When Nietzsche Wept

When Nietzsche Wept – Irvin D. Yalom

In Vienna in 1882, the distinguished physician Josef Breuer, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, is approached by a striking young woman, Lou Salomé. She asks him to help her friend, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who is suffering from severe headaches and, she believes, from a despair so deep that it may drive him to suicide. The difficulty is that Nietzsche must not know he is being treated for his mind.

When Nietzsche Wept, by psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom, imagines what might have happened if these two remarkable men had met. Breuer agrees to treat Nietzsche, and devises an unusual arrangement: he persuades the philosopher to help cure him, Breuer, of his own despair, while secretly attempting to treat Nietzsche in return.

As their conversations unfold, the roles of doctor and patient become blurred. Breuer, a respected family man, is haunted by an obsession with his former patient Bertha Pappenheim, known to history as Anna O., and is troubled by questions about his marriage, his aging and the meaning of his life. Nietzsche, proud, lonely and wounded by his rejection by Lou Salomé, challenges Breuer with his philosophy of freedom, will and confronting one’s fate. A young Sigmund Freud also appears as Breuer’s friend and confidant.

Yalom, an expert in existential psychotherapy, uses the novel to explore themes such as despair, love, obsession, freedom and the healing power of honest conversation, and to dramatize the birth of the talking cure.

Thought-provoking and engaging, When Nietzsche Wept is a rewarding read for lovers of literary fiction, philosophy and psychology. It is a work of fiction based on historical figures.