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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780060748128
ISBN number: 0060748125
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: January 01, 2005
Release Date: January 04, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 14033
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In nineteenth-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him.
When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental 'talking cure,' Breuer never expects that he too will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient. In When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense, to unfold an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of friendship.
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Rated by buyers 
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I wanted so badly to believe all of the details in this story were true; Yalom described the characters with fantastic but not excessive detail, and allows the reader to get inside the head of each, and to varying extents. I can't get enough of Yalom. If you like to learn about therapy, read his books!
Rated by buyers -
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 Friederich 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 themeselves 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 very 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 very 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 endeavor to cure Nietzsche's migraines and Nietzsche, in turn, will offer philosophical counselling 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: "amour 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 "amour fati" --- living one's life so that one may understand, shape, and embrace one's destiny.
Robin Friedman
Rated by buyers -
This is a very heart-touching novel, easily one of the book novels I've read. But it must not be approached as a history text, or you'll be rather disillusioned. Yalom makes it clear that none of the events in the text actually occurred; nevertheless, in a very intricate way Yalom humanizes Nietzsche, who, judging from his works alone, can come off as bitter and arrogant. Also, some of Nietzsche's philosophies as interpreted by Yalom can be interpreted in other ways, but the author does provide a nice summary of Nietzsche's key ideas, in particular the idea of eternal recurrence, a popular theme of Nietzsche's that can be misleading and/or difficult to grasp.
I highly recommend this text for any fan of Nietzsche's; it's a nice supplement to Nietzsche's own works.
Rated by buyers -
wonderful book! Differences in rewievs only the prove of the point in this book that we all have our own way, nobody can design our destiny, but us. Also its so intresting how we create our obsessions.
Rated by buyers -
Nietzsche and Beuer meet... and their contact will bring both of them closer to getting to know themselves better. They are both ruled by obsession, and at very first they are unable to see it. As time goes by, one becomes the other's mirror, and the reader's as well, showing us the power of obsession over us, and how our wishful thinking can create worlds of illusions that will dissociate us away from our true self, our life, the people around us that truly matter. And try to remember, that it is a novel.
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