We humans appear to be meaning-seeking creatures that have the misfortune to be thrown into a world devoid of intrinsic meaning. One of our major life tasks is to invent a purpose in life sturdy enough to support a life. And then next we have to perform the tricky maneuver of subsequently denying personal authorship of this purpose so as to conclude that we “discovered” it – that it was “out there” waiting for us.

Irvin D. Yalom “wrote the book” on Existential Psychotherapy and has further shared his experience and insights with such books as Love's Executioner, a collection of clinical accounts that charts the life of the soul much as Oliver Sacks has done for the mind.

I have found that four givens are particularly relevant to psychotherapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.

This speech is a condensation of his perspective. It appears to be an unedited draft; I have taken the liberty of cleaning up some obvious typos and creating a PDF version.