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When Nietzsche Wept Irvin D Yalom 9780060748128 Books

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When Nietzsche Wept Irvin D Yalom 9780060748128 Books

Irvin Yalom is a psychiatrist with a deep interest in philosophy. In works of fiction and non-fiction he has tried to combine these two disciplines for the insights they may jointly offer to people. "When Nietzsche Wept" (1992) is probably Yalom's most successful novel. In his book, Yalom imagines a lengthy encounter between Josef Breuer (1842-1925), a Viennese physician who, among other accomplishments helped found psychoanalysis, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.(1844 -1900)

Yalom's story is subtitled "A Novel of Obsession". Both Nietzsche and Breuer are obsessed with a woman and with sexuality, as well as with their own loneliness, and their attempts to understand themselves and find meaning in their lives. The book is set in Vienna in 1882. Breuer, age 40, and highly successful has ended the doctor-patient relationship with a woman in her early twenties, Bertha O., with whom he has been sexually obsessed. Breuer has been using talk-therapy with Bertha, the first time this technique had been attempted. Breuer has been neglecting his wife, Mathilde, and their five children over his obsession with Bertha and with his heavy commitments to his medical practice and research.

While Breuer and Mathilde are on a brief holiday, Breuer is approached by the young, beautiful and highly self-willed Lou Salome who asks Breuer to help cure the suicidal tendencies of her friend and teacher Nietzsche. Nietzsche had, in fact, fallen in love with Salome, proposed to her, and been rejected. He is deeply despondent and, indeed, suicidal, and suffers from migraine headaches.

The first half of the book details how Breuer and Nietzsche make contact and shows their initial testy relationship. In the second part of the book, Breuer persuades a highly reluctant Nietzsche to enter a clinic for a short stay, where Breuer will attempt to cure Nietzsche's migraines and Nietzsche, in turn, will offer philosophical counseling to Breuer to try to help the physician understand his life, his obsession with Bertha, and his feelings about Mathilde.

In the course of their discussions, Breuer and Nietzsche gradually become friends and reveal some of their innermost feelings to each other. Both men share a deep skepticism towards religion, with Nietzsche famous for his aphorism, "God is dead". In Yalom's book, Nietzsche explains that the goal of his thought is to find meaning in live rather than nihilism or despair in the face of the denial of theism. In the course of the book, the reader learns a great deal about Nietzsche's thought, with portions of his imaginary conversations with Breuer taken extensively from his writings.

Through his conversations with Nietzsche, Breuer comes to learn something of his fear of dying and of purposelessness, and, with great strain, he frees himself of his obsession with Bertha. Nietzsche comes to understand Breuer, and he learns something of his relationship to Lou Salome. He recognizes more fully than he had done earlier the loneliness of his path in life, but he also recognizes his need for affection and friendship with others. Nietzsche, with this new understanding, determines to follow through with the course he has set himself. When the book concludes, Nietzsche is about to begin writing his masterwork, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

Yalom's book explores two difficult ideas of Nietzsche's: the doctrine of eternal recurrence and the, for Nietzsche, closely related injunction: "amor fati" -- to love one's fate or one's life. With moments of trepidation and some highly surprising twists in the story Breuer, and Nietzsche too, learn to love their respective lives.

Yalom's book is an imaginative creation of the birth of "talk therapy" and it shows the relationship between philosophical concerns and the concrete issues of individuals that are explored in psychotherapy. In addition to its portrayals of the two major characters, Yalom offers good portrayals of the young Sigmund Freud, a student and friend of Breuer, of Lou Salome, and of fictitious characters such as Breuer's long-suffering friend Max and Breuer's coachman, Fischmann.

Yalom has written a compelling philosophical novel about Nietzsche which helps show the impact Nietszche's thinking continues to exert on many readers. The book may encourage readers to explore Nietzsche's difficult thought for themselves. In its own right, Yalom's book may help people think in a new way about their lives and to work towards "amor fati" --- living one's life so that one may understand, shape, and embrace one's destiny.

Robin Friedman


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When Nietzsche Wept Irvin D Yalom 9780060748128 Books Reviews

Nietzsche demystified. Should you read this book? Yes, if you’re reading this review, because most likely, then, you’re interested in Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas’, psychology, and/or psychoanalysis. It is strong on each of those topics. It is an interpretation, pure speculation, but the larger ideas – the philosophy of Nietzsche, the benefits of friendship, and the benefits of talking honestly and openly with someone, what I call “fearless communication,” are legitimate. Nietzsche is often not understood, or misunderstood; but here is what I gleaned about the man’s ideas from Yalom’s novel.

1. God was invented by man (= humans.)
2. Religion is a dodge – a wrong path taken by weak minded people.
3. People benefit from their sicknesses and illnesses, always.
4. Altruism (helping others) is a power play that benefits the helper and weakens the helped – because it places the helped in debt to the helper, who then feels superior. Thus, it makes the helper feel good about him or herself, while robbing the helped the opportunity to become who they truly are. Nietzsche’s main point “Become who you are.”
5. Life is always a contest, i.e. a competition.
6. No pain, no gain.
7. No one embedded in a culture [social, say marriage; corporate, say any job; or institutional, say the police, military, and even academia] can choose freely.
8. A major problem is that people feel discomfort in the wrong thing.
9. Man is divided into two groups Those who wish for peace; and those who wish for truth. One must choose between comfort and true inquiry.
10. Confessions are for the confessors benefit, not the recipients.
11. Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness.
12. Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger.
13. Become who you are.
14. The cause of your sickness, or illness, is secret to the self.
15. Women are false saviors.
16. Consciousness [normal everyday] is only the translucent skin covering existence The trained eye can see through it—to primitive forces, instincts, to the very engine of the will to power. (see #5)
17. All motives spring from a single source – the drive to escape oblivion (= to be forgotten. To leave no clear trace that you were here.)
18. True Friendship is the joining together in the search for higher truths.
19. Your task is to die at the right time. ( = Be who you are and live as you should, by your own will. Consummate your life, and then you can ‘die at the right time’.)
20. Choose your life (= the way you live.) Don’t let it be assigned to you.
21. Time is a flat circle. You will live your life over and over again, an eternal recurrence, if you haven’t evolved to a place of freedom, wherein you actually choose and create your life. (= The Law of Attraction.)
22. Duty is a euphemism for using others for your own enlargement. (see# 4 &7, 17)

The plot/story is secondary to the revealing of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It posits that Freud might well have read Nietzsche, and together, with the intermediary, Breuer, they sort-of uncovered the unconscious, and the healing power of psychoanalysis. It, the plot, could have happened. In the end (of the story) Breuer and Nietzsche help each other understand their obsessions with what might be called ‘Phantom Lovers’; which is in itself intriguing. I loved this book.
Winter 2014
I have been remiss in writing reviews of Yalom’s books. I became a therapist in 1973 and soon after I read THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY, 1975 and not getting enough….then read EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY, 1980. Last fall at a therapy training, Yalom’s fiction was recommended to me and lickety-split I read THE SPINOZA PROBLEM, WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT, and THE SCHOPENHAUER CURE, each book better than the one before, but all of them splendid! I started with Spinoza because I’d always respected him for being true to himself and love historical fiction. Reading a Midrash (a story that fills in the gaps) of Spinoza’s life helped me realize that I too have a “Spinoza Problem” because I think I’ve become a therapist bereft of a “methodological” community having developed my own brand of psychotheray. WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT gave the juicy details of Breuer’s (Freud’s mentor) life and glimpses of a young Freud, not to mention an introduction to Nietzsche and his influence on psychology. It puzzles me that many therapists, thinking Freud is passé, have no interest in studying their roots and discovering that psychoanalysis is in our DNA. And finally—THE SCHOPENHAUER CURE. I did not have a clue who Schopenhauer was and I thank Yalom for his “philosophy for dummies” books. But, will someone please tell me if Yalom is familiar with the enneagram because Philip Slate is the prefect ennea-type 5 self-sufficient, avoids intrusions, observes rather than experiences, and seeks wisdom and skills. It helped me understand a significant other in my life—also a self-sufficient type. This last book, in its modern setting with flash-backs to the 1800s made me laugh, cry out loud, and is a candidate for the best book I ever read.
Irvin Yalom is a psychiatrist with a deep interest in philosophy. In works of fiction and non-fiction he has tried to combine these two disciplines for the insights they may jointly offer to people. "When Nietzsche Wept" (1992) is probably Yalom's most successful novel. In his book, Yalom imagines a lengthy encounter between Josef Breuer (1842-1925), a Viennese physician who, among other accomplishments helped found psychoanalysis, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.(1844 -1900)

Yalom's story is subtitled "A Novel of Obsession". Both Nietzsche and Breuer are obsessed with a woman and with sexuality, as well as with their own loneliness, and their attempts to understand themselves and find meaning in their lives. The book is set in Vienna in 1882. Breuer, age 40, and highly successful has ended the doctor-patient relationship with a woman in her early twenties, Bertha O., with whom he has been sexually obsessed. Breuer has been using talk-therapy with Bertha, the first time this technique had been attempted. Breuer has been neglecting his wife, Mathilde, and their five children over his obsession with Bertha and with his heavy commitments to his medical practice and research.

While Breuer and Mathilde are on a brief holiday, Breuer is approached by the young, beautiful and highly self-willed Lou Salome who asks Breuer to help cure the suicidal tendencies of her friend and teacher Nietzsche. Nietzsche had, in fact, fallen in love with Salome, proposed to her, and been rejected. He is deeply despondent and, indeed, suicidal, and suffers from migraine headaches.

The first half of the book details how Breuer and Nietzsche make contact and shows their initial testy relationship. In the second part of the book, Breuer persuades a highly reluctant Nietzsche to enter a clinic for a short stay, where Breuer will attempt to cure Nietzsche's migraines and Nietzsche, in turn, will offer philosophical counseling to Breuer to try to help the physician understand his life, his obsession with Bertha, and his feelings about Mathilde.

In the course of their discussions, Breuer and Nietzsche gradually become friends and reveal some of their innermost feelings to each other. Both men share a deep skepticism towards religion, with Nietzsche famous for his aphorism, "God is dead". In Yalom's book, Nietzsche explains that the goal of his thought is to find meaning in live rather than nihilism or despair in the face of the denial of theism. In the course of the book, the reader learns a great deal about Nietzsche's thought, with portions of his imaginary conversations with Breuer taken extensively from his writings.

Through his conversations with Nietzsche, Breuer comes to learn something of his fear of dying and of purposelessness, and, with great strain, he frees himself of his obsession with Bertha. Nietzsche comes to understand Breuer, and he learns something of his relationship to Lou Salome. He recognizes more fully than he had done earlier the loneliness of his path in life, but he also recognizes his need for affection and friendship with others. Nietzsche, with this new understanding, determines to follow through with the course he has set himself. When the book concludes, Nietzsche is about to begin writing his masterwork, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

Yalom's book explores two difficult ideas of Nietzsche's the doctrine of eternal recurrence and the, for Nietzsche, closely related injunction "amor fati" -- to love one's fate or one's life. With moments of trepidation and some highly surprising twists in the story Breuer, and Nietzsche too, learn to love their respective lives.

Yalom's book is an imaginative creation of the birth of "talk therapy" and it shows the relationship between philosophical concerns and the concrete issues of individuals that are explored in psychotherapy. In addition to its portrayals of the two major characters, Yalom offers good portrayals of the young Sigmund Freud, a student and friend of Breuer, of Lou Salome, and of fictitious characters such as Breuer's long-suffering friend Max and Breuer's coachman, Fischmann.

Yalom has written a compelling philosophical novel about Nietzsche which helps show the impact Nietszche's thinking continues to exert on many readers. The book may encourage readers to explore Nietzsche's difficult thought for themselves. In its own right, Yalom's book may help people think in a new way about their lives and to work towards "amor fati" --- living one's life so that one may understand, shape, and embrace one's destiny.

Robin Friedman