Analysis of An Ubermensch

Kevin Vail Page 1 1/4/2009
Analysis of an Ubermensch
Kevin Vail
Student Name:
Name of your College
Christian Theological Seminary
or University:
P 761 / 762 Roots of Self in the Family / Contemporary
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Name of the course:
Fall Term, 2008
Date:
CONTENTS
I I
NTRODUCTION ................................................. ........................ 3
II T
HE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE ............................................... ............ 5
III I
NTRODUCTION TO WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT ..................... 12
IV T
HEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE PATIENT ...................... 15
I. THE PATIENT’S DIFFICULTY IN RELATING TO OTHERS
II. SOMATIZATION OF THE PATIENT’S PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
III. DISASSOCIATION
V T
HEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE TREATMENT ............... 26
VI T
HEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION ........................................ ........... 32
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ ................... 0

INTRODUCTION
Friedrich Nietzsche is an enigma of modern philosophy. His work has been used to
justify and support everything from the eugenic racism of the German NAZI party to the beliefs
of radical anarchists. His soaring, poetic, German prose has equally inspired, challenged and
offended his readers for over 100 years. He said of himself, in one of his last works, “I know my
fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis
without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured
up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am
dynamite” (1967). Nietzsche’s work was not popular in his own time. His first works sold only a
few dozen copies and his later works were published out of his own pocket. It would be for later
generations to discover him. In his work The Gay Science, when the prophetic utterances of the
death of God are rejected by his audience, his “madman” laments, “I come too early…. My time
has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering – it has not yet
reached the ears of man” (Kaufmann, 1982, 96). Nietzsche has “reached the ears” modern man,
in politics, ethics, metaphysics and linguistics to name just a few areas. Existentialists adopted
him as a precursor to their philosophy and now the post-modern deconstructionists do the same.
C.G. Jung and the existential psychology movement, among others, have plumbed him
for psychological insights. A quote widely attributed to Sigmund Freud asserts that the father of
psychoanalysis said of Nietzsche, “[he] had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any
other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live” (source unknown). However more
contemporary psychoanalysts who have studied Nietzsche’s life and work have concluded he
suffered from a variety of psychopathologies. In his work of psychological fiction, When
Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom remarks of Nietzsche that he is “a curious mixture… of massive
blind spots and lightning originality”(1992, 164). I think we will see that despite his towering
intellect and unquestionable genius, he was “human, all too human”.
A number of psychological analyses of the man have been published in the century since
his collapse into insanity and subsequent death 10 years later. This paper will examine one such
analysis. Irvin Yalom’s psychological novel is, to my knowledge, unique in the genera of
Nietzsche literature. He blends events from the life of the real Nietzsche with a “what if”
scenario built from his understanding of Nietzsche’s life and philosophy as well as his own
considerable clinical experience and expertise. Additionally, his talents as a writer make for an
intriguing and gripping read. The events of the novel never happened but Yalom argues they
could have.
I will begin my endeavor with a discussion of the life of the real Friedrich Nietzsche,
based on the authoritative literature. I will primarily rely on the scholarship of Walter Kaufmann
whose work is primarily responsible for the wider appreciation and acceptance of Nietzsche’s
philosophy in the United States during the post-war period. The primary purpose of this
biographical sketch will be to outline the significant events and relationships of Nietzsche’s life
that precede the events of Yalom’s novel and form the background, which I will utilize in
theorizing about his psychopathologies. I will then proceed to outline the fictional events of the
novel and identify a number of psychopathologies gleaned from the text of the novel and
possible treatment interventions. Finally, I will examine the psychological and theological
implications of Nietzsche’s strident atheism.

THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in the small German village of Röcken bei Lützen, located
in a rural farmland area southwest of Leipzig on October 15, 1844. He was the first-born son of a
German Lutheran pastor, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813-1849) and his wife Franziska. As was
common in Victorian Europe, his father was considerably older than his mother, he being thirty-
one and she only being eighteen at the time of his birth. Madness comes early in the story of
Nietzsche’s life. The King of Germany, Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, for whom he was
named, and his father both suffered debilitating mental illnesses only a few years after his birth
(Kaufmann, 1974). Friedrich’s father died from “softening of the brain” when he was only four
years old. His younger brother, Joseph would also die at the age of 2 in 1850. Walther reports
that Nietzsche did not learn to speak until the age of 2 ½ but after that picked up reading and
writing very quickly, mastering both by the age of 4 (2002). After the deaths of Karl Ludwig and
Joseph, Nietzsche’s family moved to Naumburg an der Saale where he lived as the only male in a
household of women, consisting of his mother, his father's mother, Erdmuthe (d. 1856), his
father's two sisters, Auguste (d. 1855) and Rosalie (d. 1867), and his younger sister, Therese
Elisabeth Alexandra (1846-1935) until 1858 when he entered the prestigious boarding school at
Schulpforta (Wicks, 2008). He performed well academically at Schulpforta, particularly in
religion, German literature and classics. His medical records from that time note that he was
“shortsighted and often plagued by migraine headaches. His father died early of softening
of the brain and was begotten in old age; the son at a time when the father was already
sick. As yet no grave signs are visible but the antecedents require consideration” (quoted
in Kaufmann, 1974, 23).
Nietzsche graduated from Schulpforta after completing a thesis on Theognis and enrolled
in the University of Bonn. At Bonn he briefly joined a fraternity but resigned in short order due
to his disdain for his brothers’ “ lack of sophistication and [their] very unclassical, beer-drinking
patriotism” (Kaufmann, 1974, 23). Nietzsche initially studied theology and philology but gave
up his studies of theology and left Bonn in 1865, following his instructor Friedrich Ritschl to
Leipzig (Kaufmann, 1974).
Nietzsche’s early friendships included Paul Deussen (1845 - 1919) and Erwin Rohde
(1845 – 1898). It is via Deussen’s 1901 publication of Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche that
we learn that the young Nietzsche, while in Cologne, was mistakenly taken to a brothel. In the
story as reported by Deussen, Nietzsche was “[h]orrified at the sight of the flimsily clad women,
[he] first froze, then walked over to a piano, which seemed to him the only live thing in the
room, struck a chord, found the spell broken and hastened out” (Brann, 1931, quoted in
Kaufmann, 1974, 24). A later student of Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, speculated in his Neue
Studien, published in 1948, that Nietzsche was unable to resist the temptation to visit a brothel
again a year later and may have, at that time, infected himself with the syphilis that would be the
cause of his collapse 24 years later (Kaufmann, 1974). Deussen was one of the few individual
who would remain close to Nietzsche for his entire life. His relationship with Rhode began at
Leipzig. According to Kaufmann they were so close they earned the nickname “the Dioscuri”.
However, their relationship fell apart after Nietzsche’s break with and repudiation of Richard
Wagner (1974).
Nietzsche was appointed professor of Philology at Basel, on the recommendation of
Ritschl, at the unprecedented age of 24, prior to even completing his doctorate at Leipzig.
Ritschl, in his letter of recommendation wrote of Nietzsche:
“However many young talents I have seen develop under my eyes for thirty-nine years
now, never yet have I known a young man, or tried to help one along in my field as best I
could, who was so mature as early and as young as this Nietzsche. His Museum articles
he wrote in the second and third year of his triennium. He is the first from whom I have
ever accepted any contribution at all while he was still a student. If – God grant – he lives
long enough, I prophesy that he will one day stand in the front rank of German philology.
He is now twenty-four years old: strong, vigorous, healthy, courageous physically and
morally, so constituted to impress those of a similar nature. On top of that, he possess the
enviable gift of presenting ideas, talking freely, as calmly as he speaks skillfully and
clearly. He is the idol and, without wishing it, the leader of the whole younger generation
of philologists here in Leipzig who – and they are rather numerous – cannot wait to hear
him as a lecturer. You will say, I describe a phenomenon. Well, that is just what he is –
and at the same time pleasant and modest. Also a gifted musician, which is irrelevant
here” (quoted in Kaufmann, 1982, 7-8).
His tenure at Basel lasted only 10 years and in 1879, at the age of 34, he retired due to ill
health. His health problems, Kaufmann speculates, may have been related to his brief military
service as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war. Kaufmann relates that during
Nietzsche’s service he once found himself unrelieved and responsible for the care of 6 badly
injured soldiers for a period of 3 days and nights. All the men, in addition to their wounds, were
suffering from dysentery and diphtheria. Nietzsche became ill with both and required medical
attention. He would later write to his friend Gersdorff – “the atmosphere of my experiences had
spread around me like a gloomy fog: for a time I heard a sound of wailing which seemed as if it
would never end” (quoted in Kaufmann, 1974, 26). Kaufmann notes that upon his return to Basel
he appears “quite eager to drown in a double load of work” and concludes that Nietzsche may
have had a “physical and nervous breakdown” from which he never completely recovered
(1974).
Another significant personae in Nietzsche’s early life was the well-known historian Jacob
Burckhardt, whom Nietzsche befriended after publishing his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, in
1872. In temperament, Kaufmann compares Burckhardt to Goethe. Nietzsche retained his great
respect for the much older Burckhardt until the end of his life. Also during his time at Basel,
Nietzsche met Franz Overbeck, who was seven years his senior (Kaufmann, 1974). They would
remain close friends for the duration of Nietzsche’s life and we have many of the letters they
exchanged over the years.
The most famous relationship Nietzsche had was with the German composer Richard
Wagner, who he called “the greatest benefactor of my life” [Ecce Homo, II 6] (quoted in
Kaufmann, 1974, 32). Nietzsche would devote two entire books to Wagner (The Case of Wagner
and Nietzsche Contra Wagner). Wagner initially enchanted Nietzsche with his opera Tristan
which premiered in Munich in 1865 and he became acquainted with him personally in November
of 1868, at the home of Hermann Brockhaus (Wicks, 2008). Like Burckhardt and Ritschl,
Nietzsche found in Wagner a father figure. In Wagner’s wife, Nietzsche found an Oedipal mother
figure. She became his great, impossible love. In his later poetry, Kaufmann explains, Nietzsche
cast Cosima in the role of Ariadne to his Dionysus. His love for her was not revealed to her,
however, until he wrote to her from his bed at the asylum in Jena in 1889. Kaufmann notes, “his
days in the Wagner’s house in Tribschen were as close as he ever came to having a home in
which he belonged and of which he could feel proud” (1974, 34). In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche
himself writes “I’d let go cheap the whole rest of my human relationships; I should not want to
give away out of my life at any price the days of Tribschen” [II 5] (quoted in Kaufmann, 1974,
34). The issues that were to eventually divide them were Wagner’s militant nationalism and anti-
Semitism. Nietzsche also took offense to what he viewed as Wagner’s “ostentatious obeisance to
Christian other worldliness” in his opera Parsifal which premiered in 1882 at Bayreuth
(Kaufmann, 1974, 37). During the period of his deteriorating relationship with Wagner his
migraine headaches and vomiting spells increased in severity and frequency, which Kaufmann
asserts gave Nietzsche “an excuse to say away from Wagner after he had moved to Bayreuth”
(1974, 37). In Yalom’s novel, Joseph Breuer notes the same, when during his one of his
interviews of Nietzsche, he puts to him the question of whether he profits from his migraines. To
this insinuation Nietzsche responds, “Yes, I should bless my illness, bless it. For a psychologist,
personal suffering is a blessing – the training ground for facing the suffering of existence” (1992,
96).
We cannot discuss Nietzsche’s relationships without mentioning his critically important
relationship with his sister Elizabeth. As a boy Nietzsche was very devoted to his sister however
as they grew up, he came to realize that in many ways she had embraced “the narrowness, the
chauvinism, and the deeply unchristian Christianity which he loathed” (Kaufmann, 1974, 42). In
1885 Elizabeth married a leader in the German anti-Semitic movement, Bernhard Forester. They
both moved to Paraguay to found a “Teutonic colony” called Nueva Germania. Nietzsche was
deeply disappointed in his sister’s marriage and let her know so in a series of letters that are
extant. He wrote, “The whole affair [the marriage] went through and through me. And since your
son is in poor health, he was consequently sick all the time; this spring was one of the most
melancholy springs of my life … For my personal tastes such an agitator [Forster] is something
impossible for a closer acquaintance” (quoted in Kaufmann, 1974, 43). To Nietzsche’s chagrin,
this association of his sister’s rubbed off on him in European society and his writings were used
to justify their anti-Semitism, which he despised. In a letter to his sister dated 1887 he writes of
the colony Forster and her at started, “One of the greatest stupidities you have committed – for
yourself and for me! You association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my
whole way of life which fills me ever again with ire or melancholy” (quoted in Kaufmann, 1974,
45). Nietzsche was repeatedly brought into conflict with the anti-Semitic ideology, which he
unequivocally opposed, through his most important relationships. In the case of Wagner, this
difference of opinion was fatal to the relationship and it certainly alienated him from his sister as
well. Unfortunately for Nietzsche, after his collapse it was into his sister’s care that he went.
After his death, she attached herself to his name, seized control of all legal rights to his writings
and promoted the idea that her brother was a fellow proto-NAZI.
From 1880 until his collapse in 1889, Nietzsche lived a rootless life. He had surrendered
his German citizenship and never acquired citizenship rights in any other nation. He lived out of
a suitcase, traveling around Europe, often in search of a better climate and environment for his
increasingly severe medical problems. According to Wicks he went “circling almost annually
between his mother's house in Naumburg and various French, Swiss, German and Italian cities.
His travels took him through the Mediterranean seaside city of Nice (during the winters), the
Swiss alpine village of Sils-Maria (during the summers), Leipzig (where he had attended
university), Turin, Genoa, Recoaro, Messina, Rapallo, Florence, Venice, and Rome, never
residing in any place longer than several months at a time” (2008).
The final relationship I will discuss begins in Rome in 1882. It was there that Nietzsche
met Lou Salome. He was introduced to her via two other friends, Malwida von Meysenbug and
Paul Ree. She was young, bright, beautiful and extremely strong willed. She prided herself on
freedom from social convention. The relationship between Nietzsche and Salome forms an
important story device of Yalom’s novel, however, the facts are not entirely clear. One thing that
is clear is that Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth and Miss Salome took an instant and intense dislike to
one another. Elizabeth did everything she could to discourage Nietzsche’s interest in her. Recent
scholarship has ascertained that in more than one case Elizabeth was guilty of altering,
destroying or forging Nietzsche’s correspondences, to forward her anti-Semitic agenda. It was
assumed, therefore, that Salome’s account of the relationship could be trusted and Elizabeth’s
discounted, but now that too has been called into question. Yalom accepts and makes use of the
report, by Salome, that Nietzsche had proposed marriage to her. According to Salome, he did so
via Paul Ree and she declined. Nietzsche viewed this as a complete repudiation and accused
Salome of using him to get closer to Paul Ree. He repudiated both of them by 1883. Wicks also
accepts Salome’s account (2008). Kaufmann, however, rejects it, citing Rudolph Binion’s 1968
work Frau Lou (1974). Kaufmann writes “we cannot fully reconstruct the development that
finally led him to break with Lou in December [1882]” (1974, 56). It is this ambiguity that
Yalom exploits in his novel. The events of his novel, take place during the fall and winter of
1882 while Nietzsche was pining for Miss Salome and smarting from her rejection of his
“marriage proposal”. For my purposes, I will accept Yalom’s use of the situation to forward his
fictional story line, but the reader should be aware that the facts of the relationship are in dispute.
I think it is clear, whether or not Nietzsche proposed marriage to Miss Salome, he was smitten
with her and it is not inconceivable or out of character that he might have actually have done so.
We will also analyze this as another instance of Nietzsche’s penchant for choosing unavailable
women on which to lavish his affections.
This biographical sketch brings us up to the events we wish to examine in Yalom’s novel.
For the sake of completeness, I note that beyond the winter of 1882-3 very little changed for
Nietzsche. He lived a simple, nomadic existence, subsisting off of the small pension he was
granted by the University at Basel. He continued to write, and to not find much in the way of a
following until a series of lectures given by Georg Brandes at the University of Copenhagen in
1888. Unfortunately, this much-delayed recognition was largely lost on Nietzsche. On January 3,
1889 he collapsed in the street at Turin. As the story goes he witnessed a horse being whipped by
a coachman, he grabbed the man to prevent him from beating the horse and then collapsed in
tears with his arms around the neck of the animal. He never recovered fully. He had momentary
periods of lucidity over the next 10 years, but never wrote coherently again. He lived with his
mother for 7 years until her death in 1897 and then was taken in by his sister Elizabeth. Friedrich
Nietzsche died on August 25, 1900, apparently of pneumonia, complicated by a possible stroke.
He was buried at the family gravesite, next to his father’s church in Röcken bei Lützen (Wicks,
2008).
INTRODUCTION TO WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT
We are now familiar with the characters of the life of the real Nietzsche. The characters
introduced by Yalom in his novel, aside from Miss Salome, were not actually part of Nietzsche’s
life, but they could have been. Most students of psychoanalysis are familiar with them, so I will
not bother with much in the way of introductions. Yalom’s main character is Joseph Breuer, the
Viennese physician and mentor to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Freud himself
also appears in the novel as a student, friend and confident of Breuer but is not directly involved
with the treatment of Nietzsche around which the novel centers. Other characters include
Breuer’s family and the subject of Freud and Breuer’s famous 1895 work, Studies in Hysteria,
Anna O, whose real name, revealed in the 20th century, was Bertha Pappenheim. The novel is as
much a story of Breuer and his struggles with despair and obsession as it is about Nietzsche’s
struggles, but I will focus on Nietzsche.
Irvin Yalom is a major figure in the field of existential psychotherapy and has authored a
number of books on the subject. One of his most important contributions to the field has been a
systematization of existential practice in his magisterial work Existential Psychotherapy. In this
book he identifies four themes, around which, he argues, all psychopathology revolves. These
themes are:
1. Death
2. Meaning vs. Meaninglessness

3. Freedom
4. Isolation vs. Relationship
His theory informs his writing and the novel revolves around these four themes. I will be
applying the tools of contemporary object relations theory to his novel. I believe there is a point
of overlap with object relations theory in his fourth theme, isolation vs. relationship. Yalom’s
dictum, which appears in several of his works, is very apropos for the object relations
practitioner, “It is the relationship that heals”. An argument could be made that it is impossible to
tease out the real Nietzsche from Yalom’s interpretation of Nietzsche and I concede the point.
However, I will accept Yalom’s picture of Nietzsche in his novel in good faith.
When Nietzsche Wept is the story of Breuer’s attempt to apply his “talking cure” that he
discovered in his treatment of Anna O. to Nietzsche. Breuer is enlisted by Lou Salome to treat
Nietzsche for his “despair” but there is a catch. Nietzsche is far too proud to accept help with his
emotional distress and has strange ideas about power in relationships. Breuer’s first attempt to
treat Nietzsche consists of openly treating his medical issues while surreptitiously attempting to
treat his psychological problems. This approach fails to gain Nietzsche’s confidence. Breuer then
changes his strategy, and by playing on Nietzsche’s vanity, enlists Nietzsche’s help with his own
despair, hoping to eventually “reverse the roles”. This approach is successful but Breuer finds
himself drawn into the psychotherapeutic relationship in a way he had not expected. Yalom
begins his story in Venice in October of 1882 when Breuer receives a cryptic note from Miss
Salome desiring to meet him. Miss Salome tells Breuer that she has a friend afflicted with
despair and she fears he may soon take his own life. She claims that “such a loss could extend far
beyond me: this man’s death would have momentous consequences – for you, for European
culture, for all of us” (p. 3). She describes to Breuer Nietzsche’s health problems and admits that
she “would bear some responsibility for his despair”. She goes on to describe how Nietzsche has
wandered Europe, consulting with many of the finest physicians and has found little relief from
his illness. It is not for Breuer’s reputation as a healer of the body, however, that she has
contacted him. She rather has sought him out as healer of the mind. She relates that her brother,
Jenia, has attended Breuer’s lectures in Vienna on the case of ‘Anna O.’ and she wishes him to
apply his talents to Nietzsche in an effort to treat his despair. However, there is a catch. Nietzsche
does not know that Miss Salome has sought out Breuer on his behalf and would not approve of
her doing so. Breuer is dumbfounded by such a request but fascinated by Miss Salome so he
agrees to her plan to persuade Nietzsche to consult with him about his medical ailments and to
meet with her again in Vienna in four weeks time. Salome is already alienated from Nietzsche,
these events take place after the alleged “marriage proposal” described above in Nietzsche
biography, therefore, she contacts Nietzsche’s friend, Franz Overbeck, who is concerned for his
friend’s health. Overbeck persuades Nietzsche to travel to Vienna to consult with the eminent Dr.
Breuer.
What Miss Salome does not know, but is intimated to the reader, is that Breuer is
struggling with his own obsession and despair as a result of his relationship with Bertha
Pappenheim (Anna O.). He had fallen in love with his patient during the course of her treatment
and though he never acted on his feelings towards her he feels tremendous guilt and longing for
Bertha as well as resentment towards his faithful wife, Mathilde, who forced him to quit the case
and refer Bertha to another physician after Bertha delusionally proclaimed to her that she was
pregnant with Breuer’s child.
Nietzsche’s resistance to treatment provides insight on his neuroses. Specifically there are
three I will discuss in detail:

1. Nietzsche’s difficulty in relating to others and participating in healthy adult

relationships.
2. Nietzsche’s physical ailments as somatic symptoms of his neuroses.
3. Nietzsche’s disassociation from himself and his splitting of objects in his
environment.
The story of their “counseling” relationship is a story about the development of
psychotherapeutic practice for the last 100 years and proceeds through the stages described by
Martha Stark in Modes of Therapeutic Action. The story of their relationship is also the story of
negotiating the transference – countertransference in any psychotherapy.
THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE PATIENT
PATIENT’S DIFFICULTY IN RELATING TO OTHERS.

There are a number of interactions detailed in the novel that are indicative of Nietzsche’s
difficulty with human relationships. During their second meeting, Salome reveals to Breuer the
source of her concern that Nietzsche will never willingly agree to address his despair with him.
She relates:
“Nietzsche is extraordinarily sensitive to issues of power. He would refuse to engage in

any process that he perceives as surrendering his power to another … and he is deeply
distrustful of the motives of anyone who forgoes context and claims to be altruistic… No
one desires, he believes, to help another: instead people only wish to dominate and
increase their own power” (p. 17).
Nietzsche deploys the defense of rationalization to keep others at arms length. During his initial
consultation with Nietzsche, Breuer manages to discourse with Nietzsche about his relationships
and thereby to indirectly discuss his despair. He approaches this initially by getting Nietzsche to
discuss his sexual behavior. Nietzsche admits that he has no regular sexual partner and relates
that, on the advice of a previous physician, he “worked out an arrangement with a young peasant
woman in a village near Rapallo.” However, he reports, “at the end of three weeks I was almost
moribund with head pain”. When Breuer inquires further, Nietzsche declares, “a flash of bestial
pleasure followed by hours of self-loathing of cleaning myself of the protoplasmic stink of
rutting, is not, in my view, the route to … organismic totality” (p. 62).
Breuer then addresses his social relationships in general. He asks Nietzsche “can you
deny that all of us are embedded in a social context, a context that historically has facilitated
survival and provided the pleasure inherent in human connectedness.” Nietzsche’s reply is
instructive, “Perhaps such herd pleasure are not for everyone… Thrice have I reached out and
attempted to build a footbridge to others. And thrice I have been betrayed… No, it is not that I
have trusted too little: my mistake was to trust too much. I am not prepared to, cannot afford to,
trust again” (p. 62). Shortly after this exchange, Nietzsche’s initial physical assessment comes to
an end and Breuer is left feeling stunned that his usually successful techniques for building trust
with a patient have been foreclosed upon in such an absolute fashion.
That evening, Breuer has dinner with Freud and consults with him on his patient. They
arrive at a plan to focus on treating Nietzsche’s migraines by reducing stress. The prescription
will be admission to a clinic with plenty of rest and a medical staff on hand to immediately treat
any migraines that occur in their earliest stages. They then begin to discuss how to crack
Nietzsche’s self-imposed isolation so that Breuer might deploy his new “talking cure” to treat his
despair. They find a passage in Nietzsche’s work The Gay Science, which Breuer has been
studying. It reads:
“There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our
friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were
about to step on it, I asked you: ‘Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?’ –
Immediately you did not want to any more; and when I asked you again you remained
silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates
have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when
you now thing of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel” (p. 85).
Breuer and Freud conclude from this that Nietzsche is speaking of power and the aphorism
indicates that Nietzsche “will interpret any expression of positive sentiment as a bid for power”
(p. 85).
In their next meeting, Breuer proposes that Nietzsche enter the Lauzon clinic for
treatment of his migraines. Nietzsche rejects Breuer’s proposal on several grounds, for my
purposes the most important of these is his questioning of Breuer’s motives. When Breuer
presents his proposal, that Nietzsche be admitted to Lauzon clinic, Nietzsche argues he cannot
afford such treatment on his modest pension. Breuer then offers him a free bed and medical care.
He argues strenuously that Breuer’s claim to serve him, to alleviate his pain is false. He declares,
“Such claims have nothing to do with human motivation. They are part of the slave mentality
artfully engineered by priestly propaganda… no one has ever done anything wholly for others.
All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.” (p. 107) and “I will
be used by you! Your pity for me, your charity, your empathy, your techniques to help me, to
manage me – the effects of all these make you stronger at the expense of my strength. I am not
rich enough to afford such help!” (p. 110). Here again we see Nietzsche’s rationalization
defenses against those who would do him a kindness. Breuer is stumped, not a little angry and
retorts, “Don’t you see, here’s a perfect example of why you cannot dissect your own psyche.
Your vision is blurred! ... Because of your own unfortunate problems with friendships you make
bizarre mistakes … You assume your own attitudes are universal and then you try to comprehend
for all mankind what you cannot comprehend about yourself” (p 110-1). Nietzsche leaves
Breuer’s office in huff and promises to return two hours to settle his bill.
That night a Gasthaus owner bearing Nietzsche’s card with Breuer’s name and address on
the opposite side awakens Breuer in the middle of the night. The Gasthaus owner explains that a
guest of his is gravely ill. Breuer immediately goes to Nietzsche’s side and finds him in the
throes of a severe migraine. Additionally, he has taken a near fatal does of chloral hydrate. In the
depths of his pain, Nietzsche mumbles, barely audible, “help me” over and over. Breuer resolves
anew to treat Nietzsche by any means necessary. Breuer returns four hours later and Nietzsche is
some better. He warns Nietzsche that he took a near fatal dose of medication. Nietzsche replies to
him “I don’t share your concern… Am I living? Dying? Who cares? No slot. No slot” (p. 130).
When Breuer again returns to the Gasthaus to check on his patient, Nietzsche is more
lucid and expresses his gratitude but is formal and insists making full payment for Breuer’s
services. He still refuses Breuer’s entreaties to enter the Lauzon clinic for treatment, however, he
does agree to stay in Vienna until Monday so that he may be better fit to travel back to Basel.
When Nietzsche comes to Breuer’s office on Monday morning, Breuer has had an
epiphany, an entirely new strategy to entice Nietzsche to stay in Vienna. He proposes to him that
Nietzsche treat him for despair. Breuer proposes that he “act as physician to your body. I will
concentrate only on your physical symptoms and medications. And you, in return, will act as
physician to my mind, my spirit” (p. 138). Breuer discloses to him his despair, resentment of his
wife and family, fear of aging and death. But only when Breuer states his motivation is entirely
self-serving and challenges Nietzsche, “Are you strong enough to help me?”, does Nietzsche
agree (p.142). The above are only a sample of the interactions present in the text but they are
sufficient for us to make some theoretical deductions.
James Grotstein has theorized “people inherently feel responsible for all that happened to
them” (2000, 45) and that one reason for this belief is the need to possess “a sense of agency for
the self”. The other reason he gives is “the presence of an archaic super-ego that colludes with
and relentlessly intimidates the subject with guilt feelings for all that happens” (2000, 45). This
super-ego is derived from the introjection of the image of hostile, sadistic, demanding and
obligatory wishes, which had been previously expelled into the parent by projective
identification (Klein, 1940, quoted in Grotstein, 2002).
Helmut Walther at the University of Nuremberg, in his lecture on the early life of
Nietzsche, notes that even at the age of 2 his sister Elizabeth describes him as “very passionate,
what he, however, did not like to hear, later on, since he, according to the Nietzsche 'family
tradition', learned to control himself early on”. He asserts that there were “various ‘tranquilizers’
for the passionate, yet still ‘speechless’ child”. Walther names three, the first of which was
music. He reports that when Nietzsche “cried for unknown reasons, his father was asked to
"make music" and instantly, "Fritzchen became as quiet as a mouse, sat upright in his little cart
and did not turn his eyes away from the player". The second and third “tranquilizers” were
described in a letter written in 1846 by Nietzsche’s father,
“Brother Fritz is a wild boy who, at times, can only be brought under control by his
father, since the rod is not far removed from the latter; however, there exists now another,
more powerful helper, that is Christ who has already won the boy's head and heart, so that
he does not want to hear anything else talked about but of 'heile Kist!’”
This is what Walther calls the “Principle of the Pietists”, namely “the child's own will has to be
broken so that the child can later be open to God's will” (2002). This “breaking of the will”
occurred to Nietzsche at a time when he was unable to give symbolic meaning to it. Nietzsche
also suffered the trauma of watching his father suffer a debilitating illness and then losing him at
a young age. Of that experience Nietzsche wrote, “"My beloved father had to endure incredible
pain, but the illness did not want to subside, rather, it grew day by day. Finally, even his eyesight
was lost, and in eternal darkness, he had to endure the rest of his suffering" (quoted in Walther,
2002). Finally, after witnessing the agonizing death of his father, Nietzsche endured another
trauma, the death of his two-year-old brother. Again the subject of responsibility is broached, but
this time it is responsibility for the tragedy befalling another, not himself. Nietzsche recalls,
“I dreamed that I heard funeral organ music from the church. Since I looked what the
cause might be, suddenly, a grave was rising, and my father emerged, in his funeral attire.
He hurried towards the church, and shortly after, he returned with an infant in his arms.
The grave opened up, he went in, and the tombstone closed behind him. Instantly, the
organ music stopped, and I awoke.--The day after this night, suddenly, little Joseph
became ill, had cramps and died within a few hours. Our pain was unspeakable. My
dream had come true completely” (quoted in Walther, 2002).
Grotstein notes that Freud believed “in the unconscious there was no negation. All ideas
and potential impulses live side by side, without conflict” (2000, 68). Therefore, responsibility
and blame could live side by side in the unconscious.
Grotstein writes, “We must first create the image of the object or the event we confront in
order to personalize it as meaningful to us” and that “psychopathology can be understood as
resulting from a significant intersubjective or interpersonal failure that occurs too
overwhelmingly or too suddenly for the infant or patient to have imagine, phantasied, created, or
‘autochthonized’ it beforehand” (2000, 42-3). He goes on to argue, “traumatic memory is not like
other memories that can be repressed. It is ‘remembered’ in the zero dimension; that is, it
becomes… an infinite set (i.e. ’symmetrized’, without boundaries in either space or time and
without end)” (2000, 87). Grotstein notes that “[t]rauma and psychosis are clinical examples of
the predominance of symmetrical relations over asymmetrical ones. In trauma, for instance,
victims generalize the class of the perpetrator so that the person who traumatized them becomes
a whole class [e.g. my father=all men = all mankind]” (2002, 63). We can now compare this
analysis with Breuer’s when he excoriates Nietzsche, “Because of your own unfortunate
problems with friendships you make bizarre mistakes … you assume your own attitudes are
universal and then you try to comprehend for all mankind what you cannot comprehend about
yourself”. Nietzsche cannot accept pity or even compassion because of the shame he feels for
“being responsible” for his abuse and the deaths of his father and brother. Breuer’s mistake here
is to link the attitudes Nietzsche holds about human motivation and trust to his adult experiences
of relationship. In fact, these attitudes can be linked to Nietzsche’s pre-verbal traumas at the
hands of his father and his father’s subsequent abandonment of him into death. This is the
betrayal that haunts Nietzsche.
And what of Nietzsche’s misogyny and puritanical views on sex? While much of it could
be explained by his cultural milieu, I believe we can attribute it in part to a similar mechanism as
that which is developed above. Durant comments,
“The early death of his father left him a victim to the holy women of the household, who
petted him into an almost feminine delicacy and sensibility… It was his delight to seclude
himself and read the Bible, or to read it to others so feelingly as to bring tears to their
eyes. But there was a hidden nervous stoicism and pride him…all his life long he was to
seek physical and intellectual means of hardening himself into an idealized masculinity”
(1953, 403).
Breuer writes in one of his “case notes” regarding Nietzsche,
“In most aspects of human relatedness he has prodigious blind spots. But when it comes
to the subject of women, he is barbaric, hardly human. No matter who the woman or what
the situation, his response is predictable: the woman is predatory and scheming. And his
advice about women is equally predictable: blame them, punish them! Oh yes, one other
mode – avoid them!” (Yalom, 1992, 168).
Nietzsche here could be reacting to rage at the women in his early life who raised him and whom
he partially blames for the tragedies that befell him. Because those women “betrayed” him by not
protecting him from the vicissitudes of life, all women are “predatory and scheming”.
It is not uncommon for trauma victims to re-enact their traumas with other perpetrators,
unconsciously selecting others who will cooperate with their re-enactment. This brings up the
interesting possibility that in each of the adult relationships where Nietzsche felt betrayed he is in
reality re-enacting this early traumatic relationship. His rationalizations about power are about
his powerlessness in the face of his father’s abuse and his need to assert self-agency. Bromberg
notes that the role of the psychotherapist in these situations is to “rebuild faith in self-other
experience” (2006, 199). Unfortunately, Breuer himself has been drawn into the Nietzsche’s
unconscious re-enactment; he is lying to Nietzsche the entire time.
PSYCHOGENIC ILLNESS
When Breuer meets with Nietzsche he again to presents his plan to admit him to a clinic
and treat his migraines by treating his stress. There is an interesting exchange during this meeting
that I alluded to previously. Breuer discusses the research linking migraines with general levels
of stress. Nietzsche responds by asking if Breuer’s position implies that the patient chooses his
illness. This leads Breuer to ask the question if Nietzsche profits from his illness. Nietzsche
admits that he does. His illness has prevented him from reading his peers in philosophy, which he
considers a boon; his illness has emancipated him from his teaching duties at Basel; it resulted in
his release from military service and has confronted him with the actuality of death which caused
him to work without rest and gave him “perspective and courage” to be himself (p. 96-7). I
believe in the first three we again see the issue of relationships and Nietzsche’s self-imposed
isolation from most human contact. It is generally accepted these days that most cases of
migraines are psychogenic and in Nietzsche’s case it has served him to be ill. The last “blessing”
of his migraines Nietzsche names also points to a possible psychogenic cause.
Thomas Ogden postulates the existence of a primitive mode of experience which he calls
the “autistic-contiguous”. Experience in this mode is dominated by “[s]ensory contiguity of skin
surface, along with the elements of rhythmicity” (1989, 52). Like the more familiar Paranoid-
Schizoid and Depressive dialectic, the autistic-contiguous mode operates concurrently with the
other two modes of experience. Anxiety in this mode of experience is associated with “the
disruption of sensory cohesion and boundedness” (1989. 67). I believe that Ogden’s construct of
the autistic-contiguous position may lend itself to a new way of exploring the phenomena of
psychogenic illness. Nietzsche lived the life of an ascetic in the realm of ideas. He consciously
denied himself even the most basic of comforts. His psyche forced him to pay attention to it. A
person is never more aware of their body than when they are in pain.
Ogden offers yet another insight, which I believe, is applicable to Nietzsche’s case. He
notes,
“The fact that one’s experience of self is powerfully rooted in the interplay of the sensory
and the symbolic is often highly visible in psychoanalytic work with teachers and students of
linguistics. These patients often experience anxiety states bordering on panic in association with
the feeling that they are dissolving as they dismantle the binding power of language” (1989, 81).
Nietzsche was a philologist, at the time a new and controversial discipline. He was at the very
forefront of recognizing the social construction of language. Today, it is far more accepted that
words have only the meanings that we give them. In Nietzsche’s day this was a revolutionary
thought.
There is yet a third possibility we might consider. Nietzsche’s headaches first became
apparent at the age of 12. Walther attributes them to eye strain and notes that missed some school
as a result (2002). Psychosomatic illness can be a learned response. Winnicott noted that appetite
disorders were used a defense against anxiety and “by means of his symptoms he has managed to
be a more or less lovable and social being” (1958, 40). The individual receives attention and
approval for being ill and unconsciously seeks to recreate the experience. So while Nietzsche
was learning to get attention and compassion for his illnesses, he was also beginning to engage in
the study of language and dismantling it’s binding power over experience. There is a possible
corollary here with his conscious rejection of pity and compassion as an adult. As Jung has
argued, the unconscious is often compensatory to the conscious. That which Nietzsche could not
tolerate consciously, expressed itself somatically through his illness.
DISASSOCIATION
Two weeks after his first meeting with Miss Salome, Breuer meets with Nietzsche for the
first time in his Vienna office. Nietzsche appears polite and cooperative with Breuer’s question
regarding his physical health. Breuer is struck by the disconnect between Nietzsche’s personal
demeanor and the strident tone of his writings. This is only the first of many such references to
Nietzsche’s “dual personality”. There is the polite, quiet scholar who lives the life of an ascetic
and the firebrand preacher of self-overcoming and autonomy who appears in his books.
Howell and Bromberg have convincingly argued for the ubiquitous nature of
disassociative phenomena. Bromberg writes, “Self states are what the mind comprises.
Dissociation is what the mind does. The relationship between self-states and dissociation is what
the mind is” (2006, 2). Howell makes the case that
“[P]roblematic dissociation does not proceed from trauma alone. It encompasses not only
the shattered self of posttraumatic severed connections, but also more general failures of
integration. Poor psychological integration proceeds from family environments that are
chaotic, abusive, neglectful, or all three” (2005, 17).
Although disassociation need not be a result of trauma, as Howell and Bromberg argue, we have
substantial evidence of trauma in the early childhood of Nietzsche as well as in adulthood. His
abuse, the death of his father and his brother, his experience during the Franco-Prussian war, all
point to the strong possibility of pathological dissociative processes. Bromberg observes, “To the
degree that the attachment bond, and thus core self-continuity, was compromised by the patient’s
particular ‘gorilla’, that gorilla lives out its existence as a not me experience” (2006, 73) and
earlier in the same book argued,

The effect of traumatic experience is that the person surrenders self-state coherence to
protect self-continuity. When the illusion of unity is so dangerous to self-continuity that
coherence cannot be maintained, experience that is disjunctive with the ongoing self-state
that organizes core identity is denied simultaneous access to consciousness. The person
become unable to hold conflicting ways of seeing himself vis-à-vis his objects within a
single experiential state long enough to feel the subjective pull of opposing affects and
dissonant self-perceptions as a state of mind that can be take as an object of self-
reflection. As a consequence, inharmonious contents of the mind (affects, wishes, beliefs,
etc.) are not readily accessible to self-observation, and the person tends to experience his
immediate subjective experience as truth” (68).
Nietzsche’s rage at his father for his abuse and his abandonment and at his mother for her
inability to protect him was his “gorilla”, it was incompatible with the expectations and self-
identity he was operating under and constructing, so they were split off. Walther notes that
Nietzsche was “’serious’ and ‘pensive’" at a young age and that “already in his childhood can we
encounter that peculiar trait of Nietzsche that can be observed in him throughout his life: to adopt
a formal behavior--in his writings, his striving for form, of which he, as we will soon see, already
was aware very early. To Nietzsche, both in his life and in his writing, form served him as a
hideout, protective shield and effective means, at the same time” (2002). The rage in his writing
against Christianity, European society and morality is rage against his father who preached the
love of Christ from the pulpit but did not “spare the rod”.
The splitting of the self is a newer discussion in the psychoanalytic literature. Classically
it was assumed that the psyche split the object. Ogden summarizes the classical position,
“The schizoid patient to a large degree has retreated from the object relations with the
whole external objects into an internal world comprised of conscious and unconscious
relations to internal object. These phantasied object relations are conducted in a realm of
omnipotent thought with heavy reliance on spitting and projective identification as modes
of defense. It is a world of heroes and villains, of persecutors and victims; a work in
which object ties are often addictive in nature, the loved objects are tantalizing and
unattainable a work in which introjects are omniscient and conduct unrelentingly critical
narratives of one’s phantasied and actual behavior. For this individual, external objects
are so thoroughly eclipsed by transference projections of his internal object world that the
qualities of the external objects are bare discernible” (1989, 84-5).
This is apparent in Nietzsche. He often operates in a paranoid-schizoid mode with regard to his
external objects. The people in his life, such as Richard Wagner, his wife Cosmia or Lou Salome,
are either idealized or vilified. There is no in-between; they are identified with one symmetry or
the other.
THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE TREATMENT
The treatment of Nietzsche / Breuer proceeds in earnest from this point. Nietzsche enters
the Lauzon clinic under the pseudonym Eckhart Mueller and meets with Breuer each day. They
face the challenge of creating, from scratch; an entirely new treatment modality. However, they
do draw on the experience Breuer gained from working with ‘Anna O.’. They use a method
which Breuer calls “chimney sweeping”, in actuality, free association.
Breuer’s treatment methods are certainly unorthodox by contemporary standards of
psychoanalytic praxis but there are at least two issues raised in their process that are relevant to
contemporary clinicians.
1. The development of psychoanalytic praxis from a classical model to a relational

model.
2. Negotiating the transference – countertransference relationship.
The first issue is raised in the earliest sessions between Breuer and Nietzsche when
Breuer’s complains that Nietzsche fails to “join with me in a down-to-earth manner” (Yalom,
1992, 207). Nietzsche’s style at this point is to preach more than to counsel. He gives Breuer
abstract philosophical constructs that Breuer cannot use. Breuer argues, “there is a gulf – a huge
gulf – between knowing something intellectually and knowing it emotionally… This is where
philosophy falls short. Teaching philosophy and using it in life are very different undertakings”
(p. 209).
Martha Stark has created a taxonomy of psychoanalytic praxis which is a useful guide for
examining the various “modes of therapeutic action”. She has divided the various modes into 3
paradigms, which she calls simply models 1, 2 and 3. She notes that the models are inter-
dependent – model 1 is dependent on a pre-existence of an empathic relationship; model 2 will
contain interpretative elements as well as empathic relating and model 3 depends on the
empathic relationship and will typically involves interpretative action as well (Stark, 2000).
The earliest psychoanalysts learned from Freud their role was to be a “mirror” for the
patient’s transference neurosis. To this end, they should be as invisible as a person as possible.
Their job was to interpret for the patient. They were regarded as the experts to whom their
patient came for “truth” about themselves. The counter-transference was regarded as an
impediment from the therapist’s objectivity which would be resolved if the therapist himself had
sufficient analysis. Psychopathology was viewed as existing strictly within the intrapsychic
conflicts of the patient. Therefore, Stark calls this a “one person psychology”. It is a very
hierarchical and patriarchal model with a typically modern, Gnostic flavor. This model is a
structural conflict model, which primarily seeks to strengthen the ego through the process of
abreaction (Stark, 2000).
By the middle of the 20th century a new structural deficit model gained acceptance,
chiefly through the work of the self-psychologists, which Stark calls model 2. The model
emphasized the empathic relationship between the patient and therapist and used Winnicott’s
notion of a “good-enough mother”. They viewed the role of the therapist as that of an adjunct the
self of the patients (a selfobject). The focus for psychopathology in the patient began to shift to
interpersonal dysfunction rooted in early childhood experience. Therefore a better understanding
of very early psychic development became critical. Winnicott theorized that the depressive
position was an achievement attained by the experience of “being held by a mother who adapts
to ego needs” (1953, 263). The mother through regulation of the environment prevents
unnecessary impingement on the infant’s state of “going-on-being”. In later stages the mother
processes the infants affects that it cannot and returns them to it in a tolerable form through the
cyclical process of projective identification and introjection. In both cases, the mother’s psyche
makes up for the structural deficits of the infants psyche (1953). This was taken a model for
psychotherapy, where the therapist’s self, in the role of “good-enough mother”, would allow the
patient to have a “corrective experience”. Therefore they called this a “deficiency-compensation”
model. The self-psychologists emphasized the absence of good objects in the psyche of the
patient. The flow of affects was regarded as a one-way process, with the healthy psyche of the
therapist providing the necessary components for the deficient psyche of the patient. Therefore,
Stark calls this “a one and ½ person psychology”. What was primarily required of the therapist
was empathic listening and relating (Stark, 2000).
Contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy has moved into a understanding of
therapeutic process as intersubjective, which Stark calls model 3. The intersubjective model
emphasis the relationship created by the interaction of the subjectivity of the patient and the
subjectivity of the therapist. Counter-transference is no longer viewed as an impediment to the
psychotherapeutic process but as a crucial diagnostic tool. Intersubjective theorists have
elaborated on Wilfred Bion’s container-contained paradigm and view the exchange of affects
between therapist and patient as a two-way process. Therefore Stark calls this a “two person
psychology”. She writes,
“Model 3 addresses itself specifically to the force filed created by the patient in an effort
to draw the therapist into participating in ways specifically determined by the patient’s
early-on history – ways the patient needs the therapist to participate if she (the patient) is
ever to have a chance to master her internal demons” (2000, xix).
Bion theorized that in the therapist-patient dyad the therapeutic process was a co-created
experience of ‘O’ (ineffable reality). The therapist must forgo “memory and desire” and allow
the experience to unfold. Bion also stresses, as Winnicott did with his “good-enough” mother, the
therapist will fail the patient and these failures are necessary for growth (1965). I understand this
in terms one of my supervisors used to use, “trust the process”.
Patrick Casement advocated that the therapist “provide a freedom for patients to use us in
whatever ways belong to their own experience” (1985, 195). When the therapist allows
him/herself to be led by the patient, s/he will eventually become “able to discover for herself the
paradox of transference, becoming able to explore the recurring sense of sameness within a
growing awareness of difference in the analytic relationship” (1985, 268). Relational (Model 3)
therapists stress the presence of bad object (pathological introjects) in the the psyche of the
patient. Through the psychotherapeutic process, these introjects are “detoxified”. (Stark, 2000).
This development of the understanding of the psychotherapeutic process parallels the
development of Nietzsche and Breuer’s relationship. They begin as doctor – patient and Breuer
has the notion that he (the expert) will treat Nietzsche’s illness. His model is his treatment of
Anna O., which he describes as being dependent on identifying the “cause” of her hysterical
symptoms. “Cause” has the connation of something objective that can be discovered and
imparted as knowledge to another. As their relationship progress, Nietzsche and Breuer find it is
not the “cause” of the symptom that must be identified, but the “meaning” of the symptom.
Meaning is always co-created in relationship with another. In the end of their time together,
Nietzsche says to Breuer, “I’ve always dreamed of a friendship in which two people join together
to attain some higher ideal. And here, now, it has arrived! You and I have joined together
precisely in such a way! We’ve participated in the other’s self-overcoming (Yalom, 1992, 300).
The second issue I would like to examine, which appears in Nietzsche and Breuer’s
counseling relationship is that of negotiating the transference-countertransference. As their
relationship progresses, Breuer finds himself experiencing the transference neurosis in regard to
Nietzsche. Breuer writes in his case notes,
“In the future … this talking treatment could be common place… Just as surgeons must
first learn anatomy, the future “Angst doctor” must first understand the relationship
between the one who counsels and the one who is counseled… I used to be critical of
Nietzsche, but no longer. On the contrary, I now cherish his every word and, day by day,
grow more convinced that he can help me… I used to compete with him, to devise chess
traps for him. No longer! His insight is extraordinary. His intellect soars. I gaze at him as
a hen at a hawk. Do I revere him too much! Do I want him to soar above me?” (Yalom,
1992, 230).
“Understanding the relationship between the one who counsels and the one who is
counseled” has been a gradual process in psychoanalytic thought. As was mentioned above, early
psychoanalysts viewed the transference phenomena as a necessary process that allowed the
intrapsychic conflicts to play themselves out on the mirror of the analyst. Counter-transference
was to be avoided and was a sign the analyst needed more therapy himself. Self-psychologists
viewed the counter-transference with suspicion as well. It was potentially an impediment to their
empathic connection with the patient and interfered with their ability to make objective
interpretations for the patient.
Relational (Model 3) therapists have begun to understand the therapeutic relationship
differently and to use the counter-transference in a totally new way. Thomas Ogden formulated
the concept the creation of an analytic third through a matrix of the mutual projective
identification. He argued,
“Projective identification can be understood only in terms of a mutually creating,

negating and preserving dialectic of subjects, each of who allows himself to be
‘subjugated’ by the other, a third subject (the subject of projective identification)… The
analytic process, if successful, involves the reappropriation of the individual
subjectivities of analyst and analyzand, which have been transformed through their
experience of (in) the newly created analytic third” (Ogden, 1994, 100-1).
What this means for psychoanalytic practice is “no thought, feeling, or sensation can be
considered to be the same as it was or will be outside of the context of the specific (and
continually shifting) intersubjectivity created by the analyst and analyzand” (Ogden, 1994, 73-4).
Under this construct, far from being an impediment to analysis, the counter-transference, gives
the analyst the “inside tract” on what disavowed otherwise unconscious affects and thoughts of
the patient! As Ogden writes, “a view of the analyst’s experience that dismisses this category [the
countertransference] of clinical fact leads the analyst to diminish (or ignore) the significance of a
great deal (in some instances, the majority) of his experience with the analyzand” (p. 83). This
understanding however, requires a significant degree of self-awareness on the part of the
therapist. S/He must at all times remain in touch with what s/he is feeling and thinking and be
prepared to share that, appropriately, as part of his interpretations for the patient. The implication
for the therapist is not therefore that s/he needs less personal therapy, but more! It would
unreasonable to suppose that a therapist must remain in therapy him/herself during the entire
time they are in practice but certainly it would be wise to undertake regular “courses” of therapy
in order that s/he maybe a more finely tuned instrument at the service of his/her patients.
The new emphasis on dissociative phenomena in psychoanalytic thought has led to still
further developments in this concept of intersubjectivity. Bromberg has written that, given the
ubiquity of disassociation, it is the therapist’s task “to allow himself slowly to discover all her
selves or self-states and to form relationships with each, while honoring that each hold its own
truth its own reality, and its own treatment agenda, which must be discovered and taken
seriously” (2006, 109.) Bromberg has postulated the patient’s enactments are his/her “effort[s] to
negotiate unfinished business in those areas of selfhood where…affect regulation was not
successful enough to allow further self-development at the level of symbolic processing by
thought and language”(181) and therefore the “analyst’s self-revelation is… a necessary part of
the clinical process if the therapeutic efficacy of analytic treatment is to most enduring and far-
reaching” (132). Enactments are often “sub-symbolic” experiences that are communicated
through the counter-transference. He argues that these experiences are not the analyst’s “personal
property” and it is the therapist duty to aid the patient, through his/her own self-disclosure, in
representing these experiences symbolically. He writes, “a main part of the analyst’s job is to
find words to get his own experience of enacted communication out on the table in a manner that
facilitates the patient’s ability to do the same” (137). Thus, Bion’s concept of “transformations of
O to K” is completed by the therapist self-disclosure. Contra Bion though, Bromberg argues that
it is the process that must lead the content, “it is the affective aliveness that is generated by
mutual spontaneity in a human interaction that hold it together as part of a relational analytic
process” (138).
THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION
Sometime in the first millennium B.C. an anonymous psalmist penned the words, “The
fool hath said in his heart: There is no God” (Ps 13:1b). Atheism is today a largely acceptable
position and many of the thinkers whose ideas have shaped the modern age were avowed
atheists, including Friedrich Nietzsche. I argue however, that both psychologically and
theologically; atheism is not only unwise but also impossible. It is informative to note that
although atheism has been around as long as we know of, it has never meant what it is assumed
to mean today. Both Socrates of classical Greece and Christians of ancient Rome were
prosecuted and executed for “atheism”, but obviously a Christian is a theist and though it’s a
more debatable assertion, Socrates was a theist as well. What Socrates and the ancient Christians
were guilty of was not worshipping the gods of their culture and society. It was not that they did
not worship any god; it was rather, they did not worship the right gods.
The first commandment given to Moses on Mt. Sinai is against idolatry. The
commandment precedes all the others because the others are dependent on it, both theologically
and psychologically. St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica demonstrates that it is necessary
that God is the efficient cause of all beings:
“It must be said that every being in any way existing is from God. For whatever is found
in anything by participation, must be caused in it by that to which it belongs essentially,
as iron becomes ignited by fire. Now it has been shown above (Question 3, Article 4)
when treating of the divine simplicity that God is the essentially self-subsisting Being;
and also it was shown (11, 3,4) that subsisting being must be one; as, if whiteness were
self-subsisting, it would be one, since whiteness is multiplied by its recipients. Therefore
all beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation.
Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of
being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses
being most perfectly.” (Prima Pars, Q. 44, ad 1)
He also shows that God is the final cause of all beings:
“Every agent acts for an end: otherwise one thing would not follow more than another
from the action of the agent, unless it were by chance. Now the end of the agent and of
the patient considered as such is the same, but in a different way respectively. For the
impression which the agent intends to produce, and which the patient intends to receive,
are one and the same. Some things, however, are both agent and patient at the same time:
these are imperfect agents, and to these it belongs to intend, even while acting, the
acquisition of something. But it does not belong to the First Agent, Who is agent only, to
act for the acquisition of some end; He intends only to communicate His perfection,
which is His goodness; while every creature intends to acquire its own perfection, which
is the likeness of the divine perfection and goodness. Therefore the divine goodness is the
end of all things.” (Prima Pars, Q. 44, ad 4)
One modern objection is voiced within the same above section. The objection as St. Thomas
wrote it was “Further, all things desire their end. But all things do not desire God, for all do not
even know Him. Therefore God is not the end of all things.” His reply is as relevant today as it
was in the 13th century, “All things desire God as their end, when they desire some good thing,
whether this desire be intellectual or sensible, or natural, i.e. without knowledge; because
nothing is good and desirable except forasmuch as it participates in the likeness to God.”
Therefore it is part of our very nature to seek God, as St. Augustine famously wrote, “Our hearts
were made for you, O’ Lord, and they are restless til they rest in Thee” (Confessions, I). This
statement and this idea have always been at the very heart of my theological anthropology.
The modern atheist asserts he/she does not believe in any god but this assertion, is a
distinctively modern and Western phenomenon. I contend it is false. He/she may not worship the
god of his/her society but all beings worship a god, whether they know it or not. It is my
contention that modern atheists are in the same boat, however, unlike the Christians of ancient
Rome, they are not consciously aware of the object of their faith. They have imbibed the
Christian teaching that there is no other God and therefore when the do not worship Him, they
mistakenly believe they worship no god at all. I contend that they have turned to idols –
ideologies and myths most often – communism, liberalism, Darwinism, Freudianism - these are
modern idols to which many turn for answers to the questions that matter the most. Sadly,
making anything god, other than God is as disastrous to the psyche as it is to the soul.
The modern world has seen many attempts to make God irrelevant to human life.
Immanuel Kant attempted to construct a morality without God; Karl Marx a society and a theory
of history without God; Darwin an origin of man and other living creatures; Freud a psychology
without God and Nietzsche a meaning to life without God. Though not all were conscious of
what they were building, they all contributed to the increasing “secularity” of the world. Milbank
has contended that secularism itself is a religion, specifically a theodicy (2006). This theodicy is
a house of cards built on a number of flimsy assertions and ultimately on the error that man has a
natura pura and is not dependent on God.
John Milbank has argued that the creation of the “secular”, whether as a category of
political or intellectual life, was imagined into being sometime during the Renaissance. It has as
its foundation the univocal ontology of Bl. Duns Scotus. This ontology, he argues, disconnects
the world from God. God becomes something “over there” while we and the world exist “over
here” and being is one thing, which God merely has more of. God must be separated from His
creation before one can think into being a society, a biology, a psychology or an ethic that does
not include Him. It is, of course, logically impossible to prove the non-existence of God, just as
it is logically impossible to prove the non-existence of any thing. Atheism stems from not from a
rational examination of the evidence and the arguments but from an assumption that is basic to a
person’s worldview. The zeitgeist to explain all things without reference to God has dominated
the modern age and today to take God seriously as a scholar is to be relegated to the fringes of
academic discourse. As Paul Vitz has noted, “there seems to be a widespread assumption,
throughout much of intellectual community, that belief in God is based on all kinds of irrational,
immature needs and wishes, where as atheism or skepticism flows from a rational, grown-up, no-
nonsense view of things as they really are” (1999, xiv). It is interesting to note that several of the
most prominent atheists have acknowledged the need, whether sociological or psychological for
belief in God and the practice of religion. Most of their arguments have centered around
morality, as Dostoevsky wrote, “If God is dead, everything is permitted”. It would seem here that
they were guilty of an intellectual elitism, we must preserve a belief in god to control the
behavior of the great unwashed but the intelligent and educated must pay obescience to the
zeitgeist.
The attitude that religious faith stems from ignorance and skepticism from enlightenment
is a 180 turn from the position held in the Western world since the beginnings of Christianity. For
the Christians of the first millennium and the Middle Ages, faith was the light of reason. St.
Thomas wrote,
“Just as bodily blindness is the privation of the principle of bodily sight, so

blindness of mind is the privation of the principle of mental or intellectual sight. Now this
has a threefold principle. One is the light of natural reason, which light, since it pertains
to the species of the rational soul, is never forfeit from the soul, and yet, at times, it is
prevented from exercising its proper act, through being hindered by the lower powers
which the human intellect needs in order to understand, for instance in the case of
imbeciles and madmen, as stated in I, 84, 7,8.
Another principle of intellectual sight is a certain habitual light superadded to the natural
light of reason, which light is sometimes forfeit from the soul. This privation is blindness, and is
a punishment, in so far as the privation of the light of grace is a punishment. Hence it is written
concerning some (Wisdom 2:21): "Their own malice blinded them."
A third principle of intellectual sight is an intelligible principle, through which a man
understands other things; to which principle a man may attend or not attend. That he does not
attend thereto happens in two ways. Sometimes it is due to the fact that a man's will is
deliberately turned away from the consideration of that principle, according to Psalm 35:4, "He
would not understand, that he might do well": whereas sometimes it is due to the mind being
more busy about things which it loves more, so as to be hindered thereby from considering this
principle, according to Psalm 57:9, "Fire," i.e. of concupiscence, "hath fallen on them and they
shall not see the sun." On either of these ways blindness of mind is a sin.” (Summa Theologica,
II-II, Q. 15, ad 1).
For the Christian of the Middle Ages, all knowledge was a path to knowledge of God. There was
a colloquial saying among the theologians of the period, “God has written two books, the Bible
and the world, we should read both”.
It is a failure of object relations psychology to take God seriously. With a few exceptions,
it tends towards the same naturalistic explanations as other bodies of psychological theory. God
and supernatural experience are to be explained away by constructs such as “the unthought
known” (Christopher Bollas). Where mystical experience is permitted, there is an extreme
epistemological skepticism, rooted in Kantianism. They seem to have forgotten that God has
spoken to humanity, revealed Himself in Christ Jesus and continues to speak through the Holy
Spirit. There are additional issues of epistemology that are too complex to discuss in their
entirety here. There is excellent discussion of them in John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock’s
book Truth in Aquinas for the interested reader.
Dr. Paul Vitz has studied the question of atheism psychologically. It is his contention that
Freud’s “projection theory” of God, i.e. God is a projection of our need for the security of an
omnipotent father figure, fails as an explanation for theism but is a fine argument for atheism. It
is his thesis that atheism is related to “disappointment in and resentment of his own father”
(1999, 16). The theory is sound theologically, the apostle writes, “For this cause I bow my knees
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Eph
3:14-15). In other words, a father participates in the fatherhood of God.
He examines the lives of 29 prominent atheists and 21 prominent apologist for theism (18
Christian, 2 Jewish) over the last few hundred years, with particular attention to the relationship
they had with their earthly father. In the overwhelming number of cases Vitz’s thesis is
supported. The atheists, with the exception of 2, all had abusive or no relationship with their
father. The theists with one, debatable exception (Soren Kierkegaard), all had strong and close
relationships with their fathers (Vitz, 1999).
Friedrich Nietzsche as was mentioned many times in the preceding pages, was one of the
atheists who, after the age of 4, had no relationship to his father and was severely traumatized by
both his abuse while he was alive and by his untimely and painful death. Vitz notes, as I have, it
is common for young children to view death as a choice and react with anger towards the parent
who has died. This is particularly true, with regard to the father, for young boys ages 3-5. There
are two psychological reasons for this. First, there is the necessary resolution of the Oedipus
complex. The young man, to successfully navigate this stage of development, must identify with
the father. Secondly there is the social reality that the first 2 years are dominated by the
relationship of the child to the mother and after age 5, the child will enter school and peer
relationships will begin to take precedence. Also beyond the age of 7 or so, the child begins to
understand intellectually that death is not a choice and is less likely to blame the offending
parent. The atheist, really an “anti-theist”, transfers this anger at the father to the Father. (Vitz,
1999).
There is certainly room to debate Vitz’s thesis but it also certainly warrants more research
and discussion in psychoanalytic thought. There are certainly more, and simpler, causes of the
modern phenomenon of atheism. Some experience abuse at the hand of a religious figure and for
this cause turn away from God. It also very possible, in our culture, to absorb the zeitgeist that
religious faith is irrational and atheism is rational with little reflective thought and to become an
atheist by default. However, the first are better termed “anti-theists” for they do not simply
disbelieve, they are angry with God. The second, typically unconsciously pursue one idol or
another. They turn to ideologies and mythologies for their answers. Nietzsche was both an atheist
of the type described by Vitz and of the “anti-theist” type, for he suffered abuse and
abandonment by his father, who was also a figure of the Christian religion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bion, W. (1965). Transformations. London: H. Karnac Ltd.

Bromberg, Philip M. (2006). Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic
Press.
Casement, Patrick (1985). Learning from the Patient. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Durant, Will. (1953). Friedrich Nietzsche. In The Story of Philosophy (pp. 401-447). New York,
NY: Pocket Books.
Grotstein, James S. (2000) Who is the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream?. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic
Press.
Howell, Elizabeth F. (2005). The Dissociative Mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Kaufmann, Walter. (1974). Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th Ed. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
------------------------- (1982) The Portable Nietzsche. (Walter Kaufmann, Trans. & Ed.). New
York, NY Penguin Books.
Milbank, John. (2006). Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. 2nd Ed. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1967). Ecce Homo: Why I am a Destiny. (Walter Kaufmann, Trans.).
Retrieved Dec. 12, 2008, from http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/eh16.htm.
Ogden, Thomas. (1989). The Primitive Edge of Experience. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
------------------- (1994). Subjects of Analysis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Stark, Martha. (2000). Modes of Therapeutic Action. North Bergen, NJ: Book-Mart Press.
Vitz, Paul. (1999). Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. Dallas, TX: Spence
Publishing.
Walther, Helmut (2002). The Young Nietzsche. Retrieved on 12/15/08 from
http://www.virtusens.de/walther/djn_e.htm.
Wicks, Robert. (2008). "Friedrich Nietzsche". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward
N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved Dec. 12, 2008, from
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/nietzsche/.
Winnicott, D.W. (1958). Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis: Collected Papers. New York,
NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Yalom, Irvin D. (1992). When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession. New York, NY:
HarperCollins.

Analysis of An Ubermensch

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Kevin Vail Page 1 1/4/2009

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ ................... 0

suffered from a variety of psychopathologies. In his work of psychological fiction, When

intellect and unquestionable genius, he was “human, all too human”.

implications of Nietzsche’s strident atheism.

THE LIFE OF NIETZSCHE

Schulpforta (Wicks, 2008). He performed well academically at Schulpforta, particularly in

Leipzig (Kaufmann, 1974).

Nietzsche was appointed professor of Philology at Basel, on the recommendation of

Ritschl, in his letter of recommendation wrote of Nietzsche:

exchanged over the years.

We cannot discuss Nietzsche’s relationships without mentioning his critically important

residing in any place longer than several months at a time” (2008).

destroying or forging Nietzsche’s correspondences, to forward her anti-Semitic agenda. It was

women on which to lavish his affections.

INTRODUCTION TO WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT

struggles, but I will focus on Nietzsche.

systematization of existential practice in his magisterial work Existential Psychotherapy. In this

2. Meaning vs. Meaninglessness

pregnant with Breuer’s child.

three I will discuss in detail:

1. Nietzsche’s difficulty in relating to others and participating in healthy adult

The story of their “counseling” relationship is a story about the development of

negotiating the transference – countertransference in any psychotherapy.

THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE PATIENT

PATIENT’S DIFFICULTY IN RELATING TO OTHERS.

“Nietzsche is extraordinarily sensitive to issues of power. He would refuse to engage in

pleasure followed by hours of self-loathing of cleaning myself of the protoplasmic stink of

rutting, is not, in my view, the route to … organismic totality” (p. 62).

with a patient have been foreclosed upon in such an absolute fashion.

sufficient for us to make some theoretical deductions.

identification (Klein, 1940, quoted in Grotstein, 2002).

described in a letter written in 1846 by Nietzsche’s father,

and blame could live side by side in the unconscious.

order to personalize it as meaningful to us” and that “psychopathology can be understood as

resulting from a significant intersubjective or interpersonal failure that occurs too

betrayal that haunts Nietzsche.

that which is developed above. Durant comments,

unconscious re-enactment; he is lying to Nietzsche the entire time.

of his migraines Nietzsche names also points to a possible psychogenic cause.

the “autistic-contiguous”. Experience in this mode is dominated by “[s]ensory contiguity of skin

tolerate consciously, expressed itself somatically through his illness.

earlier in the same book argued,

THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE TREATMENT

which Breuer calls “chimney sweeping”, in actuality, free association.

Breuer’s treatment methods are certainly unorthodox by contemporary standards of

1. The development of psychoanalytic praxis from a classical model to a relational

dependent – model 1 is dependent on a pre-existence of an empathic relationship; model 2 will

abreaction (Stark, 2000).

interpersonal dysfunction rooted in early childhood experience. Therefore a better understanding

patient to have a “corrective experience”. Therefore they called this a “deficiency-compensation”

was empathic listening and relating (Stark, 2000).

Contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy has moved into a understanding of

subjectivity of the therapist. Counter-transference is no longer viewed as an impediment to the

psychotherapeutic process but as a crucial diagnostic tool. Intersubjective theorists have

psychology”. She writes,

in terms one of my supervisors used to use, “trust the process”.

This development of the understanding of the psychotherapeutic process parallels the

counseling relationship is that of negotiating the transference-countertransference. As their

Nietzsche. Breuer writes in his case notes,

interpretations for the patient.

Relational (Model 3) therapists have begun to understand the therapeutic relationship

“Projective identification can be understood only in terms of a mutually creating,