Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.‘*
— Virgil
I was deeply saddened to learn that Victor Yalom had died by suicide after a long struggle with mental illness.
Why does news like this affect us so deeply?
Perhaps because, somewhere inside us, we still imagine that those who dedicate their lives to understanding suffering should somehow be protected from it. We know, intellectually, that this cannot be true. Yet emotionally, we continue to hope that wisdom offers immunity. It does not. A psychiatrist can become depressed. A psychologist can lose hope. A therapist can experience unbearable despair. Knowledge changes many things. It does not change our humanity.
Victor Yalom’s death led me to revisit an idea that has accompanied psychotherapy since its earliest days, the image of the wounded healer. Carl Jung borrowed the metaphor from the Greek myth of Chiron, the healer who carried a wound that never fully healed. For decades, many dismissed the metaphor as little more than poetic symbolism.
Yet the research tells an interesting story. Studies suggest that many people who become therapists have encountered psychological suffering long before they ever entered a consulting room. Some grew up in families marked by trauma, addiction, emotional neglect, or mental illness. Others have lived through depression, anxiety, grief, or profound loss themselves. Many have sought psychotherapy not only as part of their training, but because they genuinely needed it.
Of course, not every therapist fits this picture. Many are drawn to psychology by intellectual curiosity, compassion, or a fascination with the human mind. But the wounded healer, it seems, is not merely a beautiful metaphor. Perhaps people who have stood close to suffering sometimes develop a particular sensitivity to it. They recognize loneliness because they have known loneliness. They notice fear because they have lived with fear. They can sit quietly beside another person’s despair because, at some point in their own lives, despair was no longer an abstraction.
Yet there is another side to this truth. The wounds that deepen our compassion do not always disappear. Sometimes they remain silent for years. Sometimes they return. Sometimes they become heavier than anyone around us realizes.
Victor Yalom’s death reminded me that therapists do not stand outside the human condition. We stand inside it. Every day we accompany people through grief, trauma, panic, loss, shame, and hopelessness. We witness extraordinary resilience. We also witness unbearable pain.
The remarkable privilege of our profession is not that we are stronger than those who seek our help. It is that we are willing to meet them in a place we know something about. Perhaps that is why Victor Yalom’s death has affected us. It was a painful reminder that the people who spend their lives holding hope for others sometimes struggle to hold it for themselves.
In the end, his story has reminded me of something both heartbreaking and strangely comforting. Therapists are not immune to the human condition. We simply choose to spend our lives sitting beside pain, listening to it, making sense of it, and, whenever possible, helping others carry it. Most days, that journey brings healing and hope. Sometimes, however, it asks of the healer more than the world will ever know.
* “There are tears in the nature of things, and mortal sorrows touch the heart.” (Aeneid, Book I, line 462).
References
Dickeson, E. (2017). The prevalence and implications of wounded healers: A systematic review of the literature. (Systematic review examining childhood adversity, personal suffering, and the “wounded healer” phenomenon among helping professionals.)
Orlinsky, D. E., Schofield, M. J., Schroder, T., & Kazantzis, N. (2011). Utilization of personal therapy by psychotherapists: A practice-friendly review and a new study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 67(8), 828–842.
