When Nietzsche Wept

by Irvin D. Yalom

  So he wrote letters of farewell to his closest friends: to Freud, Ernst Fleishl, and Franz Brentano. To each he described his motivations for leaving while acknowledging that these reasons, sketched in a brief letter, might seem insufficient or incomprehensible. “Trust me,” he urged each, “this is not a frivolous act. I have significant grounds for my actions, all of which I shall reveal to you at a later date.” Toward Fleishl, his pathologist friend who had seriously infected himself while dissecting a cadaver, Breuer felt particular guilt: for years he had offered him medical and psychological support and now would be removing it. He also felt guilty toward Freud, who depended on him not only for friendship and professional advice but also for financial support. Even though Sig was fond of Mathilde, Breuer hoped that, in time, he would understand and forgive his decision. To his letter, Breuer added a separate note officially canceling all of Freud’s debts to the Breuers.

  He wept as he descended the stairs of Backerstrasse 7 for the last time. While he waited for the district Dientsmann to fetch Fischmann, he meditated on the brass plaque by the front door: DOCTOR JOSEF BREUER, CONSULTANT—SECOND FLOOR. The plaque would not be there when he next visited Vienna. Nor would his office. Oh, the granite and bricks and the second floor would be there, but they would no longer be his bricks; his office would soon lose the odor of his existence. He had experienced the same feeling of dislocation whenever he had visited his childhood home—the small house which reeked of both intense familiarity and the most painful indifference. It housed another struggling family, perhaps another boy of great promise who many years hence might grow up to be a physician.

  But he, Josef, was not necessary: he would be forgotten, his place swallowed by time and the existence of others. He would die sometime in the next ten to twenty years. And he would die alone: no matter the companionship, he thought, one always dies alone.

  He cheered himself with the thought that if man is alone and necessity an illusion, then he is free! Yet as he boarded his fiacre, his cheer gave way to a sense of oppression. He looked at the other apartments on the street. Was he being watched? Were his neighbors staring out of every window? Surely they must be aware of this momentous event taking place! Would they know tomorrow? Would Mathilde, assisted by her sisters and her mother, throw his clothes into the street? He had heard of angry wives doing that.

  His first stop was Max’s home. Max was expecting him because, the day before, immediately after his cemetery discussion with Nietzsche, Breuer had confided in him his decision to leave his life in Vienna and had asked him to handle Mathilde’s financial affairs.

  Again, Max strenuously attempted to dissuade him from this impetuous and ruinous course of action. To no avail; Breuer was resolute. Finally Max tired and appeared resigned to his brother-in-law’s decision. For an hour the two men huddled over the file of the family financial records. When Breuer prepared to leave, however, Max suddenly stood up and blocked the doorway with his huge body. For a moment, especially when Max spread his arms, Breuer feared an attempt to restrain him physically. But Max simply wanted to embrace him. His voice broke as he croaked, “So, it’s no chess tonight? My life will never be the same, Josef. I’ll miss you horribly. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  Too overcome to respond in words, Breuer hugged Max and quickly left the house. In the fiacre, he instructed Fischmann to drive him to the train station and, just before they arrived, told him that he was off on a very long trip. He gave him two months’ wages and promised to contact him when he returned to Vienna.

  As he waited to board the train, Breuer scolded himself for not telling Fischmann that he would never be returning. “To treat him so casually—how could you? After ten years together?” Then he pardoned himself. There was only so much he could bear in a single day.

  He was heading to the small town of Kreuzlingen in Switzerland, where Bertha had been hospitalized at the Bellevue Sanatorium for the past few months. He was puzzled by his dazed mental state. Just when and how had he made the decision to visit Bertha?

  As the train rumbled into movement, he put his head back on the cushion, closed his eyes, and meditated on the events of the day.

  Friedrich was right: All along, my freedom has been here for the taking! I could have seized my life years ago. Vienna is still standing. Life will go on without me. My absence would have happened anyway, ten or twenty years from now. From a cosmic perspective, what difference does it make? I am already forty years old: my younger brother has been dead for eight years, my father for ten, my mother for thirty-six. Now, while I can still see and walk, I shall take some small fraction of my life for myself—is that too much to demand? I am so tired of service, so tired of taking care of others. Yes, Friedrich was right. Shall I remain yoked to the plow of duty forever? Shall I, throughout all eternity, live a life I regret?

  He tried to sleep, but each time he nodded off, visions of the children drifted into his mind. He winced with pain to think of them without a father. Friedrich is right, he reminded himself, when he says, “Do not create children until one is ready to be a creator and to spawn creators.” It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future—as though sperm contains your consciousness!

  Still, what about the children? They were a mistake, they were forced upon me, begotten before I was aware of my choices. Yet they are here, they exist! About them Nietzsche is silent. And Mathilde has warned that I may never again see them.

  Breuer slumped into despair but quickly roused himself. No! Away with such thoughts! Friedrich is right: duty, propriety, faithfulness, selflessness, kindness—these are soporifics that lull one to sleep, a sleep so deep that one awakens, if at all, only at the very end of life. And then only to learn that one has never really lived.

  I have only one life, a life that may recur forever. I do not want to regret for all eternity that I lost myself while pursuing my duty to my children.

  Now is my chance to build a new self on the ashes of my old life! Then, when I have done that, I shall find my way to my children. Then I shall no longer be tyrannized by Mathilde’s notions of what is socially permitted! Who can block a father’s path to his children? I shall become an axe. I shall hew and slash my way to them! As for today, God help them. I can do nothing. I am drowning and must first save myself.

  And Mathilde? Friedrich says that the only way to save this marriage is to give it up! And “Better to break wedlock than be broken by it.” Perhaps Mathilde, too, was broken by wedlock. Perhaps she will be better off without me. Perhaps she was as imprisoned as I. Lou Salomé would say so. How did she put it: that she would never be enslaved by the frailties of another? Perhaps my absence will liberate Mathilde!

  It was late in the evening when the train reached Konstanz. Breuer got off and spent the night at a modest train-station hotel; it was time, he told himself, to become acclimated to second- and third-class accommodations. In the morning, he hired a carriage to Kreuzlingen, and the Bellevue Sanatorium. Arriving, he informed the director, Robert Binswanger, that an unexpected consultation request had brought him to Geneva, close enough to the Bellevue to pay a visit to his former patient, Fraulein Pappenheim.

  There was nothing unusual about Breuer’s request: he was well known to the Bellevue as a long-time friend of the former director, Ludwig Binswanger, Sr., who had recently died. Dr. Binswanger offered to send for Fraulein Pappenheim immediately. “She’s taking a walk now and discussing her condition with her new physician, Doctor Durkin.” Binswanger stood and walked to the window. “There, in the garden, you can see them.”

  “No, no, Doctor Binswanger, do not interrupt them. I feel strongly that nothing should take priority over patient-doctor sessions. Besides, the sun is glorious today, I’ve seen too little of it in Vienna lately. If you have no objection, I’ll wait for her in your garden. A
lso, it would be interesting for me to observe Fraulein Pappenheim’s condition, especially her gait, from an unobtrusive position.”

  On a lower terrace of the extensive Bellevue gardens, Breuer saw Bertha and her physician strolling back and forth along a path bordered by high, carefully trimmed boxwoods. He chose his observation perch carefully: a white bench on the upper terrace, almost entirely hidden by the bare branches of an encircling lilac arbor. From there, he could look down and see Bertha clearly; perhaps, when she strolled by, he would be able to hear her words.

  Bertha and Durkin had just passed below his bench and were walking down the path away from him. Her lavender scent wafted up to him. He inhaled it greedily and felt the ache of deep longing coursing through his body. How frail she seemed! Suddenly she stopped. Her right leg was in contracture; he remembered how often this had happened when he had strolled with her. She clung to Durkin for support. How tightly she was clasping him, precisely as she had once clasped Breuer. Now both of her arms were clutching Durkin’s, and she was pressing against him! Breuer remembered her pressing her body against him. Oh, how he loved the feel of her breasts! Like the princess feeling the pea through many mattresses, he could feel her velvet, yielding breasts through all obstacles—her Persian lamb cape and his fur-lined greatcoat only gossamer-thin barriers to his pleasure.

  There, Bertha’s right quadriceps was now in severe spasm! She grabbed at her thigh. Breuer knew what would come next. Durkin quickly lifted her, carried her to the next bench, and laid her down. Now would come the massage. Yes, Durkin was taking off his gloves, carefully slipping his hands under her coat, and now beginning to massage her thigh. Would Bertha now moan with pain? Yes, softly! Breuer could hear her! Now won’t she close her eyes, as if in trance, stretch her arms over her head, arch her back, and thrust her breasts upward? Yes, yes, there she goes! Now her coat will fall open—yes, he saw her hand unobtrusively slip down and unbutton it. He knew her dress would creep up, it always did. There! She’s bending her knees—Breuer had never seen her do that before—and her dress slides up, almost to her waist. Durkin stands stark still, gazing at her pink silk underpants and the faint outline of a dusky triangle.

  From his distant perch, Breuer stares over Durkin’s shoulder, equally transfixed. Cover her up, you poor fool! Durkin tries to pull down her dress and close her coat. Bertha’s hands interfere. Her eyes are closed. Is she in trance? Durkin appears agitated—as well he might be, Breuer thought—and looks nervously about him. No one there, thank God! The leg contracture has eased. He helps Bertha up, and she tries to walk.

  Breuer feels dazed, as though he were no longer in his own body. There is something unreal about the scene before him, as though he were watching a drama from the last balcony row of an enormous theater. What is he feeling? Perhaps jealousy toward Dr. Durkin? He’s young and handsome and single, and Bertha is hanging on to him more closely than she ever did him. But no! He feels no jealousy, no animosity—none at all. On the contrary, he feels warm and close to Durkin. Bertha does not divide them, but draws them together into a brotherhood of agitation.

  The young couple continued their stroll. Breuer smiled to see that it was now the doctor, and not the patient, who walked with an awkward, shuffling gait. He felt great empathy for his successor: how many times had he had to stroll with Bertha while dealing with the inconvenience of a throbbing erection! “Lucky for you, Doctor Durkin, that it’s winter,” Breuer said to himself. “It’s much worse in summer with no coat to conceal yourself. Then you have to tuck it under your belt!”

  The couple, having reached the end of the path, had now turned back in his direction. Bertha put her hand to her cheek. Breuer could see that her orbital muscles were in spasm, and that she was in agony; her facial pain, tic douloureux, was a daily occurrence and so severe that only morphine could relieve it. Bertha stopped. He knew exactly what would come next. It was eerie. Once again it felt like the theater, and he the director or prompter coaching the cast on their next lines. Put your hands on her face, your palms on her cheeks, your thumbs touching on the bridge of her nose. That’s right. Now press down lightly and stroke her eyebrows, again and again. Good! He could see Bertha’s face relax. She reached up, took Durkin by the wrists, and held each hand to her lips. Now Breuer felt a stab. Only once had she kissed his hands like that: it had been their closest moment. She came closer. He could hear her voice. “Little father, my dear little father.” That smarted. It was what she used to call him.

  This was all he heard. It was enough. He rose and, without a word to the puzzled nursing staff, walked out of the Bellevue and into his waiting carriage. In a daze, he returned to Konstanz, where he somehow managed to board the train. The sound of the locomotive whistle brought him back to himself. His heart pounding, he sank his head back into the cushion and began to think about what he had seen.

  That brass plaque, my office in Vienna, my childhood home, and now Bertha, too—all continue to be what they are: none of them require me for their existence. I’m incidental, interchangeable. I’m not necessary for Bertha’s drama. None of us is—not even the leading men. Neither I, nor Durkin, nor those yet to come.

  He felt overwhelmed: perhaps he needed more time to absorb all this. He was tired; he leaned back, closed his eyes and sought refuge in a Bertha reverie. But nothing happened! He had proceeded through his usual steps: he focused upon the stage of his mind, he set the initial scene of the reverie, he was open to what would develop—that had always been up to Bertha to decide, not him—and he had stepped back waiting for the action to begin. But there was no action. Nothing moved. The stage remained a still-life awaiting his direction.

  Experimenting, Breuer found he could now summon Bertha’s image or dismiss her at will. When he called on her, she readily appeared in any form or posture he wished. But she no longer had autonomy: her image was frozen until he willed her to move. The fittings had come loose: his tie to her, her hold on him!

  Breuer marveled at this transformation. Never before had he thought about Bertha with such indifference. No, not indifference—such calmness, such self-possession. There was no great passion or longing, but no rancor either. For the first time, he understood that he and Bertha were fellow sufferers. She was as trapped as he had been. She also had not become who she was. She had not chosen her life but instead was witness to the same scenes playing themselves endlessly.

  In fact, as he thought about it, Breuer realized the full tragedy of Bertha’s life. Perhaps she did not know these things. Perhaps she had forgone not only choice, but awareness as well. She so often was in “absence,” in a trance, not even experiencing her life. He knew that in this matter Nietzsche had been wrong! He was not Bertha’s victim. They were both victims.

  How much he had learned! If only he could begin again and become her physician now. The day at Bellevue had shown him how evanescent had been the effects of his treatment. How foolish to have spent month after month attacking symptoms—the silly, superficial skirmishes—while neglecting the real battle, the mortal struggle underneath.

  With a roar the train emerged from a long tunnel. The blast of bright sunlight snapped Breuer’s attention back to his current predicament. He was returning to Vienna to see Eva Berger, his former nurse. He looked dazedly around the train compartment. I’ve done it again, he thought. Here I sit on the train, hurling myself toward Eva, yet confounded about when and how I made the decision to see her.

  When he arrived in Vienna, he took a fiacre to Eva’s home and approached her door.

  It was four in the afternoon, and he almost turned away, certain—and then hoping—that she would be at work. But she was at home. She seemed shocked to see him and stood staring at him, not saying a word. When he asked if he could enter, she admitted him, after glancing uneasily at her neighbors’ doors. He felt immediately comforted by her presence. Six months had passed since he had seen her, but it was easy as ever for him to unburden himself to her. He told her everything that had happened
since he had dismissed her: his meeting with Nietzsche, his gradual transformation, his decision to claim his freedom and to leave Mathilde and the children, his silent, final encounter with Bertha.

  “And now, Eva, I’m free. For the first time in my life, I can do anything, go anywhere I wish. Soon, probably right after we talk, I shall go to the train station and choose a destination. Even now I don’t know where I’ll head, perhaps south, toward the sun—perhaps Italy.”

  Eva, ordinarily an effusive woman who used to respond with paragraphs to his every sentence, was now strangely silent.

  “Of course,” Breuer continued, “I’ll be lonely. You know how I am. But I’ll be free to meet anyone I choose.”

  Still no response from Eva.

  “Or invite an old friend to travel with me to Italy.”

  Breuer could not believe his own words. Suddenly he imagined a skyful of his pigeons swarming through his laboratory window, back into their wire cages.

  To his dismay, but also relief, Eva did not respond to his innuendos. Instead, she began to question him.

  “What kind of freedom do you mean? What do you mean by ‘unlived life’?” She shook her head incredulously. “Josef, none of this makes much sense to me. I’ve always wished I had your freedom. What kind of freedom have I had? When you have to worry about the rent and the butcher’s bill, you don’t worry much about freedom. You want freedom from your profession? Look at my profession! When you fired me, I had to accept any job I could find, and right now the only freedom I wish for is the freedom not to work the night shift at the Vienna General Hospital.”