Irvin Yalom || Existential Psychotherapy

[Music] Today, it's great to have Irvin D. Yalom on the podcast. Yalom is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of many internationally best-selling books, including *Love's Executioner*, *The Gift of Therapy*, *Becoming Myself*, and *When Nietzsche Wept*.

He was the recipient of the 1974 Edward Strecker Award and the 1979 Foundations Fund Prize in Psychiatry. His textbooks *In-Patient Group Psychotherapy* and *Existential Psychotherapy* are classics and have influenced me personally, deeply. Dr Yalom lives in Palo Alto, California.

Hey, thank you so much for being on the Psychology Podcast today! You're very welcome. When I announced on Twitter that you were going to be on my podcast, everyone was freaking out.

This is such a delight; 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 a life, you know, I want to see how much I can capture that today. And you’re right; 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 was perilous.

Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood there and how you took refuge in books? Well, I—my father had a little grocery liquor store. He’d come over from Boston in Russia named Stealth, and I lived there for the first 14 years of my life.

There were no other white people there, except for a few store owners. The barber a few doors down was white; he always greeted me, "Hey, boy," every morning. I had to walk several blocks to my school; I was just on the edge of the school.

So I biked or walked to school. I played with some of the Black children in the neighborhood, but my parents wouldn’t let me bring them into the house. I spent a lot of time in the library; I went there weekly and took home all the books I was permitted—maybe six or eight; I don’t remember.

I did a lot of reading at that time. My parents were hard workers; they were in the store from eight in the morning to eight at night, midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, so they had a very hard life. That’s where I grew up.

At 14, my mother decided that she wanted a better home; she went out and bought a home. My father never even saw it until he got there, and we moved into a nicer section of town, where I met my wife at the age of 14. Yeah, so you were in the chess club, right?

You were a big nerd in school, is that right? Right. The only thing I did with my parents that I really enjoyed and loved was Sunday mornings playing chess with my father.

He was a pretty good chess player, and I did that every Sunday. That was a real treat for me. When I got to high school, there was a chess team playing out of the high school, so I was a member of that team for three years and played the last year and a half or so as the first board.

Right. And around 14 or 15, I mean, you described yourself as a bit of a shy kid, but you said when you met your wife at a party, something came over you, like you were extroverted all of a sudden or something. Can you kind of tell me about that?

Well, I met someone—one of the bowling alley bums there—but I enjoyed gambling with him and playing bowling. He said, "There’s a party over at Maryland Koenig’s house afterward; would you 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 was a huge mob of children trying to get in the front door. He said, "Let’s go in through the window. " So he opened the window, and I crawled through.

The house was very crowded, but I saw Marilyn across the room. I thought she was very beautiful; she was tiny, under five feet tall, and never weighed more than a hundred pounds. I went up to her and told her I just crawled through her window.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I got her phone number, and we had my first date. It was something called the Hot Shoppes in Washington, and I did it two later.

Over our hot fudge sundae, she told me that she had not been to school that day; she skipped school. I said, "You skipped school? How could you do that?

" What I really liked about her was that she was so much in love with books, like me. She said she read going out the window and that it kept her up all night long, and she was too sick to go to school. I think I was absolutely floored by this, someone who loved books as much as I did.

I never let go of her after that. You were married for more than 65 years? That’s right, yes.

For 65 years, I married, um. . .

[Music] Let's see, I was in medical school. So, yeah, at least 65 years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that’s rare.

I went to medical school at George Washington; she went to Wellesley. I had heard—I looked into it—there was an open spot at Boston University Medical School. You usually do not transfer medical schools, but I heard there was an extra spot, and they accepted me at Boston University too, so I could be here in Maryland.

And so that’s why I had one year in GW and three years at BU. Ah, I didn't know those details. So you were also, you know, at a very young age, I guess death was something that you saw up close, right?

Both your parents' deaths—you were present at both of them, is that right? And they were quite unexpected. Yeah, so I was present at both my parents' deaths, that’s right.

I was present also at my father's severe coronary when I was a teenager, and we all had to wait until the middle of the night for a physician to come—Dr Manchester. He was very nice to me; he rubbed my hair, took care of my father, relieved some of his pain. My father lived 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. I’d like to give to someone else 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 these preoccupations concern you as a child? Like, when did they really start coming to the fore in your consciousness—preoccupations about death? Not for some period of time.

No, I wasn’t aware of that very much at that time, although I was with my father when he died. But no, it was later on in life that I had a lot of concerns about that. Roughly when in your career did you pivot to, you know—I'm trying to see the origin story of the founding of this existential psychotherapy field that you have contributed to so much.

You know, what were some of the reasons for your interest in those issues? Well, personally, I was a massive reader, and I read everything I could find. At that point, when I started my residency at Johns Hopkins, I think that was when I ran into Rollo May’s book on existence—"Existence.

" I have that on my shelf somewhere. Yeah, and I read that from cover to cover, and I was absolutely persuaded 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; I took nothing but pre-med.

So, as a first-year resident, I enrolled in a basic philosophy course at GW, and I went three days a week to introduce myself to philosophy. That was my real beginning with that. And then coincidentally, Rollo May moved to California, and you were able to get psychotherapy with him, right?

Well, what happened was that I got drafted. Every MD had to sign a statement saying that if you wanted to go to medical school, you had to sign a statement saying you would go into the service afterwards. So, I went for two years.

The army sent me, and at first, I was going to Germany. Then, at the last moment, a spot opened up in Hawaii that they needed someone for. So that was a great blessing for me.

I went to Hawaii then, and after that, I had planned to go back to Washington. But my wife leaned on me pretty heavily. Both of us wanted to stay; Hawaii was lovely, and San Francisco was as close as we could get to Hawaii.

So, I applied for positions at UCSF and Stanford. I went to Stanford first, and I liked that so much, I 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, but I never took that trip because I got a very good position at Stanford. When I was at Stanford, I had a tremendous amount of freedom; I could do what I wanted to do. I began developing an interest in group therapy.

One time, I saw a woman there who had metastatic breast cancer. She came to see me and asked if I could lead a group of patients like her, and I found her very persuasive, and I did. I led this group for many years.

Everyone in the group died; new members came into the group and died. But eventually, it stirred up a lot of death anxiety for me as a young resident to be seeing this much death. 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 for perhaps about a year. Half, I think I was helped by that.

Afterwards, I became close friends with him—uh, 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 22 years older than I was when he was facing these issues for farming long before I did. So, that was my first contact. I started doing other groups to breed people also during that time—other groups, all sorts of different groups—then eventually started writing a textbook about group therapy.

Well, you know the theory and practice of group psychotherapy is the classic. Why do you think that book did so well? Um, I don't know.

I spent a lot of time with a pretty good writer. I wrote it six different times. I tried to get a lot of stories in there, and stories are a lot there.

Maybe it was the stories that… But the last edition was that I did with a co-leader, Kotharp, and they know Mullen, unless she's the president of the group therapy association here now. But it was about like 850 pages and a couple of thousand references. It's a backbreaking task to do that six times, although he did a lot of the hard work—the heavy lifting—this last time.

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That's patreon. com/psychpodcast. Well, you have said— I have a quote from you here—you 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 Executioners," which was an international bestseller and had really riveting stories about your therapy practice? Like, why did you decide to write that book? Well, I don’t remember—I don’t remember how I started doing that, I wish I had.

[Music] Undoubtedly, I wrote it when I was on sabbatical. I took advantage of every possible opportunity. We went to some far-off places.

Once, we went to the Tavistock Clinic when I was writing the group therapy book. I went there because of the group program. Other times, I went to desert islands.

I like to do underwater scuba diving and spear fishing. So, Marilyn, my wife, she was a francophile. I got her PhD in French and German literature, so she always chose to go to Paris half the year.

So, we’d split the year: half in Paris, half on a desert island. So, let's talk a little bit about this chestnut. You remember that one?

[Music] You're talking here about four givens of human existence: freedom, isolation, meaninglessness, and death. Um, do you mind just… wow, Copper, 1980? So, I was born one year before this came out, 1979.

Um, could you go through the four? 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 a long time ago.

Everybody's dealing with death; everyone’s thinking about it. Everyone's frightened of it. I have worked with a lot of people with death anxiety.

Um, and that's the one that I started with. And I had my own experience with it—when you think of my daughter's anxiety and leading all these groups, I'm seeing so many patients die. Um, my father died, my mother, and 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, there’s been an enormous number of people. I'm doing these single-session consultations, and a significant number of them have to do with people who are loaded up with death anxiety.

A 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 and the amount of regrets you have about the way you've lived your life. And the people that I see… Very often, those who are weighed down with death anxiety have a lot of regrets about what they've done and what they've not done with their life. There seems to be a relationship, so I often look at that very much and examine what's stopping them, even now, from trying to do what they really wanted to do in life.

I think that's certainly been very true for me. The time I faced death the most was when my wife died right in front of me, and I've been in grief about her death ever since—it's been the last year and a half. But I know that one of the things I did after my wife died was lie down in my bedroom.

I looked at all the books on my bookshelf—all the books I'd written—and began reading them for the first time, one by one. Every single one of them. It was very, very good therapy for me.

I was very pleased with those books and took a lot of pride in them. You—this is one you were reading, right? Yes, I was certainly staring at the sun.

Very good. But it's a motif, though. A lot of the books are stories as well.

In fact, I came across one story—almost to my surprise. I looked at a story called "Mama and the Meaning of Life" and started to read that. To my shock, I came across a story—maybe the second or third story—which was "Eight Advanced Lessons in the Therapy of Grief.

" I had absolutely forgotten that I had written that story, and I read it with tremendous interest. It was a story about a very angry Stanford professor whose husband had died, and before that, long before that, her brother had died too. We did a lot of arguing.

She'd sit there and say, "Oh, you're sitting there in that nice pink-striped shirt of yours, and nothing ever happens to you. You know, you don't know what I'm feeling. " I might argue with her and say, "Oh, I have to be depressed to work with the depressed patient—to understand the schizophrenic, to work with the schizophrenic.

" So we'd be almost yelling at each other after a while. But she got better. It 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, 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 the loss of the absolute center of my vitality.

So that was very, very helpful to me. I'm rambling here. Where were we?

Let me go back to where you were with your questions: What are the four givens of human existence? You know, you were talking about death—you started with death. If you get your violin going about death, you can go a long time on that topic.

The idea of the meaning of life interests me quite a bit. I had some time teaching at Stanford in Indiana, and I met Viktor Frankl. I had a very, very long and strong encounter with Viktor Frankl, and I was very interested in his book about the meaning of life.

He was a tortured soul. He had gone through something so awful, and he was struggling all the time to recover and to make himself well-known—not to Stanford. He did some lectures in my department, but he never felt very strong about himself.

He always doubted himself greatly, and he was tortured to the end—someone who had lived through that horrific experience. Let's see, who else? I'm just curious.

You know, the other humanistic psychology legends—who else did you cross paths with? Did you ever meet Carl Rogers? Oh yes, I met Carl Rogers and spent some time with him down in Southern California.

I liked Carl Rogers very much—a fine man. Maybe a little too much wine sometimes, but a very fun man. I admired him terribly.

I also met John Bowlby; we switched offices when I went to Haverstock. He came to the U. S.

, and I had some overlap time with him. He was a fine man, and Anna Freud was just down the street, so I attended almost weekly her seminars and got to know her a little bit. She was an amazing, amazing lady.

Roger—yeah, okay. Did you ever meet Karen Horney? No, I would have liked to have known her.

Me too. I liked her work very much. I think the two people I read with the most interest during my residency training were Karen Horney and—oh, who else?

My memory is fading. Harry Stack Sullivan was very important to me. He's a terrible writer, but what he had to say was important.

He and Karen Horney both introduced me to the interpersonal model, which is so absolutely crucial when you're doing group therapy and you're working hard on how these eight people in this group are relating to one another. So, group therapy really is. .

. An interpersonal kind of approach to therapy, so I think these are the—there's also a teacher that's, uh, who's told stories at Hopkins, and I love listening to the story. But I don't think I'm going to get this until the next half hour.

No problem! Hey, did you ever meet Abraham Maslow? No, no, I never did.

You would have liked him, right? Did you like his work? Did it influence you at all?

Uh, he didn't bring him—he was not one of my favorite writers, but I did like his work, and I read it, but I didn't re-read it, and I don't remember too much from it now. [Music] Well, he wasn't a clinical psychologist—I don't think he ever did clinical work—but, you know, the ideas of self-actualization obviously were big in the sixties. Yeah, I had a good chairman at Hopkins when I was a resident named John Whitehorn, and another man that influenced me a great deal was Jerome Frank.

Uh, Jerome Frank was a wonderful person. He certainly introduced me to group therapy and had written a book about therapy early on, so I consider him my mentor in group therapy. My residents all watched his group for the first three or four weeks of their residency, but I found it so interesting that I watched him for several months, and he invited me to come in and co-lead the group with him, so I consider him my group therapy teacher.

Yeah, beautiful! So those are the people in the field I've known very well. So, death, meaninglessness, um, then isolation.

You talk about existential isolation. Can you just talk a little about, um, what—what is existential isolation? Well, you know, I've never used that term in later years.

Tell me what I wrote about it so long ago. You made a distinction between having loneliness—the kind of loneliness that you have from a partner, you know, or not having a lot of partners around—but existential can also be feeling estranged from yourself, you know, like being, uh, not really in touch with your existence. Yeah, yeah, yes, I take that one very seriously too.

Um, and Rollo May was my favorite discussant about these issues. He is a fine man. I mean, he's one of my heroes.

I put him up there with you in terms of my heroes. Um, you were there at Rollo May's deathbed? I mean, that's incredible.

What was—what did he say? What were his, like, last words? I mean, like, what was he—what kind of state was he?

There was a lot of death anxiety. He wasn't speaking when I was there. He was in a coma.

I was with his wife, Georgia, and he had had a—he looked like he had a severe CVA and, um, didn't speak. I did my best to help Georgia get through this. She's still alive and is in a residential establishment for the elderly in Palo Alto, very, very near me.

I've seen her from time to time. Do you remember your last conversation with Rollo? Do you remember one of your last conversations with him, what you guys talked about?

Yeah, too long ago. Fair enough, I don't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so look, it's okay. No worries.

Um, the other—I just think it's—I mean, you have to understand from my perspective: like, Rollo May is my hero. To hear about you two talking to me is a big deal, so I'm like, give me gossip! Of course!

I do know that when I did something with Rollo May, that when I saw him, I taped the sessions. Wow! And I 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—and the next week on my way there, I listened to the tape of a previous session. I thought that was a wonderful way to use therapy because it really made it almost a continuous process. I love that!

I've asked patients to do that too, and I had all the tapes in a, uh, in my studio. Then, I went away to London or went away somewhere for a year sabbatical, came back, and somebody was doing some revision work, but I'd asked him. The tapes were gone, so they were all—I lost them.

So, she's trying to steal them? I don't know! Wow!

They ended up in the dump—who knows? Maybe. Anyway, that is really truly incredible.

Um, so yeah, I mean, I read 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—fresh in my mind, and that one I can talk about.

No, that’s your—that’s your latest, um— Yeah, I know! It is profoundly touching. I mean, it's hard to read that book and not feel what you were feeling, and, um, you know, keeping, like, the tissues by my side as I'm reading your book.

I can't even imagine what it was like to go through it. Um, you and Marilyn, you had such a special, special relationship 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, who she was. Well, she was this little girl who I crawled through the window of her house.

She was, uh, very, very bright; she was always part of every class she was in. She, um, early on got interested—we went to the same junior high school. She got very interested in French studies; she spoke very, very good French.

When she ran the school newspaper, um, again, valedictorian of her high school class too. [Music] She got a scholarship to go to Wellesley in French studies, so she majored in French studies and German studies, and got her PhD in comparative literature, French and German literature, at Hopkins. All this done with a husband who, as she said many times, mispronounced every French word that ever came his way.

I could not—I made the language very important for me during those days to get all A's in college so I could get into medical school. There was a very strong five percent quota for Jewish boys to get into medical school, so I had to get all these. The only B I ever got in college was in German.

I remember that, so I used to sing opera in German back in college. But anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, 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 a psychiatrist in the Army. She had a teaching job at the University of Hawaii for two years, teaching French. When I came to Stanford, she was told they don't take back faculty wives.

So she got a job teaching French at California State University at Hayward, and then they opened up a women's center a few years later, and she came over to take over the women's center there. [Music] So, um, she was a little dissatisfied that she couldn't continue her German and her French, but she was very interested in feminist studies as well, and she did that till the end of her life and enjoyed that a great deal. Eventually, she started to write—not as soon as I did.

Once, I won a fellowship to Bellagio; it was a Rockefeller fellowship, and what they did was they gave American scholars to scholars from other countries as well, and it would give me a place for my family to live, an apartment and then a separate writing studio. So, all those writers had this writing studio, I think it was two months or so. And Marilyn 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.

She was telling me about that, and she was really interested in it, and I said to her, “You know, you might have a book in that. ” And she got even more excited about that. So we went down to the main office to see if there might be an extra writing studio that she could have as well.

No writer's wife ever had a studio there, so we were informed of that by the secretary there: "No writers' wives don't get the studios. " But just then, the head of Bellagio walked in, and they said, "Wait a minute, you know, there is a tree house just in the woods, 10 minutes into the woods. " We took a walk outside, and there's a huge tree with a little ladder going up it and a very nice studio there.

So she stayed the whole two months, hardly came down, and that started her first book. After that one, she matched me book for book. She and I were always writing books, with her being much more helpful and a very, very good editor with my work.

This looks like you both supported each other very much. Even when she died, she had just finished the book that came out shortly after that. Yeah, oh, it was like an edited book, right?

It was a book about children of World War II—children around the country and what their experiences have been in World War II; one in Norway, one in Paris, one in Italy. You know, she had long interviews with these children and what the war had meant 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, 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 that when you read these kinds of books, you feel a certain kinship to people, you know, like you and your wife. You let us into your life, you know? I guess that's the beauty of writing the kind of book you did; it'll live forever, right?

Yeah, um, right. Yeah, sorry, go on. Well, I loved writing, and after a while, I never went very long without it, you know?

And it's an interesting aspect of my life right now. Um, can I go into that a little bit? Oh, I'd love to.

to hear that. Yeah, yeah, well, about a year after about the time that Marilyn got sick, I was very much aware of a memory of operation, you know, just like my having seen you once before but remembering so little about it—the implicit part of it, the feelings I have towards these people in there. So my memory was, uh, 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 had happened earlier on. But I decided to try something else, and I decided to do a single session consultation because I felt I could do that well. I had done a few of them, and I thought that I did have a real knack for doing that.

So I put a notice up on my Facebook page. I hardly ever go to my Facebook page or use it very much, but I put a notice up saying that I was offering these consultations—single session consultations—and within 48 hours, I had about 500 letters, uh, emails, and they have never stopped, you know, every day at 40, 50 a day. So I'm still scheduled up every day of the week to see one consultation, and I began seeing these patients, and I love doing that.

And every, I'd say, five to 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 aspects of therapy. So I've been doing that ever since Marilyn 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? I just feel absolutely lost at that, so I think I'll continue for a while and see, maybe take out some of the weaker ones.

So that's been my life project since my wife died. That's great; I can't wait to read that one as well. So are you seeing—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 write in your book that there was a moment where I thought you said you decided you were going to retire when that woman came to your house and she said that she didn't, right?

So you didn't retire from ongoing therapy, but I started doing these single session consultations. Gotcha, gotcha. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad you're—like, I want to be consulted; I want a consultation from you.

Um, that's wonderful. I mean, what advice do you have? You know, 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. And, preferably, 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 and to find a therapist for them. Also, I think it's very important to be in group therapy; you learn a whole different set of ideas and skills in group therapy.

So I urge them to be in therapy groups as well. Um, and there are a good number of— I didn't start; a couple of us started a therapy group of other therapists—there's no leader—but that group went on for like 35 years. I stopped it just recently—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 matched her hour and a half; I think we met every other week for all those years.

Attendance was fantastic and it was quite supportive. And now there are a number of groups for therapists around the country. There’s somebody, just a man named Weinberg, who just wrote a book about that, and I’ve threatened him many times because he knows of lots of other groups for therapists around the country.

So I will try to get patients to—therapists who are patients—to try and get into that group. You learn a lot of different things about yourself in a therapy group that you might not learn in individual therapy. I also started a group in China many years ago, and so there’s been a Yalum Chinese therapy institute there.

And the group—the man who’s president of the American Group Therapy Association—his name is Molon Lesh, a Canadian psychiatrist. He's been going over to China once a year, and a very good psychologist named Ruth Ellen Jesselson, a very good psychotherapist in Baltimore, has been going there too. So that's another institute that I've had something 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've written about so many different methods. Do you have like a favorite? I’m going to have to repeat myself: try to live a life without regrets; 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 try to be helpful and kind to each person I talk to. Each of these consultations, uh, I get very involved with what they're saying and do whatever I can to be helpful to them. Uh, it may be things—if I feel like it, I feel they're going to be a good therapist—I certainly will tell them that and say that to them.

So, so that's important to me. Do you have any regrets? Any major regrets in your life?

I don't think so. I don't think so. Amazing!

I think that I did the best that 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, uh, at that point. And I was lucky to get into medical school since only five percent of the students could get in there, which meant that I had to get all A's.

I just studied my head off so they had to take me into their 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 off and take a lot of philosophy courses, which I had, but I was in such a rush. That was what the rush was about—was to capture Marilyn before she got away. Yeah, she was going up to Wellesley, was going out with Harvard kids, and that was driving me.

That's the reason that I had to transfer up to BU. [Laughter] I love it. Well, so then, no regrets?

Then, no regrets? Oh boy! You have children who are retired themselves now, right?

And you have grandchildren. What sort of advice do you have for your grandchildren about how to live their life as um, regret-free as you have? Well, I loved my grandchildren.

Three of them, they were quite young, and they're caught in San Diego. They've been there; the mother’s a surgeon, and the father is my youngest son. The grandchildren up here are just flourishing.

They're doing quite well. One of them is—my daughter, who’s an OB-GYN, has a daughter who's an OB-GYN resident and has another who's in high tech. And my son's son up here has, um, he has a son who is also in high tech.

Um, and my son has a Japanese daughter who's getting a PhD in stem cell research at the University of Chicago now. So the grandchildren are often—they're really going just fine. Beautiful!

You're, um, you’ve a—you have something in your heart, right? You have a, like a metal—no, what do you have? You have a pacemaker?

What do you have? Okay, it's right here. I mean, you play my two fingers.

Uh, I feel it all the time. It always makes me aware of mortality, but it's been behaving quite well. [Music] You could, you could go another ten years.

I mean, ten—you know, like, why not? [Laughter] Twenty years! You know, I'm not enjoying life as much as I have in the past.

Not so much because of this part of me, but because I have terrible problems with my balance. Uh, it 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 my balance is quite terrible.

So that’s the part of life I don't enjoy much. Watching tennis in Wimbledon stirred up a lot of longing because I used to love to play tennis. Uh, well, you've said that in your book.

You say you're quite serene about death. You don't—you don't fear it like you used to in your youth? No, I don't fear it.

I think I may have written in the book 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. Um, but what would I—what did I just say? You, a minute ago, I was going to tell you something about—oh!

I was going to say something about there are times that I was saying to Marilyn. Marilyn, my wife, did a book on cemeteries in the United States, unusual cemeteries. She had my son, who's a photographer, travel across the country.

So I sit around a year or two ago, you know, maybe we should be buried in the same casket. I would like that; we would never be separated. And she said, she— instead 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, but my—I will be buried next to her. Uh, but every once in a while, when I think of death, and I think of Marilyn, the thought comes to my mind.

I don't produce it; it just comes to my mind. Oh, I'll be joining Marilyn. Well, I'll be joining Marilyn.

And I’m believing—it's unbelievable to me—but I suddenly feel a subtle wave of comfort inside. Uh, I—it feels comfortable, and I feel warm and kindly at that point. Even though— even though my brain, my intellect tells me this is totally absurd, I'm.

. . Not gonna be joining.

Marilyn Mellen doesn't exist any longer, you know. She's simply bones at this point. And how can I possibly be?

But even so, it helps me understand so clearly what religions have had to offer to mankind since the beginning of time. You know, there's some sort of sense that we won't vanish; that we'll somehow continue—will continue—in some sort of after-existence. And the end of this part of my brain, uh, this implicit part of my brain that buys into that, I guess, and I get comforted when I think of moral.

. . well, you never know.

You never know in what capacity your consciousness and her consciousness will still. . .

will—you know, don't count it out, is 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 an extremely full and rich life, with very few regrets. I want to thank you so much for making such an incredible impact on so many of us in the field and, for me personally, it was a real honor to chat with you today.

Thank you for this really lively conversation we've had. I appreciate it. Okay, thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.

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