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When Nietzsche Wept is a 1992 novel by Irvin D. Yalom.
The novel starts with Dr. Josef Breuer, sitting in a cafe in Venice, Italy waiting for Lou Salomé, who was involved with Friedrich Nietzsche.
She has written a letter stating that the future of the philosophy of Germany is at stake and that the German philosopher needs help desperately.
The plot develops into a therapy where Breuer needs to have his soul treated, i.e. to help him get over a patient who he t
When Nietzsche wept, Irvin D. YalomWhen Nietzsche Wept is a 1992 novel by Irvin D. Yalom.
The novel starts with Dr. Josef Breuer, sitting in a cafe in Venice, Italy waiting for Lou Salomé, who was involved with Friedrich Nietzsche.
She has written a letter stating that the future of the philosophy of Germany is at stake and that the German philosopher needs help desperately.
The plot develops into a therapy where Breuer needs to have his soul treated, i.e. to help him get over a patient who he treated for hysteria and with whom he has fallen in love, whereas Nietzsche needs help with his migraines.
Influenced by the revolutionary ideas of his young disciple Sigmund Freud, Josef Breuer starts the dangerous strategy that will mean the origin of the psychoanalysis. Thanks to their unusual relation, both of them will see how their perspective of life changes completely.
The story also explains how Friedrich Nietzsche received the inspiration to write his famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «و نیچه گریه کرد»؛ «وقتی نیچه گریست»؛ «هنگامی که نیچه گریست»؛ نویسنده: اروین د یالوم؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: یکی از روزها در ماه اکتبر سال 1994میلادی
عنوان: و نیچه گریه کرد؛ نویسنده: اروین د یالوم؛ مترجم: مهشید میرمعزی؛ تهران، نشر نی، چاپ دوم 1381، در 453ص؛ مصور، عکس، شابک9643126161؛ چاپ سیزدهم 1392؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده ی 20م
عنوان: وقتی نیچه گریست؛ مترجم: سپیده حبیب؛ تهران، کاروان، 1385، در 476ص؛ شابک 9648497435؛ چاپ سوم 1387؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، گلشن راز، 1389؛ شابک 9789647522236؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نشر قطره، 1391، چاپ یازدهم 1391؛ چاپ پانزدهم 1393؛ شابک9786001192029؛ چاپ بیست و دوم 1395؛
عنوان: وقتی نیچه گریست؛ مترجم: امیر علیجانپور؛ تهران، آوای مکتوب، 1394، در 423ص؛ شابک 9786007364147؛
عنوان: وهنگامی که نیچه گریست؛ ؛ مترجم: کیومرث پارسای؛ تهران، جامی، 1392، در 424ص؛ شابک 9786001760952؛
آمیزه ای از واقعیت و خیال است، جلوه ای از عشق، تقدیر و اراده، در شهر «وینِ» خردگرایِ سده ی نوزدهم میلادی، و در آستانه ی زایش دانش روانکاوی؛ «فردریش نیچه» بزرگ‌ترین فیلسوف «اروپا»، «یوزف برویر» از پایه گذاران علم روانکاوی و دانشجوی پزشکی، جوانی به نام «زیگموند فروید»، هر سه اجزایی هستند، که در ساختار رمان در هم، تنیده می‌شوند، تا حماسه ی فراموش نشدنی رابطه ی خیالی، میان بیماری خارق العاده، و درمان‌گری استثنایی را، بیافرینند؛ در آغاز رمان، «لو سالومه»، زنی دست نیافتنی، از «برویر» میخواهد، با استفاده از روش آزمایش «درمان با سخن گفتن» به یاری «نیچه»ی ناامید، و در خطر خودکشی بشتابد؛ در این رمان جذاب، دو مرد برجسته، و اسرارآمیز تاریخ، تا ژرفای وسواس‌های خویش پیش میروند، و در این راه، به نیروی رهایی بخش دوستی، دست می‌یابند.؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 25/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 07/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
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The fin de siecle Viennese satirist, Karl Kraus, took a dim view of the emerging field of psychiatry: "Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy." And, somewhat surprisingly, this is the main theme of this novel by an eminent psychotherapist. Psychiatry is indeed a field of Byzantine relationships. Perhaps that is Yalom's point.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer never really met; but Yalom puts them in an intense relationship of mutual th
The Doctor of DespairThe fin de siecle Viennese satirist, Karl Kraus, took a dim view of the emerging field of psychiatry: "Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy." And, somewhat surprisingly, this is the main theme of this novel by an eminent psychotherapist. Psychiatry is indeed a field of Byzantine relationships. Perhaps that is Yalom's point.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer never really met; but Yalom puts them in an intense relationship of mutual therapy, each believing that the other is the patient and he the therapist. Breuer, Freud's mentor and the discoverer of the psychoanalytic 'talking cure', is acutely depressed; Nietzsche, the as yet unknown philosopher, suffers from debilitating migraines.
Nietzsche seeks to teach Breuer about 'freedom' by which he means a sort of resignation to one's fate. Breuer sees his task as revealing Nietzsche's emotional reality to himself. Neither succeeds. But in their failures they accomplish remarkable psychological things with themselves by trying to help the other. Breuer frees himself from his obsession with a patient and Nietzsche learns how to reduce the severity of his migraines.
It appears, then, that Karl Kraus was on to something important as far as Yalom is concerned. Kraus summarised the situation thus: "My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious." Psychoanalysis is Byzantine indeed. Does anyone really understand its mechanism and effects? Yalom seems to doubt it.
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The premise of Yalom's novel is interesting: Get two of the most innovative thinkers of modern times to meet. And then what? Friederich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer--the father of modern philosophy and the father of mod
I am not in the habit of trashing a book. However, since this novel had been published as a "Perennial Classic," there is no danger that I might destroy a writer's career. However, the choice of this book as a "classic" left me perplexed: why this book is held in such a high regard?The premise of Yalom's novel is interesting: Get two of the most innovative thinkers of modern times to meet. And then what? Friederich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer--the father of modern philosophy and the father of modern psychoanalysis (and a friend of the young Freud) had never met in life. But what if they had?
I would have expected some new, explosive ideology to burst out of this fictional years-long relationship. Sort of 1 + 1 = 3. But this is not the case beyond some personal epiphanies. No new discipline emerges.
Furthermore, in exploring each character, Yalom regurgitates their respective theories, while failing to move into the realm of new intellectual challenge either one of them might have presented to the other. Many of the "truths" the characters cite have, by now, become so common knowledge that they sound nonsensical. On rare occasions the novel brings some forgotten, interesting statement--mostly from Nietzsche--but not enough to spend time with 300 pages of talking heads.
In the years I was honing my writing skills at writing workshops, not a single page of Yalom's dialogues would have passed a writing instructor's scrutiny. It would have been dismissed for its amateurishness, and the author would have been taught the basics of "show, don't tell." Yet, Yalom gives the reader a book-length uninterrupted flow of stilted lecturing. The dialogue lines lack tension, characterization--and certainly fail to move the story forward, which are the must ingredients for good, compelling dialogue.
Which brings me to the underlining flaw of this work: The flimsy plot. In the first 100 pages, nothing happens from "scene" to "scene" because these are really not scenes, each with a beginning, a middle and an end, but rather sections of text. They lie flat, with little development other than more information parted to the reader. When things finally move, they are slow and predictable.
A good novel can take the reader into a new world of ideology and intellectual thinking by placing the characters in situations where these theories can be examined under the pressure of events. It is called dramatization. It requires vivid imagination on the part of the writer, something Yalom clearly lacks.
It is astonishing that Yalom's book has gone this far (reprinted by Harper Collins in their Perennial Classics series.) I hope that future writers do not take their cue from this dubious literary success.
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The title promises tears, cruelly the author holds them back to the last page, whether his technique in this regard is equal to that of noted Northumbrian wordsmith Catherine Cookson I don't know, nor am I much moved to find out.
As I noted in the updates I started this book in the expectation that it would be awful, hopefully amusingly so, at first say for about a hundred pages I was obliged to channel the spirit of Robin the boy wonder, and exclaim every other paragraph or so "Holy info-dump Batman!" the interesting thing here was that the information was irrelevant - does it matter if Lou Salome crossed her legs or not, or what shape Dr. Breuer's breakfast roll was, or if he ate one or three, or if Neitzsche met a Buddhist monk, any monk or just read about one in Switzerland, or what Yalom believes a typical upper middle-class Viennese dinner in 1882 consisted of, or who ate whipped cream with their cake?
Yalom's triangular Kaisersemmel gave me traumatic flashbacks to reading All the light we cannot see and left me thinking if you are just going to make stuff up you might as well have the inter-galactic space dog leave off chasing the Rings of Saturn and come down to cure Nietzsche, admittedly since an inter-galactic space dog is still a dog, the cure would consist of urging Nietsche to put on his hover boots and come down the park to chase squirrels, but hey, why not? Woof! Woof!
Well, one reason would be is that this is all a bit pedagogical and space dogs generally are not on hand to assist people studying to become therapists to help their clients (view spoiler)[ and mores the pity, though the squirrels are awfully relieved (hide spoiler)], I sense in this book there is an attempt to communicate to students some of the difficulties and pitfalls of working with a client. Personally if I was one of those students I think I would prefer the blurry photostat with the twelve bullet-points ,but no doubt I'm just grumpy, or old fashioned, or not up for monetising my experience through a new medium or something.
I'm mildly interested that English is unusually not the dominant choice of language for reviewing this book. Which reminds me of George Mikes' How to be an alien in which he mentions that a French book about the Popular Front was mistranslated into English as the Popular Behind and became a best selling marital aid. I wonder if this novel was translated back into English if we'd find that Herr Dr. Breuer was powerfully aroused by the touch of Herr Professor Nietzsche's famously droopy moustache and that he urged his darling Fritzchen not to forget his whip the next time he came? Stranger things have happened I imagine (view spoiler)[ but not triangular Kaisersemmel, that is too much (hide spoiler)].
Still there is something nice and genuinely touching (view spoiler)[ not in a creepy way like a predatory employer (hide spoiler)] in people wanting to read and indeed write about dead people like Nietzsche, Breuer and Freud rather than mysteriously topless muscular firemen or space-dogs or treasure hunting Nazis and what have you. It suggests some kind of hunger for knowledge and understanding, even a desire for engagement with big ideas and fancy notions. Whether books like this are the gateway drugs to harder stuff or an end in themselves I couldn't say (view spoiler)[ because I don't know (view spoiler)[ at a guess both probably (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]. On the other hand this is absolutely the book for you if you've ever wanted to eavesdrop on somebody else's therapy sessions without having to plant a bug in the room. Although it may leave you with the desire to burst in with a jar of wasabi paste and a spoon.
Final thought. One character urges the other to consider if his tears had voices, what would they say? Hard not to say 'give me a tissue you bastard, can't you see I'm crying'?
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An avenue through which not only a great historical biography is depicted, but an invaluable psychological method is illustrated in perceivable words. I couldn't stop reading it! Five stars with no doubt...
An avenue through which not only a great historical biography is depicted, but an invaluable psychological method is illustrated in perceivable words. ...more
I'm
Nietzsche was anything but one dimensional as this novel tries to make him. There is a reason why all 20th century philosophy went through Nietzsche in one way or another. This book and this author have no idea why and clearly they only understand Nietzsche as if he were a comic book character. He's not. Aphorisms are a dangerous thing to quote out of context. This author does that and tries to make a whole book out of muddled psychoanalytical babble with a weak story melding a shallow plot.I'm grateful to be out of the 90s (this book was originally published 1992) and this book and the shallowness shown with this book shows the zeitgeist of a time that is best forgotten.
Don't be afraid to read Freud or Nietzsche directly. They really aren't that difficult to follow and a book like this one has too many errors of thought and is best left unread. (that's a note to my future self and hopefully will serve as a warning to me if I ever pick up this time waster of a book in a parallel universe).
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That what happens in the story could have happened, even if it did not happen, is explained in a well written and very interesting afterword. Letters are quoted that give proof of the possibility of the fictitious events. What is true and what is not is clarified, even if at times it can be hard to keep straight. The author goes on to explain why he wrote the book, what he wished to achieve by it and why in detail he drew the story as he did. On completion of the lengthy afterword I much better understood the book - why he chose the year 1882,why he chose to incorporate particular real-life characters and why he chose to fabricate the fictional elements as he did. On completing the afterword my whole view of the book changed; only then did I come to really like the book. Nevertheless, I have chosen to give the book three rather than four stars because I do not think a book should have to be explained to be appreciated. That made clear in the afterword should have been conveyed in the story itself. My interpretation of the story before reading the afterword and after reading it were different. Without the afterword I wouldn't have considered giving the book more than three stars. The bottom line is that I would probably have preferred that the author had presented the figures, their beliefs and actions in a straightforward book of non-fiction.
It is important to know that the author is an accomplished psychotherapist, an existentialist and an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University. He writes about that which he knows.
The author saw the book as an implement for teaching. I did learn elements of Nietzsche's philosophy. While the basic tenets of his philosophy are made clear, an in-depth analysis of the philosophy requires a different book. One's appetite is merely whetted and there is a lot of repetition.
The two central figures are Nietzsche and Joseph Breuer (1842 – 1925), the latter being a prominent Austrian physician working in the field of neurophysiology. Breuer had from 1880 – 1882 been using talk therapy to treat Bertha Pappenheim (1859 – 1936) for hysteria, an illness which at this time was coupled to the female sex. Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) and Breuer came to write about her under the pseudonym "Anna O." in Studies in Hysteria. Published in 1895, it is considered one of the founding texts of psychoanalysis. We also know that Breuer's wife had become jealous of her husband's interest in Bertha, and rumors had begun to circulate. All of the above is true.
Breuer is 40 in 1882, and being 40 he could have had of a mid-life crisis. This is how the story is drawn here - he became infatuated with his patient, he ignored his wife, he couldn't resist the flirtatious requests of Lou Salomé. Lou Salomé did actually exist and she was having a "relation à trois" with Nietzsche and Paul Rée. Nietzsche did propose marriage to her, but she refused. In the story Lou requests that Breuer treat Nietzsche. Perhaps, perhaps, it might have been so, but we do know that Breuer never did meet Nietzsche. The ins and outs, the true facts and the possibilities become confusing.
Before reading the afterword, what I saw was a book about a mid-life crisis and the book was more about Breuer than Nietzsche! We are told of Nietzsche debilitating illness, both physical and psychological, but his illness doesn't become palpable until the very end. Only at the end does the focus shift to Nietzsche, and only then did I feel his suffering. For me he was the stronger of the two men.
I feel some aspects of the fictional story lacked credibility. In 1882 psychotherapy had not yet come into practice and it was never practiced by Nietzsche. Is it conceivable that the distinguished physician Breuer would treat (view spoiler)[Nietzsche's physical disorders in exchange for advice from Nietzsche to help Breuer overcome his despair, his fear of death and his erotic fixation for Bertha? I found the rapid resolution of Breuer's marital discord not credibly drawn. (hide spoiler)]
The author wants to show that much of the acclaim given to Freud rightly belongs to Nietzsche. In the book he has the younger Freud influenced by Nietzsche through Breuer, but we know that in reality they never met!
The author wants to show and does show how existentialism could be used in psychotherapy. He wants to show and does show how both patient and therapist influence each other. The fictional aspects of the story convey this message.
The audiobook is narrated by Paul Michael Garcia. He uses a stronger, firmer intonation for Breuer's words. Nietzsche's intonation is weaker, more questioning, less firm. Should it be this way? As stated above, only by the book's end did I feel Nietzsche's suffering so for most of the book the intonations felt wrong. On the other hand I could hear who was speaking by the use of two intonations, and this was certainly helpful.
The book well draws Vienna in the 1880s and the birth of psychotherapy.
Are you curious about existentialism? I highly recommend At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. Unfortunately it does not cover Nietzsche.
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"Fiction is history that might have happened." - Irvin D. Yalom
"When Neitzsche Wept" is a phenomenal novel that creatively marries fact and fiction. It fires the imagination even as it simultaneously engages both the heart and mind.
Its author, Irvin Yalom, an American existential psychiatrist, intended it as a teaching novel. However, it did not read like one. How ingenious to create a pedagogical device "to introduce the student to the fundamentals of existential therapy"!
At center stage were
"Fiction is history that might have happened." - Irvin D. Yalom
"When Neitzsche Wept" is a phenomenal novel that creatively marries fact and fiction. It fires the imagination even as it simultaneously engages both the heart and mind.
Its author, Irvin Yalom, an American existential psychiatrist, intended it as a teaching novel. However, it did not read like one. How ingenious to create a pedagogical device "to introduce the student to the fundamentals of existential therapy"!
At center stage were three well known historical professionals whose lives interacted. They were:
1. Josef Breuer: An Austrian physician and researcher investigator of respiration and equilibrium. He was an outstanding diagnostician who tended to the elite in Vienna. He developed the talking cure in his seminal work with his patient, fictitiously named Anna O. Breuer was presented as supremely competent but overworked, over-involved with his patients, in despair, and needed help.
2. Sigmund Freud: Breuer's protégé, a struggling young intern who had to decide between a clinical or research career. Breuer sought his counsel often in his treatment of non-medical cases.
3. Friedrich Neitzsche: a young and brilliant thinker in philology. A guarded social recluse, he suffered from severe migraine, was depressed and suicidal, but would not remotely consider getting help for his dark moods.
Yalom grounded their life circumstances in this fictional novel in fact. Whole and parts of letters quoted were alleged to be authentic. In 1882, psychotherapy was not yet born but fascinating developments were beginning to emerge in treating psychological conditions. Freud and Breuer's "Studies on Hysteria" subsequently launched the psychoanalytic revolution.
I was impressed by how remarkably this novel was crafted. The novel offered a wealth of information on the practice of medicine in the 19th century, the emergence of psychoanalysis, hypnosis, and the "talking therapy" of the Angst Doctor.
For me, much of the novel's appeal came from shadowing Breuer while he stretched the limits of his competencies to help Neitzsche while appearing not to do so. The 38-year-old Neitzsche was a patient from hell. He was fiercely intelligent and very formidable. He was proud of his courage to have black moods. He denied being suicidal.
Breuer too was battling marital woes and an obsession with a former seductive patient (Bertha Pappenheim, a.k.a Anna O). He had a predilection for beautiful women; hence he could not refuse the invitation extended by the stunning but impertinent Russian beauty, Lou Salome, to treat Neitzsche whose heart she had broken. The twists and turns that led to how a mutual contract was struck between Breuer and Neitzsche to serve as each other's therapist were riveting.
Their mutual treatment led to a prolonged and profound discussion on the compatibility of searching for peace and truth concurrently. The scintillating sparring between Breuer and Neitzsche was most invigorating and entertaining, akin to listening to two masters play verbal chess. Neitzsche's nihilistic views on a host of issues were persuasive and disturbing at the same time. Neitzsche's take on truth: "It is not the truth that is holy, but the search for one's own truth! Can there be a more sacred act than self-inquiry?" How does one argue against this?
Breuer, the physician, opined that "Above all, hope must be preserved. And who else but the physician can sustain hope?" He could not bear breaking bad news to his patients. Neitzsche, the philosopher, had an opposing view: "Hope? Hope is the final evil." "Hope is the worst of evils because it protracts torment." Neitzsche believed, and I agree, that a physician ought to prepare a patient for death.
I found Neitzsche's views appealing in startling ways. However, his philosophy about life ("a great dice game"), God ("the everlastingly bloated nipple"), mortality, marriage, duty, and faithfulness was very hard to swallow. He was right in proclaiming himself "a teacher of bitter truths, an unpopular prophet".
Neitzsche emerged as the more dominant therapist and in actuality, a wretched one. He was incapable of connecting socially and empathically. He was dismissive of Breuer's pain. It was almost hilarious reading counsel that went like this: "Of course, you are fearful, living means to be in danger. Grow hard!... You are not a cow, and I am no apostle of cud chewing." Not funny.
How both Breuer and Neitzsche desperately sought liberation from their obsession kept me reading. A couple of times along this journey with them, I was close to tears. The treatment attested to the power of the subconscious mind and the importance of the therapeutic relationship.
But above all, what moved me most deeply was the trust, honesty, and friendship that Breuer and Neitzsche forged in the fiery dungeon of their despair and that emerged like refined gold.
When Neitzsche wept, I believe he wept for all of us because like him, we are human too, "all too human".
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Similar to his novel on Schopenhauer, Yallom's novel on Nietzsche illustrates the cathartic value of the "talking cure" approach used in psychotherapy. Yallom sets the stage (early 1880s, Vienna) by using two historic figures, Dr. Joseph Breuer (who is associated with laying the foundation of psychoanalysis) and the philosopher Nietzsche, both of whom were afflicted with obsessive love interests with two beautiful women. In the background, the young Freud serves as a sounding board for Breuer.Yallom uses Nietzsche's philosophy of freedom - generally, living for oneself, not others; particularly, freedom from his sexual attachment toward one of his patients - to push Breuer to his breaking point. Only then, through a hypnotic session with Freud, does Breuer come to terms with his obsession that represented his loss of a freedom to live as he really would like to live without regard for what others thought. With this, Breuer becomes a free man to re-engage life on his own terms.
Despite Nietzsche's strong push of Breuer, it turns out that Nietzsche was not following his own counsel and his overarching philosophy of freedom. Nietzsche's sexual obsession pulls him down, but his more chronic problem is his own fear about exposing his imperfection (his sexual lust) and more generally opening up himself to others. Breuer busts through Nietzsche's defenses here and forces him to talk about what he had for so long bottled up inside. Nietzsche opens up. He weeps and "gives his tears a voice," and regains his energy for his life which he then applies to his seminal work, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
This is a fun novel, even though Yallom appropriates Nietzsche to illustrate the value of talking, hypnosis, and cathartic release. This image is at odds with Nietzsche's fiercely-worded philosophy that has little place for the traditional sentiments of human kind.
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When Nietzsche wept, I sobbed for him and for me. Our sessions were over, he left, and I found a friend.
Irvin D. Yalom is a famous American psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who writes with this book a novel about the history of psychotherapy. So he must know what he's writing about. It is important to keep in mind that this is a novel and not a non-fiction book. At the end of the book the author adds a note where he explains which parts are fiction and which are factual. This is very useful in order to better understan
For a review in Italian, please visit: https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/201...Irvin D. Yalom is a famous American psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who writes with this book a novel about the history of psychotherapy. So he must know what he's writing about. It is important to keep in mind that this is a novel and not a non-fiction book. At the end of the book the author adds a note where he explains which parts are fiction and which are factual. This is very useful in order to better understand what he's writing about.
We are in 1882. Joseph Breuer is a famous physician working in Vienna, who is at present on holiday with his wife in Venice. He receives a note from a certain Lou Salomé, who wants to meet him because the future of philosophy is at stake. Her friend Friedrich Nietzsche is severely depressed, with suicidal ideation. Lou wants for Breuer to take him on as his patient, and that is because he had a patient, Bertha Pappenheim, known to his students as Anna O., whom he treated with talk therapy, a new kind of therapy invented by him, which consisted in hypnotizing the patient and letting her talk. Breuer, fascinated by Lou Salomé, decides to take on the patient, who is going to be a very difficult one, since he doesn't want to be cured.
Joseph Breuer was an actual Austrian doctor, famous in real life for treating Bertha Pappenheim with talk therapy. Bertha, who suffers from hysteria, will become Anna O. in Sigmund Freud's book Studies in Hysteria, written together with Breuer. Freud is also a character in the book, portrayed as a young medicine student and a friend of the Breuers' family. Lou Salomé was a writer and psychoanalyst of Russian origin, known for a series of friendships and relationships with various famous characters, most notably Rainer Maria Rilke (who is not in Yalom's story). Friedrich Nietzsche doesn't need an introduction, but let me just say that in this novel he is a 38-year-old unknow philosopher who has written two books that almost nobody has read, namely Human, All Too Human and The Gay Science. He never actually got to meet Joseph Breuer in real life, but he really was in love with Lou Salomé and proposed to her, who refused him.
The story is well-written and might appeal not only to psychotherapists or those interested in the history of psychotherapy, but also to all those who like a good, solid story which is engaging and well-written. It does have some minor flaws (for instance (BIG spoiler ahead), when (view spoiler)[Breuer "comes back" from his hypnotic experience with Freud and finds out he really is in love with his wife – she never for a moment thinks his renewed love for her to be weird and out of character, since he had not loved her one bit so far, at least for the last several months (hide spoiler)]), but all in all I consider it to be a good novel, which I wouldn't hesistate to recommend to my friends who love good literature.
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Excerpts:
--------
Page 82:
"My whole life has become a journey, and I begin to feel that my only home, the only familiar place to which I always return, is my illness."
P103 :
Is it my duty to impose a truth on others that they do not wish to know?"
"Who can determine what one wishes not to know?" Nietzsche demanded.
P109:
Dying is hard. I've always felt the final reward of the dead is to die no more!"
P141:
You wonder about a conversation
Excerpts:
--------
Page 82:
"My whole life has become a journey, and I begin to feel that my only home, the only familiar place to which I always return, is my illness."
P103 :
Is it my duty to impose a truth on others that they do not wish to know?"
"Who can determine what one wishes not to know?" Nietzsche demanded.
P109:
Dying is hard. I've always felt the final reward of the dead is to die no more!"
P141:
You wonder about a conversation with nothing concealed—its real name is hell, I believe. To disclose oneself to another is the prelude to betrayal, and betrayal makes one sick, does it not?".
P210:
The other day you described your belief that the specter of nihilism was stalking Europe. You argued that Darwin has made God obsolete, that just as we once created God, we have all now killed him. And that we no longer know how to live without our religious mythologies. Now I know you didn't say this directly—correct me if I'm mistaken—but I believe you consider it your mission to demonstrate that out of disbelief one can create a code of behavior for man, a new morality, a new enlightenment, to replace one born out of superstition and the lust for the supernatural." He paused.
P256:
After twenty years of such wondering, I now believe that fears are not born of darkness; rather, fears are like the stars—always there, but obscured by the glare of daylight. And dreams, dreams are a glorious mystery which beg to be understood. I envy you your dreams. I rarely capture mine.
P265:
In that letter, I stated that there was a basic division of the ways of men: those who wish for peace of soul and happiness must believe and embrace faith, while those who wish to pursue the truth must forsake peace of mind and devote their life to live inquiry.
P282:
"The fact that the will cannot will backward does not mean the will is impotent! Because, thank God, God is dead—that does not mean existence has no purpose! Because death comes—that does not mean that life has no value. These are all things I shall teach you in time.
P341:
But who will protect us—the holy skeptics? Who will warn us of threats to the love of wisdom and hatred of servitude? Shall that be my calling? We skeptics have our enemies, our Satans who undermine our doubting and plant the seeds of faith in the most cunning places. Thus we kill gods, but we sanctify their replacements—teachers, artists, beautiful women.
P346:
Though no stones hear and none can see
Each sobs softly, 'Remember me. Remember me.'
P414:
"I don't know what else to say except that, thanks to you, I know that the key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed."
P432:
"Do you know that no other woman has ever touched me? Not to be loved or touched-ever? To live an absolutely unobserved life-do you know what that is like? Often I go for days without saying a word to anyone, except perhaps "Guten Morgen' and "Guten Abend'to my Gasthaus owner. Yes, Josef, you were right in your interpretation of 'no slot.' I belong nowhere. I have no home, no circle of friends to whom I speak daily, no closet full of belongings, no family hearth. I don't even have a state, for I have given up my German citizenship and never remain in one place long enough to get a Swiss passport."
P437:
"Perhaps we're all fellow sufferers unable to see each other's truth."
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 Nietzsc
Learning To Love One's LifeIrvin 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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Generally, I like Yalom's writing style but this book also had a very intriguing plot.
I enjoyed every minute of this masterpiece and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking a walk through psychology and philosophy. I completely and utterly loved this book!
Generally, I like Yalom's writing style but this book also had a very intriguing plot.
I enjoyed every minute of this masterpiece and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking a walk through psychology and philosophy. ...more
Even so, t
Too much fiction, too little philosophy. Ironically, somewhere in the book Nietzsche abhors the idea of reading the recast philosophy. That's why he learned Greek. Drinking from the source spring rather than the still water in the carafe, he learned to read the firsthand writings and then the philologer became a philosopher. Keeping this point in your mind, imagine if you can learn Nietzsche's philosophy by reading merely the excerpts of his early works quoted now and then in the text.Even so, the book is interesting and has handful of surprises. The idea of bringing Nietzsche and Breuer together and setting a novel is certainly appealing. Furthermore, the quoted aphorisms are indeed intriguing and somehow weakly philosophical. I also admit that every iconoclast is still a human: same passion, same points of weakness. One should not expect to encounter superheros (ubermenschen) in the novel, even if the main characters are indeed intellectual giants.
The presented topics and subjects, namely:
a) the love-triangle of Lou, Fritz, and Paul and how this relationship- once a Pythagorean as Nietzsche in former times named it- afflicts the philosopher,
b) the nightmares of Breuer, Freud's tutor,
c) Lou's weltanschauung, etc.
are also interesting.
However, I find the book an average one. Perhaps, the book could be more impressive if the author had chosen a humbler title instead of what he finally came up with. The present title of the book, i.e. 'When Nietzsche Wept', sounds too strong. Although, I might be the one who expects too much of such a title and this might be my own illusion. Regardless of this, there is still one objective point of weakness in the book, viz. Nietzsche's ridiculous and banal remedial processes as they appear in the midst of the novel. This part is certainly out of the place.
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Yalom plays a bit with history in this book. He takes two famous character
Obsession. The domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire. We've all had obsessions. Some can last longer, others can vanish before we know it. In fact, isn't the very act of "falling in love" sort of an obsession? I was in the 12th grade when one of my teachers told me that. It struck me as odd, but the idea must've made me ponder quite a lot since I still remember it after all this time.Yalom plays a bit with history in this book. He takes two famous characters from the end of the 19th century who have not actually met in reality and puts them together in a situation which is supposed to benefit both. And it does, transforming both of them in the process in better and freer versions of themselves. Physician Breuer is supposed to help Nietzche treat his despair through some incipient version of psychoanalisis, but, in fact, it happens the other way around: Nietzche applies his philosophy on dr. Breuer and cures him of his existential anxieties and obsessions. The discussions between the two are quite priceless and the way Yalom chooses to present their interpretations of the discussions after each session is also priceless as it shows how two different people can create two different realities from the same raw data. I had found this idea before in the book by Steinbeck that I've read before this one ("East of Eden") and ever since it has been reinforced by many articles. Each individual's reality is not what it actually happens outwards, the objective facts, but how our mind frames it and perceives it. However, "even though we invent reality, our minds are devised in such a way as to conceal this from ourselves."
We are the ones creating our own obsessions because we attribute meanings to things/persons that help us run away from and not face directly our existential angsts: the fear of getting older, the fear of life's transiency maybe or of not having lived the lives we were hoping for. "The mind is, you know, fond of back alleys and trapdoors." Lust is but a way of soothing fear, but "lust does not think; it craves, it recollects" and it turns to obsession. This is how Dr. Breuer became obsessed with his young pacient, Bertha, and "he no longer looked into the distance, but spent his time recollecting such miracles as how Bertha moved her fingers, her mouth, how she undressed, how she talked and stuttered, walked and limped."
"But surely"-and Nietzche shook his clenched fists-"you must realize that there is no reality to any of your preoccupations! Your vision of Bertha, the halo of attraction and love that surround her-these don't really exist. These poor phantasms are not part of the numinal reality. All seeing is relative, and so is all knowing. We invent what we experience. And what we have invented, we can destroy."This book is good, but not as engaging as the other book I read by Yalom ("The Shopenhauer's Cure"). It strongly reinforces that most of us don't understand "that there is a my way and a your way, but there is not "the"way." Once we begin to understand that, we might be able to lower our frustrations and enhance our ability to accept people and ourselves for what they/we really are and, why not, become more able not to appeal to obsessions, but rather face our fears in a constructive way. ...more
that is our greatest burden.
And our greatest challenge is to live
in spite of that burden".
What a phenomenal book it is!
Exceptionally written.
Simply awesome & awestruck. I really don't have appropriate words but if I didn't write something now later I wouldn't be able to.
"When the Nietzsche wept" a historical fiction based on the real life story of intricate genius.
A man with exceptional ideologies suffering from a dozens of disease. Gone through a number of treatments
that is our greatest burden.
And our greatest challenge is to live
in spite of that burden".
What a phenomenal book it is!
Exceptionally written.
Simply awesome & awestruck. I really don't have appropriate words but if I didn't write something now later I wouldn't be able to.
"When the Nietzsche wept" a historical fiction based on the real life story of intricate genius.
A man with exceptional ideologies suffering from a dozens of disease. Gone through a number of treatments with different physicians but all in vain. He want to be treated at the same time don't want to be treated by the way physicians are treating him. Dont want to reveal a bit about his privacy, cherishing his miseries living in an isolation zone.
when the Nietzsche wept? Why? how? when? where? with whom? to know all this you have to read the book. (Unconciously I added the spoiler here but then edit it :) )
Not an easy book for me, I myself suffered a lot, my mind is continuously working even when I left it simultaneously felt my brain got dehydrated. This book will give you a sudden rush of thoughts, massive attacks, besides painstaking one remain in awe.
Many philosophical views difficult to grasp but they effect you, no matter at what level, at what extent, irrespective of the fact how much you agree, but they hit you hard, very very hard. It's like a Ideological zone, tightly grasping your mind, holding your attention and there's no way to get an escape.
P.S:
Never ever start this book except weekend/ holidays (my mistake I start it on sunday :'( ) Because your mind have to work hard and for such kind of struggling books one need complete isolation and concentration.
A must read for sure.
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Actually a friend recommended this to me and the same day one of my lecturers at university talked about it, so I just had to give it a try.
I highly enjoyed the mixture of philosophical and psychoanalytic aspects, as I am interested in both topics. It was definitely one of those books, where you should always have a marker ready to highlight all of these beautiful philosophical sentences, that might change the way you
This book was surprisingly good, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.Actually a friend recommended this to me and the same day one of my lecturers at university talked about it, so I just had to give it a try.
I highly enjoyed the mixture of philosophical and psychoanalytic aspects, as I am interested in both topics. It was definitely one of those books, where you should always have a marker ready to highlight all of these beautiful philosophical sentences, that might change the way you look at life.
I also really enjoyed the friendship between Breuer and Nietzsche, as well as Breuer's friendship with Freud, which might not be the focus of the book but was definitely interesting to look at with the knowledge of it's importance for the psychoanalysis.
Yalom managed to weave actual facts and true events into a fictional meeting of two very different but at the same time very similar men and created a convincing and touching story of two lonely souls, who desperately needed each other to save themselves.
I especially loved the fact that you actually learn a lot about the beginning of psychoanalytic psychotherapy without having to push yourself through some highly scientific book. (I hope it somehow comes in handy for my clinical psychology exam, because damn that's gonna be harddd)
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I especially loved the relationship that grew between the two men. I found it extremely touching and real-more real than life often seems since we were able to be so much more inside of the relationship than we can in actual life (even in our own where we are distracted by so many of our own internal and external issues and often so unable to see into the other, even those we care deeply about. Maybe especially those.
In short, this book has everything I crave in a good read: good writing, interesting thoughts, nice dialogue, well-constructed scenes and pacing and people I cam to care deeply about. And it didn't hurt that I'm fascinated by both case studies and Nietsche.
I was one happy chick.
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