody was doing some revision work that I asked him to do, and the tapes were gone to the role they're lost them. I don't know, wow ended up in the dump so long ago. Anyway, that that that is really truly incredible. So yeah, I mean I had your your book A Matter of Death and Life, and what a profoundly touching book.

I'm so glad that you wrote that with your wife. You had alternating chapters. Question in my mind that what I can talk about that one that's your that's that's that's that's your latest. Uh yeah, I know it's it is uh profoundly touching. I mean it's hard to read that book and not feel what you were feeling, and you know, keeping like the tissues by by the side of my You know, as I'm reading your book, I

can't imagine was to like go to go through it. Look, you and Marilyn, you had such a special special relationship for for so many years. Can you tell me a little bit about Marilyn. Can you tell me, you know, tell the listeners who haven't read the book, just like tell us a little bit about you know what? You know? Who she who? She was? Well, she was this little girl who I called through the window of her house. He was very, very bright. She was always as the

party at every class she was in. She early on got interested in We went to the same high school. You high she got very interested in French studies. She spoke very very good French. And when she ran the school newspaper again the All Victoria her high school class too, got a scholarship to go to Wellesley in French studies. So she majored in French studies, in German studies, got her PhD in Comparative literature French and German literature ed Hopkins.

All this done with the husband, who, as she said many times, mispronounced every French word he ever came his way. I could not the language. It was very important for me during those days. Used to get old a's in college so I could get into medical school. There was a very strong five percent quota for Jewish for Jewish boys, uh get into medical school, so I I had to get old as. The only being I ever got in college was in German. I remember that I used to

sing opera in German. I'm back back in college, but that is ron. Yeah, yeah. Ma. Marilyn got her doctorate at Hopkins while I was getting my residency training there, and at that point then we went to the Army. I taught. I was as chiaches the Army. He had a teaching job at University YI for two years teaching French. When I came to Stanford, she was all, they don't

take back faculty wives. So she got a She got a job teaching French to a California State university at Hayward and then they opened up a woman center a few years later, and they and she came over to take over the women's center there. So she was a little dissatisfied that she couldn't continue her German and her French but but she was very interested in feminist studies as well, and she did that till to the end

of her life and enjoyed a great deal. And she eventually she started to write, not not as soon as I did, but once I won a fellowship to a blagio. It was a Rockefeller fellowship, and what they did was a give American scholars scholars from other countries as well, and it would give me a place for my family apartment and then a separate writing studio. So all those writers had this writing studio. I think it was two

months or so and Maryland was talking to me. She was doing a study of women French witnesses of the French Revolution and a lot of them had written about this, and she was telling me about that, and she was very interested in and I said to her, you know, you might have a book in that, uh, And she's even more excited about that. So we went down to the the managed office whether there may be an extra writing studio that she could have as well. No writer's

wife ever had a studio there. And then we were informed by that about the secretary there. No writers wives don't get don't get the studios. But just then the head of the Loggio walked in there. He said, wait a minute, you know, there is a treehouse just in the woods, ten minutes into the woods, and we took a walk outside and there's a huge, huge tree with a little ladder going up, and had a very nice studio there. So she stayed the whole two months, hardly

came down and got started her first book. And after that when she she matched the book for a book she was. She and I were always writing books, helping her some except with her books, her being much more helpful and very very good editor with my with my work. This looks like you both supported each other very much. Even when she died, she just just finished the book that as it came out shortly after that. Yeah, oh,

it was like an edited book. Right. There's a book about children of World War two, of children around the country and with their experiences had been in World Wars who went to away in Paris in Italy, you know, And so she had long interviews with these children and with the world and to them. Oh good, I'm really glad that came out. There was it was unclear in the book whether or not the person found the latest draft of it on the laptop or not. And I

was wondering about that. Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, this is how much I care. This is how much I was on the edge of my seat about that. You know, when you read these kinds of books, you know, you you feel like a certain kinship to people you know, like you and your wife. You know, you you let us into your life, you know. I guess that's the beauty of writing the kind of book you did it to'll live forever? Right, Yeah, sorry, go on, Well, I love I loved writing, and I after a while, I

never went very long without it, you know. And and it's an interesting aspect of my life right now. Can I go into that a little bit? Oh, I'd love to hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, about a year after, about the time that Roland got sick, I was very much aware of a memory of operation, you know, just like my having seen you once before. But remember it's a little about it. The implicit part of the feelings

I have for these people are there. So my memory was my memory was definitely getting into difficulty, and I decided I really didn't want to continue doing ongoing therapy. Then I just couldn't trust my memory to remember what happened earlier on, I decided to try something else that. I decided to do a single session consultation, uh, because I felt I could do that well. I've done a few of them, and I thought that I didn't have a real knack at doing that, so I put it

to put a notice up on my Facebook page. I heard the real on my Facebook page, you use it very much. But I put a notice up saying that I was offering these consultations single session consultations. Within forty eight hours, I had about five hundred letters by email. And I have never stopped, you know, every day at fifty a day, so I'm still scheduled up every day of the week to see one consultation. And I began

seeing these patients. I love doing that, and every i'd say five ten patients that I saw, a story began to emerge, a story that I thought would be very interesting for beginning therapists to teach them some fundamental aspect of therapy. So I've been doing that ever since Marylyn died and I'm just right now at book length. But I can't bear the idea of stopping, because what am I going to do if I'm not writing that's I

just feel absolutely lost at that. I think, continue for a while and see maybe maybe take out some of the weaker ones. So that's that's been my life project since my wife died. That's that's great. I can't I can't wait to read that one as well. So are you seeing new You're not seeing new patients? Correct, you've retired. Well, I see a patient every day, a new patient every

day except for one session. But you you write in your book that there was a moment where I thought you said you decided you were you're going to retire, when that that woman came to your house and she said that she didn't so you. But so you didn't retireing therapy. But I started doing these single sessions. Gotcha? Gotcha? Well, I'm glad. I'm glad, Like I want to be consulted. I want a consultation by you. That's wonderful. I mean,

what what advice do you have? You know? Just think, just think that you have hundreds of young psychotherapists listening to this podcast right now. I mean, what words of wisdom can you give everyone? Well, one of the first things I will say to them is I've always said to my students, one of the most important parts of your training is getting into therapy. I'm perfectly maybe getting into therapy more than once. I take that very seriously.

I see a lot of people in these consultations who are therapists who have not been in therapy, and I will lean on them very heavily to do that find to find a therapist for them. Also, I think it's very important to be in group therapy. You learn a whole different set ideas and skills in group therapy, so I urge them to be in in in therapy groups as well. And there are a good number of I started.

I didn't start. A couple of us started a therapy group of other therapists, no leader, but that group went on for like thirty five years. I stopped it just recently. That's not for me. Recently, when my wife died, I didn't want to continue. But I was in that group. It was quite a wonderful group. It met for our and a half I think we made every other week for all those years. Tendance was fantastic and it was

quite supportive. And now there are a number of groups for therapists around the country and there's somebody just a man named Weinberg just wrote a book about that, and I've put him many times because he knows of lots of other groups for therapists around around the country. So I will try to get patients to therapists who are who are patients to try and get into that group. You learn a lot of different things about yourself and

a therapy group that you might not learn. And also started a group in China many years ago, and so there's been a Yo I'm Chinese therapy institute there and group. The man who's president of the American Group Therapy Association, his name is Molon Mush, a Canadian characterist. He's been going over there China once a year. And a very good psychologist named with Ellen Josselton, a very good psychotherapist in Baltimore, has been going there too. So that's another

institute that have had to me to do with cool. Well, thank you for giving advice to young people in the field. What is the best advice you found in your whole career on how to overcome the terror of death and fight against that despair? I mean, you've tried so many different methods. You'veritten about so many different methods. Is do you have like a favorite I have to repeat myself is trying to live a life without regret. Yeh. Try to be kind to everyone. It's very It's part of me.

It has been for a long time. Uh. You know, to to try to be helpful behind each person I talked to each of these consultations. I get very involved with what they're saying. Do whatever I can to be helpful to them. Ah. It may be things. If I feel like it, I feel they're gonna be a good therapist, I certainly will tell them that, uh and say that to them. So that's that's important to me. Do you have any regrets, any major regrets in your life. I don't think so. I don't. I don't think so amazing.

I think that I think I did the best I could. I think I always wanted to go to a better school, but where I came from. You know, I was lucky to get into GW at that point, and I was lucky to get into medical school since only five percent of the students could get into there, which meant that I had to get old a's and I just studied my head off, so they had to take me into their own own school. And I was in such a rush that I never had a fourth year of college.

I took a third year of college. That's a regret. I would have liked to take another fourth year album and play a lot of philosophy courses wish I had, But I was in such a rush. That was the what the rush was about was to capture Maryland before she got away. He was going after Wellesley, was going out with Harvard kids. And that was that's the reason I had to transfer upt to people. I love it well.

So then then no regrets to then no regrets to Oh boy, you have children who are retired themselves now right, and you have grandchildren? Do you do you what? What sort of advice do you have to your grandchildren about how to live their life as regret free as you have? Well? I loved I loved my grandchildren's free when they were quite younger. And they're they're caught in San Diego. They live there. The mother's a surgeon, uh and the father uh as my youngest son. The grandchildren up here are

are just flourishing. They're doing quite well. One of them is uh, my daughter who's O B G y N has a has a daughter who's an ob G y N resident and has another who's in high tech. And my my son's son up here has UH. He has he has a son who who's also in in high tech. And my son has a Japanese UH daughter who's getting out of PhD in Simson Research in University of Chicago. Now, so the grandchildren are are are often they're really going

just fine, beautiful, you're you. You've a you have something in your heart right, you have a like a metal not what do you have? You have a peacemaker? What do you have? It's right hand me pay my two fingers. I feel it all the time. It always makes me aware of mortality. But it's been behaving quite well. Mhm. You could you could go another ten years? I mean inten you you know, like why not twenty years? No, I'm not enjoying life as much as I have in

the past. I know, not so much because of this part of me, but because I have terrible problems with my balance. Happened a couple of years ago after some surgery I had on my knee and I must have had a little bleed in my brain. But I have to use a walker to walk with and it's it's my balance is quite terrible. So that's that's the part of life. I don't enjoy much. Watching tennis at Wimbledon stirred up a lot of longing because I used to love to play tennis. Well, you've said that in your book.

You say you're you're you're quite serene about death. You don't, Yeah, is that where you're at right now? You don't. You don't fear it like you used to in your youth. No, I don't. I think I may have written in the book this this thing that, Well, for one thing, I don't fear it, and the second thing is I'm not enjoying life a great deal. So those two things go together.

But what I what I just say the other minute ago, I was going to tell you something about, Oh, I was going to tell you something about there are times that I was saying to Maryland and Maryland. My wife did a book on cemeteries in the United States, unusual cemeteries. She had my son, who was a photographer across the country. So I said to around a year or two ago, you know, maybe we should be buried in the same casket.

I would like that, but we would never be separated, and she she's she's traveled around the country going to all these cemeteries. She can assure me there's no such thing as a casket for two people. But I will be buried next to her. But every once in a while, when I think of death and I think of Marylin, the thought comes to my mind. I don't I don't produce it. It just comes to my mind. Oh, I'll

be joining Marylyn. I'll be joining Maryland. And unbelieving it's unbelievable to me, but I suddenly feel a sort of a wave of comfort inside. It feels comfortable, and I feel warm and kindly at that point, even though even though my my brain, my intellc tells me this is totally absurd. I'm not gonna be joining Marylyn. Maryland doesn't exist any longer, you know, she simply bones at this point,

and how could I possibly be. But even so, it helps me understand so clearly what religions have had to offer to mankinds at the beginning of time. You know, there's some sense that we won't vanish, that will somehow will continue, We'll continue in some sort of after exist. And as part of my brain this simplicit part of my brain that buys into that. I guess and I

get comforted when I think of world. Well, you never know, You never know in what capacity your consciousness and her consciousness will still will you know, don't don't count it out as all I'm saying. Oh man, I'll end here. I'll end on a quote you said. For many years, I've been convinced that there's a positive correlation between death anxiety and the sense of unlived life. In other words, the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

It seems to me like you've really lived a extremely full, full and rich life with very few regrets. She want to thank you so much for making such an incredible impact on so many of us in the field and for me personally in It was a real honor to chat with you today. Thank you for this really lively conversation we've had. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Thanks for

listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.