Nietzsche in Vienna: Yalom's Splendid Subject - Essay Sample

Introduction

Onto dystopian chronological scenery, present-day psychiatrist and fiction author Yalom (2011) inflicts individual imagination richness along with a morsel of historical revision as he introduces Friedrich Nietzsche to Vienna's Dr Josef Breuer. Yalom illustrates his writing proficiency as he captures Nietzsche's character. The author approaches his splendid subject with such forthrightness that each of the different styles appears to be himself written from distinct perspective brawls were once his own.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Nietzsche has a different meaning in different settings or contexts that it would easily mispresent him in one's image. However, Yalom keeps lane of Nietzsche's texts in fabricating his fictional character and maintains fascinating dialogues between Nietzsche and Breuer (Yalom, 2011). As such, he demonstrates fascinating psychotherapy exploration and philosophy. Nietzsche eminently uttered that all philosophy is biography. In this context, Yalom gives his audience a foretaste of how Nietzsche's philosophy influences his psychology.

The author's plot unfolds over a succession of elongated-form debates and session between the two men. The etiquette and courtesies of the late 19th-century Viennese speech ought to be maintained by the two mannered professions, needing each other to progressively concede and re-concede all the previous points before asserting his controversies leading to dragging a bit of the dialogue.

Yalom also attempts to blend the monotony by inserting into the narrative a series of factual correspondence between Nietzsche and quite a lot of his social groups, such as devious sister Elisabeth, Richard Wagner and his friend, Franz Overbeck of Basel University. Yet anything When Nietzsche Wept lacks in action and it more that sums up for the scopes of the novel's historical precision and the quality of the opinions explored. Through Yalom's discourse, Breuer takes Nietzsche's values and ideals delivering an unversed fine hasty overview of the philosopher's early philosophical writing- Nietzsche's obsession with the melee for power in individual relationships and the value of tragedy as an affirmation of life.

The book presents an unusual doctor-patient relationship that is set in the 1882 Vienna where Joseph Breuer and renowned physician, as well as a counsellor of Sigmund Freud, applied his newly learned talking cure to a female aggrieved with a myriad indication of hysteria. The core topic of this book is the characters' developing relationship from which other themes like family life, obsession and fear arise. Josef Breuer is among the psychoanalysis founding fathers and is at the height of his career.

Friedrich Nietzsche is the greatest philosopher of Europe and at the brim of suicidal despair because he is unable to get a cure for his headaches and other illnesses that plague him. As Breuer agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental talking cure, he never expects that he too will be solaced in their sessions. It's only through the encountering of his innermost demons that the gifted naturopath starts to assist the patient. In this book, Yalom amalgams factual and fictional atmosphere and suspense scenes to develop a remarkable story about the delivering power of friendship two brilliant men.

Yalom (2011) expresses the distinguished physician and prominent scientist, Josef Breuer to have discovered himself being at 40 instantaneously at the peak of the professional life he had and almost the bottom of the pit of unfathomable depression. He's cursed with nightmares, sleeplessness and possessed of former patient's sexual fantasies. Breuer miraculously healed Ann O. through his recently discovered technique called the talking cure. In this case, the author explains that Breuer welcomes the disruption as the domineering imminent future psychoanalyst Lou SalomC stresses on the incorporation of the talk therapy to heal her friend Friedrich Nietzsche who was being threatened by suicidal despair because of her rejection. Yalom (2011) show that due to the proudness of the poverty-ridden and unknown philosopher to accept the spiritual aid from any person, Breuer ought to know how to heal the younger man without his acquaintance (Yalom, 2011).

Instead, the physician accepts the challenge and solves it by posing as the patient and asking for Nietzsche's assistance in relieving his existential agony. After a series of elusive subterfuges, the determined Nietzsche agrees to start daily talks with the physician for about a month, which becomes the start of their relationship. The physician plans to use the talking cure on Nietzsche's suicidal depression under the guise of enticing the philosopher to cure him with his mania and associated despair. Through this intelligent and entirely fictional novel, Yalom (2011) induces the condensed world of Breuer and Nietzsche's meetings along with the social and intellectual milieu of the time.

The author describes the ensuing dialogue between the philosopher and the physician as increasingly captivating. He firstly points out how Breuer then Nietzsche uncovers their elapsed past and delves deep into their insentient yearnings and dreads. Throughout the book, Yalom's elicitation of Breuer confined in an archetypal midlife predicament, Nietzsche gets thwarted by his pride, loneliness, fear, and the cracking of Lou Salome's feminist whip. Yalom's evocation extensively shows each conversation's twist making a stimulation dip into the 19th-century pools of philosophy, psychology and culture. He brings forth a delectable fantasy.

Yalom (2011) shows various themes that are ensnared in Breuer and Nietzsche' relationship. It can be noted that the female characters of the book are all one-dimensional in that they lack the depth of feeling and psychological complexity. Starting with Lou Salome, Breuer's wife, all the way to Breuer's enthrallment with his patient Anna O. Psychological complexity becomes apparent when physician Breuer attempts reconciling with his long-estranged wife who immediately accepts him regardless of the problematic past they shared. He further explores the theme of fear throughout his book. He portrays Nietzsche as having great fear-being - dreaded of dying alone.

He also feared going insane as his father. Even though that Yalom touches on Nietzsche's fears, he stresses out that his greatest fears were dying alone and his vast expectations concerning him being becoming a posthumous philosopher would never come to be. However, Yalom fails to push this fear to its logical and psychological deduction that the philosopher eventually needed someone and probably a reader to be comprehended and highly esteemed by another as he did.

Yalom's book provides a window into psychology he endorsed the book for the brainy set keeping in mind that it's one of his teaching novels that has envisioned not to entertain or achieve attributes artistically but serve as a means of a literary experiential learning tool for the therapists as well as the therapists-to-be. Additionally, the author's nerdy and passionate enthusiasm is infectious. As one reads through, it captures the interest of the reader allow one to join the writer's fun he was having while writing the fictional relationship between psychology and philosophy strengthening the ideological connection he insists on being between psychotherapy and existentialism.

The book shows how Yalom grounded the characters in life circumstances that show the relationship between fiction and factual scenes. As psychotherapy was not yet born in 1882 but fascinating developments had begun to emerge in healing psychological conditions, and Yalom's book was considered as an experiential learning tool as he points out of Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria afterwards launched the psychoanalytic revolution. Moreover, the book offers extensive information on medical practice in the 19th century relating to the beginning of psychoanalysis, hypnosis, and the "talking therapy" of the Anguish Doctor.

Conclusion

In conclusion, "When Nietzsche Wept" is a phenomenal book that artistically marries fact and fiction. It fervours imagination as it instantaneously involves both one's heart and mind. Its author Yolam, an American existential psychiatrist, envisioned it as a teaching novel despite that it does not read like one because of the ingenious efforts that can be involved in creating a pedagogical device and introducing the students to existential therapy fundamentals. Breuer and Nietzsche's complementary treatment resulted in a lengthy and in-depth discussion on the compatibility of each one of them seeking peace and truth concomitantly.

It is prudent to note that the scintillating sparring between the two professionals is stimulating and entertaining, keeping the reader glued to the novel. The treatment sessions eventually attested to subconscious power of the mind and the significance of the therapeutic relationship. In the way Yalom portrays Nietzsche as being afraid since the idea of dying terrified him. In my opinion, I found the situation very hard to imagine and relate, as am puzzle as to why someone would believe that his father's fate will catch up to him. It also evident that Nietzsche requires the views, but in this case, the readers to familiarize and highly recognize another the same way he was with himself. Besides these beliefs and criticism portrayed in the novel which fashions the novel in a more unique manner, the book represents diverse characters which are found around our community. The novel has also proven to be beneficial to those specialized in the fields of philosophy and psychology.

Reference

Yalom, I. (2011). A Novel of Obsession. Harper, New York.