Is Irvin Yalom Still Alive? His Age, Health and Latest Work
Yes. Irvin D. Yalom was born on 13 June 1931 in Washington, D.C., and is 95 years old. He is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.
The question comes up often, partly because his most famous books are decades old and partly because he has written so openly about his own mortality that readers assume the worst. He has stopped seeing patients, but he has not stopped publishing — his most recent book appeared in 2024, written with his son.
- Born 13 June 1931 — he turned 95 in June 2026
- Emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford, no longer in practice
- Most recent book: Hour of the Heart (2024), with Benjamin Yalom
Yes. Irvin D. Yalom was born on 13 June 1931 and is 95 years old. He is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and no longer takes patients, but he has continued to publish — his most recent book, Hour of the Heart, appeared in 2024, co-written with his son Benjamin. His wife Marilyn Yalom died in 2019.
Start here: Hour of the Heart
Irvin D. Yalom & Benjamin Yalom · 2024 · 208 pages
Written in his nineties with his son Benjamin, this is the book that answers the question behind the question: not only is he alive, he was still working out new things about therapy at 93. Short sessions, ordinary people, and the moment when something actually shifts.
- The most recent Yalom, published 2024
- Short chapters, each a self-contained encounter
- Shows his method stripped down to essentials
- Benjamin Yalom’s involvement gives it a second perspective
- Assumes some familiarity with his earlier work
- Less theoretical scaffolding than The Gift of Therapy
- The single-session format limits how deep any one case goes
Facts here were checked against Stanford’s faculty profile and his own biography page on 18 September 2026. Because this is a page about a living person, treat anything you read elsewhere without a date on it with caution — a great deal of outdated material about Yalom circulates online.
Side by side
Picking the right entry point
Undated pages about a 95-year-old author are worth nothing. Several aggregator sites still describe him as actively practising.
He stopped taking new patients years before he stopped writing. The two events are often reported as one.
Marilyn Yalom, his wife, died in 2019. Search results conflate the two names frequently.
Becoming Myself answers most biographical questions in his own words and settles the ones the internet gets wrong.
How old is Irvin Yalom?
He was born on 13 June 1931, which makes him 95 as of September 2026. He remains emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, a title he has held since retiring from the faculty.
Is Irvin Yalom still practising therapy?
No. He continued seeing patients well into his eighties, latterly by video call, and has since stopped taking clients. He has continued to publish — Hour of the Heart appeared in 2024.
What was Irvin Yalom's most recent book?
Hour of the Heart: Connecting in the Here and Now, published in 2024 and co-written with his son Benjamin Yalom. It collects single-session therapeutic encounters.
When did Marilyn Yalom die?
Marilyn Yalom, his wife of 65 years and a literary scholar and author, died in 2019 of multiple myeloma. A Matter of Death and Life, which they wrote together during her illness, was published in 2021.
The short answer
- Born 13 June 1931, currently 95
- Emeritus at Stanford; no longer seeing patients
- Latest book: Hour of the Heart, 2024
Irvin Yalom is alive, 95 years old, and retired from clinical practice but not from writing. If the question brought you here because you wanted to know whether there is anything new to read, the answer is yes — Hour of the Heart came out in 2024.