When Nietzsche Wept

by Irvin D. Yalom

  “We’ve always suspected Sig was clever, and now we are certain. It is a strange day. But an important one—I’ve decided to marry you.”

  Mathilde set down her tray of coffee cups, put her hands on his head, and drew him to her, kissing his forehead. “Did you drink schnapps, Josef? You’re talking nonsense.” She picked up the tray again. “But I like it.” Just before pushing open the swinging door into the dining room, she turned. “I thought you decided to marry me fourteen years ago.”

  “What’s important is that I choose to do it today, Mathilde. And every day.”

  After coffee and Mathilde’s Linzertorte, Freud hurried off to the hospital. Breuer and Max each took a glass of slivovitz into the library and sat down to chess. After a mercifully short game—Max quickly crushing a French defense with a withering queen’s side attack—Breuer stayed Max’s hand as he started to set up the next game. “I need to talk,” he told his brother-in-law. Max quickly overcame his disappointment, put away the chess pieces, lit another cigar, blew out a long fume of smoke, and waited.

  Since their brief contretemps a couple of weeks before, when Breuer had first told Max about Nietzsche, the two men had grown much closer. Now a patient and sympathetic listener, Max had over the past two weeks followed Breuer’s accounts of his meetings with Eckart Müller with great interest. Today he seemed transfixed by Breuer’s detailed description of yesterday’s cemetery discussion and this morning’s extraordinary trance session.

  “So, in your trance you first thought I’d try to block the door to stop you from leaving? I probably would have. Who else would I, have to beat at chess? But seriously, Josef, you look different. You really think you’ve gotten Bertha out of your mind?”

  “It’s amazing, Max. Now I can think about her as I think of anyone else. It’s as though I’ve had surgery to separate Bertha’s image from all the emotion that used to adhere to it! And I’m absolutely certain that this surgery occurred the moment I observed her in the garden with her new doctor!”

  “I don’t understand.” Max shook his head. “Or is it best not to understand?”

  “We have to try. Maybe it’s wrong to say that my infatuation with Bertha died the moment I observed her with Doctor Durkin—I mean my fantasy of her with Doctor Durkin, which is so vivid I regard it still as a real event. I’m sure the infatuation had already been weakened by Müller, especially by his making me understand how I had given her such enormous power. The trance fantasy of Bertha and Doctor Durkin came along at the opportune time to dislodge it completely. All her power disappeared when I saw her repeating those familiar scenes with him, as if by rote. Suddenly I realized she has no power. She can’t control her own actions—in fact, she’s just as helpless and driven as I was. We were both just fill-in performers in each other’s obsessive drama, Max.”

  Breuer grinned. “But, you know, something even more important is happening to me, and that’s my change in feelings for Mathilde. I felt it a little during the trance, but it’s settling in even more strongly now. All during dinner I looked at her and kept feeling this surge of warmth toward her.”

  “Yes,” Max smiled, “I saw you looking at her. It was fun to see Mathilde flustered. It was like the old days to see some play between the two of you. Maybe it’s very simple: you appreciate her now because you got close to experiencing what it would be like to lose her.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it, but there are other parts, too. You know, for years, I’ve bridled at the bit I thought Mathilde had placed in my mouth. I felt imprisoned by her and longed for my freedom—to experience other women, to have another, entirely different life.

  “Yet when I did what Müller asked me to do, when I grasped my freedom, I panicked. In the trance, I tried to give freedom away. I held out the bit, first to Bertha and then to Eva. I opened my mouth and said, ‘Please, please, bridle me. Jam this into my mouth. I don’t want to be free.’ The truth is, I was terrified of freedom.”

  Max nodded gravely.

  “Remember,” Breuer continued, “what I told you of my trance visit to Venice—the barbershop where I discovered my aging face? The street of clothing stores where I found myself the oldest person? Something Müller said comes back right now: ‘Choose the right enemy.’ I think that’s the key! All these years I’ve been fighting the wrong enemy. The real enemy was, all along, not Mathilde, but destiny. The real enemy was aging, death, and my own terror of freedom. I blamed Mathilde for not allowing me to face what I was really unwilling to face! I wonder how many other husbands do that to their wives?”

  “I expect I’m one of them,” Max said. “You know, I often daydream about our childhood together, our days at the university. ‘Ah, what a loss!’ I say to myself. ‘How did I ever let those times slip away?’ And then secretly I blame Rachel—as if it were her fault that childhood ends, her fault that I grow old!”

  “Yes, Müller said that the real enemy is ‘time’s devouring jaws.’ But somehow now I don’t feel so helpless before those jaws. Today, perhaps for the first time, I feel like I’m willing my life. I accept the life I’ve chosen. Right now, Max, I don’t wish I had done anything differently.”

  “As clever as your professor is, Josef, it seems to me that in designing this trance experiment you outwitted him. You found a way to experience an irreversible decision without making it irreversible. But there’s something I still don’t understand. Where was the part of you that designed the trance experiment during the trance? While you were in the trance, some part of you must have been aware of what was really happening.”

  “You’re right, Max. Where was the witness, the ‘I’ that was tricking the rest of my ‘me’? I get dizzy thinking about it. Someday someone far brighter than I will come along to unravel that conundrum. But, no, I don’t think I have outwitted Müller. In fact, I feel something quite different: I feel I’ve let him down. I’ve refused to follow his prescription. Or perhaps, simply, I’ve acknowledged my limitations. He often says, ‘Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.’ I guess I’ve chosen. And, Max, I’ve also let him down as a physician. I’ve given him nothing. In fact, I no longer even think of helping him.”

  “Don’t knock yourself, Josef. You’re always so hard on yourself. You’re different from him. Do you remember that course we took together on religious thinkers—Professor Jodl, wasn’t it?—and the term he had for them—‘visionaries.’ That’s what your Müller is—a visionary! I’ve long lost sight of who’s the physician and who’s the patient, but if you were his physician, and even if you could change him—and you can’t—would you want to change him? Have you ever heard of a married or domesticated visionary? No, it would ruin him. I think his destiny is to be a lonely seer.

  “You know what I think?” Max opened the box of chess pieces. “I think there’s been enough treatment. Maybe it’s over. Maybe a little more of this treatment would kill both the patient and the doctor!”

  CHAPTER 22

  MAX WAS RIGHT. It was time to stop. Even so, Josef astonished himself when on Monday morning he walked into room 13 and declared himself fully recovered.

  Nietzsche, sitting on his bed grooming his mustache, appeared even more astonished.

  “Recovered?” he exclaimed, dropping his tortoiseshell mustache comb on the bed. “Can this be true? How is it possible? You seemed in such distress when we parted on Saturday. I worried about you. Had I been too hard? Too challenging? I wondered if you would discontinue our treatment project. I wondered many things, but never once did I expect to hear that you were fully recovered!”

  “Yes, Friedrich, I, too, am surprised. It happened suddenly—a direct result of our session yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? But yesterday was Sunday. We had no session.”

  “We had a session, Friedrich. Only you weren’t there! It’s a long story.”

  “Tell me that story,” said Nietzsche, as he rose from the bed. “Tell me every detail! I want to learn about recovery.”

  “
Here, to our talking chairs,” said Breuer, taking his accustomed place.

  “There’s so much to tell. . . ” he began, while next to him Nietzsche leaned forward eagerly, literally on the edge of his chair.

  “Begin with Saturday afternoon,” Nietzsche said quickly, “after our walk in the Simmeringer Haide.”

  “Yes, that wild walk in the wind! That walk was wonderful. And terrible! You’re right—when we returned to the fiacre, I was in great distress. I felt like an anvil: your words were hammer blows. Long afterward, they still reverberated, especially one phrase.”

  “Which was———”

  “That the only way I could save my marriage was to give it up. One of your more confusing pronouncements: the more I thought about it, the dizzier I got!”

  “Then I should have been more clear, Josef. I meant only to say that an ideal marriage relationship exists only when it is not necessary for each person’s survival.”

  Seeing no sign of enlightenment on Breuer’s face, Nietzsche added, “I meant only that, to fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only when one can live like the eagle—with no audience whatsoever—can one turn to another in love; only then is one able to care about the enlargement of the other’s being. Ergo, if one is unable to give up a marriage, then the marriage is doomed.”

  “So, you mean, Friedrich, that the only way to save the marriage is to be able to give it up? That’s clearer.” Breuer thought for a moment. “That edict is wonderfully instructive for a bachelor, but it presents a monumental quandary for the married man. What use can I make of it? It’s like attempting to rebuild a ship at sea. For a long time on Saturday, I was staggered by the paradox of having to irretrievably give up my marriage in order to save it. Then, suddenly, I had an inspiration.”

  Nietzsche, his curiosity ignited, took off his spectacles and leaned perilously forward. Another inch or two, Breuer thought, and he’ll slip right off the chair. “How much do you know about hypnosis?”

  “Animal magnetism? Mesmerism? Very little,” Nietzsche replied. “I know that Mesmer himself was a scoundrel, but a short time ago I read that several well-known French doctors are now using mesmerism to treat many different medical ailments. And, of course, you employed it in your treatment of Bertha. I understand only that it’s a sleeplike state in which one becomes highly suggestible.”

  “More than that, Friedrich. It’s a state in which one is capable of experiencing intensely vivid hallucinatory phenomena. My inspiration was that in a hypnotic trance I could approximate the experience of giving up my marriage and yet, in real life, preserve it.”

  Breuer proceeded to tell Nietzsche everything that had happened to him. Almost everything! He started to describe his observation of Bertha and Dr. Durkin in the Bellevue garden, but suddenly decided to keep that secret. Instead, he described only the journey to the Bellevue Sanatorium and his impulsive departure.

  Nietzsche listened, his head nodding faster and faster, his eyes bulging with concentration. When Breuer’s narrative ended, he sat silently, as though disappointed.

  “Friedrich, are you at a loss for words? It’s the first time. I, too, am confused, but I do know I feel good today. Alive. Better than I have felt in years! I feel present—here with you, rather than pretending to be here, while secretly thinking of Bertha.”

  Nietzsche was still listening intensely, but said nothing.

  Breuer continued, “Friedrich, I feel sadness, too. I hate to think our talks will end. You know more about me than anyone in the world, and I treasure the bond between us. And I have another feeling—shame! Despite my recovery, I am ashamed. I feel that, by using hypnosis, I’ve tricked you. I’ve taken a risk-free risk! You must be disappointed with me.”

  Nietzsche vigorously shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

  “I know your standards,” Breuer protested. “You must feel I’ve fallen short! More than once I’ve heard you ask, ‘How much truth can you stand?’ I know that’s how you measure a person. I’m afraid my answer is, ‘Not very much!’ Even in my trance, I fell short. I imagined trying to follow you to Italy, to go as far as you, as far as you wished me to—but my courage flagged.”

  Continuing to shake his head, Nietzsche leaned forward, rested his hand on the arm of Breuer’s chair, and said, “No, Josef, you went far—farther than most.”

  “Perhaps as far as the farthest limits of my limited ability,” Breuer responded. “You always said I must find my own way and not search for the way or your way. Perhaps work, community, family are my way to a meaningful life. Still, I feel I’ve fallen short, that I’ve settled for comfort, that I cannot stare at the sun of truth as you do.”

  “And I, at times, wish I could find the shade.”

  Nietzsche’s voice was sad and wistful. His deep sighs reminded Breuer that two patients were involved in their treatment contract, and that only one had been helped. Perhaps. Breuer thought, it’s not too late.

  “Though I pronounce myself healed, Friedrich, I don’t want to stop meeting with you.”

  Nietzsche shook his head slowly and determinedly. “No. It has run its course. It’s time.”

  “It would be selfish to stop,” said Breuer. “I’ve taken so much and given you little in return. Yet I also know I’ve had little opportunity to give help—you’ve been too uncooperative even to have a migraine.”

  “The best gift would be to help me understand recovery.”

  “I believe,” Breuer responded, “that the most powerful factor was my identification of the right enemy. Once I understood that I must wrestle with the real enemy—time, aging, death—then I came to realize that Mathilde is neither adversary nor rescuer, but simply a fellow traveler trudging through the cycle of life. Somehow that simple step released all my fettered love for her. Today, Friedrich, I love the idea of repeating my life eternally. Finally, I feel I can say, ‘Yes, I have chosen my life. And chosen well.’ ”

  “Yes, yes,” said Nietzsche, hurrying Breuer along. “I understand you’ve changed. But I want to know the mechanism—how it happened!”

  “I can only say that in the last two years I was very frightened by my own aging or, as you put it, by ‘time’s appetite.’ I fought back—but blindly. I attacked my wife rather than the real enemy and finally, in desperation, sought rescue in the arms of one who had no rescue to give.”

  Breuer paused, scratching his head. “I don’t know what else to say except that, thanks to you, I know that the key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed.”

  Overcoming his agitation, Nietzsche was struck by Breuer’s words.

  “Amor fati—love your fate. It’s eerie, Josef, how twin-minded we are! I had planned to make Amor fati my next, and final, lesson in your instruction. I was going to teach you to overcome despair by transforming ‘thus it was’ into ’thus I willed it. ’But you’ve anticipated me. You’ve grown strong, perhaps even ripe—but”—he paused, suddenly agitated, “this Bertha who invaded and possessed your mind, who gave you no peace—you haven’t told me how you banished her.”

  “It’s not important, Friedrich. It’s more important for me to stop grieving for the past and———”

  “You said you wanted to give me something. Remember?” Nietzsche cried, his desperate tone alarming Breuer. “Then give me something concrete. Tell me how you cast her out! I want every detail!”

  Only two weeks ago, Breuer recalled, it was I who was pleading to Nietzsche for explicit steps to follow, and Nietzsche who was insisting on there being no the way, that each person has to find his own truth. Nietzsche’s suffering must be terrible indeed for him now to be denying his own teaching and hoping to find in my healing the precise path to his own. Such a request, Breuer resolved, must not be granted.

  “I want nothing more, Friedrich,” he said, “than to give you something—but it must be a gi
ft of real substance. There is urgency in your voice, but you conceal your true wishes. Trust me, this one time! Tell me exactly what you want. If it’s in my power to give, it shall be yours.”

  Jumping out of his chair, Nietzsche paced back and forth for a few minutes, then went to the window and stood, looking out, his back to Breuer.

  “A deep man needs friends,” he began, as if speaking more to himself than to Breuer. “All else failing, he still has his gods. But I have neither friends nor gods. I, like you, have lusts, and no greater lust than for the perfect friendship, a friendship inter pares—among equals. What intoxicating words, inter pares, words containing so much comfort and hope for one such as me, who has always been alone, who has always sought but never met one who belonged precisely to him.

  “Sometimes I have unburdened myself in letters, to my sister, to friends. But when I meet others face to face I am ashamed and turn away.”

  “Just as you turn away from me now?” Breuer interrupted.

  “Yes.” And Nietzsche fell silent.

  “Do you have something to unburden now, Friedrich?”

  Nietzsche, still gazing out the window, shook his head. “On the rare occasions when I have been overcome with loneliness and given vent to public outbursts of misery, I have loathed myself an hour later and grown strange to myself, as if I’d fallen from my own company.

  “Nor have I ever allowed others to unburden themselves to me—I was unwilling to incur the debt of reciprocation. I avoided all this—until the day, of course”—he turned to face Breuer—“that I shook your hand and agreed to our strange contract. You are the first person with whom I have ever stayed the course. And even with you, at first, I anticipated betrayal.”

  “And then?”