The Schopenhauer Cure

by Irvin Yalom

  “Come on, Philip, get to the point,” interrupted Tony. “How did this dude help you?”

  “Wait, I’m getting there. I’ve spoken for all of three minutes. This is not the TV news; I can’t explain the conclusions of one of the world’s greatest thinkers in a sound bite.”

  “Hey, hey, right on, Philip. I like that answer,” said Rebecca.

  Tony smiled and backed off.

  “So Kant’s discovery was that, rather than experience the world as it’s really out there, we experience our own personalized processed version of what’s out there. Such properties as space, time, quantity, causality are in us, not out there—we impose them on reality. But, then, what is pure, unprocessed reality? What’s really out there, that raw entity before we process it? That will always remain unknowable to us, said Kant.”

  “Schopenhauer—how he helped you! Remember? Are we getting warm?” asked Tony.

  “Coming up in ninety seconds. In his future work Kant and others turned their entire attention to the ways in which we process primal reality.

  “But Schopenhauer—and see, here we are already!—took a different route. He reasoned that Kant had overlooked a fundamental and immediate type of data about ourselves: our own bodies and our own feelings. We can know ourselves from the inside, he insisted. We have direct, immediate knowledge, not dependent on our perceptions. Hence, he was the first philosopher to look at impulses and feelings from the inside, and for the rest of his career he wrote extensively about interior human concerns: sex, love, death, dreams, suffering, religion, suicide, relations with others, vanity, self-esteem. More than any other philosopher, he addressed those dark impulses deep within that we cannot bear to know and, hence, must repress.”

  “Sounds a little Freudian,” said Bonnie.

  “The other way around. Better to say that Freud is Schopenhauerian. So much of Freudian psychology is to be found in Schopenhauer. Though Freud rarely acknowledged this influence, there is no doubt he was quite familiar with Schopenhauer’s writings: in Vienna during the time Freud was in school, the 1860s and ‘70s, Schopenhauer’s name was on everyone’s lips. I believe that without Schopenhauer there could have been no Freud—and, for that matter, no Nietzsche as we know him. In fact Schopenhauer’s influence on Freud—particularly dream theory, the unconscious, and the mechanism of repression—was the topic of my doctoral dissertation.

  “Schopenhauer,” Philip continued, glancing at Tony and hurrying to avoid being interrupted, “normalized my sexuality. He made me see how ubiquitous sex was, how, at the deepest levels, it was the central point of all action, seeping into all human transactions, influencing even all matters of state. I believe I recited some of his words about this some months ago.”

  “Just to support your point,” Tony said, “I read in the newspaper the other day that pornography takes in more money than the music and the film industry combined. That’s huge.”

  “Philip,” said Rebecca, “I can guess at it, but I still haven’t heard you say exactly how Schopenhauer helped you recover from your sexual compulsion or…uh…addiction. Okay if I use that term?”

  “I need to think about that. I’m not persuaded it’s entirely accurate,” said Philip.

  “Why?” asked Rebecca. “What you described sounds like an addiction to me.”

  “Well, to follow up on what Tony said, have you seen the figures for males watching pornography on the Internet?”

  “Are you into Internet porno?” asked Rebecca.

  “I’m not, but I could have taken that route in the past—along with the majority of men.”

  “Right about that,” said Tony. “I admit it, I watch it two or three times a week. Tell you the truth, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”

  “Me, too,” said Gill. “Another of Rose’s pet peeves.”

  Heads turned toward Stuart. “Yes, yes, mea culpa—I’ve been known to indulge a bit.”

  “This is what I mean,” said Philip. “So is everyone an addict?”

  “Well,” said Rebecca, “I can see your point. There’s not just the porn, but there’s also the epidemic of harassment suits. I’ve defended quite a few in my practice. I saw an article the other day about a dean of a major law school resigning because of a sex harassment charge. And, of course, the Clinton case and the way his potentially great voice has been stilled. And then look at how many of Clinton’s prosecutors were behaving similarly.”

  “Everybody’s got a dark sex life,” said Tony. “Some of it’s like—who’s unlucky? Maybe males are just being males. Look at me, look at my jail time in being too pushy in my demands for a blow job from Lizzie. I know a hundred guys who did worse—and no consequences—look at Schwarzenegger.”

  “Tony, you’re not endearing yourself to the females here. 0r at least to this female,” said Rebecca. “But I don’t want to lose focus. Philip, go on, you’re still not making your point.”

  “First of all,” Philip continued without a hitch, “rather than tsk-tsking about all this awful depraved male behavior, Schopenhauer two centuries ago understood the underlying reality: the sheer awesome power of the sex drive. It’s the most fundamental force within us—the will to live, to reproduce—and it can’t be stilled. It can’t be reasoned away. I’ve already spoken of how he describes sex seeping into everything. Look at the Catholic priest scandal, look at every station of human endeavor, every profession, every culture, every age bracket. This point of view was exquisitely important to me when I first encountered Schopenhauer’s work: here was one of the greatest minds of history, and, for the first time in my life, I felt completely understood.”

  “And?” asked Pam, who had been silent throughout this discussion.

  “And what?” said Philip, visibly nervous as always when addressed by Pam.

  “And what else? That was it? That did it? You got better because Schopenhauer made you feel understood?”

  Philip seemed to take no note of Pam’s irony and responded in an even tone with a sincere manner. “There was a great deal more. Schopenhauer made me aware that we are doomed to turn endlessly on the wheel of will: we desire something, we acquire it, we enjoy a brief moment of satiation, which rapidly fades into boredom, which then, without fail, is followed by the next ‘I want.’ There is no exit by way of appeasing desire—one has to leap off the wheel completely. That’s what Schopenhauer did, and that’s what I’ve done.”

  “Leaping off the wheel? And what does that mean?” Pam asked.

  “It means to escape from willing entirely. It means to fully accept that our innermost nature is an unappeasable striving, that this suffering is programmed into us from the beginning, and that we are doomed by our very nature. It means that we must first comprehend the essential nothingness of this world of illusion and then set about finding a way to deny the will. We have to aim, as all the great artists have, at dwelling in the pure world of platonic ideas. Some do this through art, some through religious asceticism. Schopenhauer did it by avoiding the world of desire, by communion with the great minds of history, and by aesthetic contemplation—he played the flute an hour or two every day. It means that one must become observer as well as actor. One must recognize the life force that exists in all of nature, that manifest itself through each person’s individual existence, and that will ultimately reclaim that force when the individual no longer exists as a physical entity.

  “I’ve followed his model closely—my primary relationships are with great thinkers whom I read daily. I avoid cluttering my mind with everydayness, and I have a daily contemplative practice through chess or listening to music—unlike Schopenhauer, I have no ability to play an instrument.”

  Julius was fascinated by this dialogue. Was Philip unaware of Pam’s rancor? Or frightened of her wrath? And what of Philip’s solution to his addiction? At times Julius silently marveled at it; more often he scoffed. And Philip’s comment that when he read Schopenhauer he felt entirely understood for the first time felt like a slap in the face. What
am I, thought Julius, chopped liver? For three years I worked my ass off trying to understand and empathize with him. But Julius kept silent; Philip was gradually changing. Sometimes it is best to store things and return to them at some propitious time in the future.

  A couple of weeks later the group raised these issues for him during a meeting which began with Rebecca and Bonnie both telling Pam that she had changed—for the worse—since Philip had entered the group. All the sweet, loving, generous parts of her had disappeared from sight, and, though her anger was not as vicious as in her first confrontation with him, still, Bonnie said, it was always present and had frozen into something hard and relentless.

  “I’ve seen Philip change a great deal in the past few months,” said Rebecca, “but you’re so stuck—just like you were with John and Earl. Do you want to hold on to your rage forever?”

  Others pointed out that Philip had been polite, that he had responded fully to every one of Pam’s inquiries, even to those laced with sarcasm.

  “Be polite,” said Pam, “then you will be able to manipulate others. Just like you can work wax only after you have warmed it.”

  “What?” asked Stuart. Others members looked quizzical.

  “I’m just quoting Philip’s mentor. That’s one of Schopenhauer’s choice tidbits of advice—and that’s what I think of Philip’s politeness. I never mentioned it here, but when I first considered grad school I considered working on Schopenhauer. But after several weeks of studying his work and his life, I grew to despise the man so much I dropped the idea.”

  “So, you identify Philip with Schopenhauer?” said Bonnie.

  “Identify? Philip is Schopenhauer—twin-brained, the living embodiment of that wretched man. I could tell you things about his philosophy and life that would curdle your blood. And, yes, I do believe Philip manipulates instead of relating—and I’ll tell you this: it gives me the shivers to think of him indoctrinating others with Schopenhauer’s life-hating doctrine.”

  “Will you ever see Philip as he is now?” said Stuart. “He’s not the same person you knew fifteen years ago. That incident between you distorts everything; you can’t get past it, and you can’t forgive him.”

  “That ‘incident’? You make it sound like a hangnail. It’s more than an incident. As for forgiving, don’t you think some things exist that are not forgivable?”

  “Because you are unforgiving does not mean that things are unforgivable,” said Philip in a voice uncharacteristically charged with emotion. “Many years ago you and I made a short-term social contract. We offered each other sexual excitement and release. I fulfilled my part of it. I made sure you were sexually gratified, and I did not feel I had further obligation. The truth is that I got something and you got something. I had sexual pleasure and release, and so did you. I owe you nothing. I explicitly stated in our conversation following that event that I had a pleasurable evening but did not wish to continue our relationship. How could I have been clearer?”

  “I’m not talking about clarity,” Pam shot back, “I’m talking about charity—love, caritas, concern for others.”

  “You insist that I share your worldview, that I experience life the same way as you.”

  “I only wish you had shared the pain, suffered as I did.”

  “In that case I have good news for you. You will be pleased to know that after that incident your friend Molly wrote a letter condemning me to every member of my department as well as to the university president, provost, and the faculty senate. Despite my receiving a doctorate with distinction and despite my excellent student evaluations, which incidentally included one from you, not one member of the faculty was willing to write me a letter of support or assist me in any way to find a position. Hence I was never able to get a decent teaching position and for the past years have struggled as a vagabond lecturer at a series of unworthy third-rate schools.”

  Stuart, working hard on developing his empathic sense, responded, “So you must feel you’ve served your time and that society exacted a heavy price.”

  Philip, surprised, raised his eyes to look at Stuart. He nodded. “Not as heavy as the one I exacted from myself.”

  Philip, exhausted, slumped back in his chair. After a few moments, eyes turned to Pam, who, unappeased, addressed the whole group: “Don’t you get that I’m not talking about a single past criminal act. I’m talking about an ongoing way of being in the world. Weren’t you all chilled just now when Philip described his behavior in our act of love as his ‘obligations to our social contract’? And what about his comments that, despite three years with Julius, he felt understood for the ‘first time’ only when he read Schopenhauer. You all know Julius. Can you believe that after three years Julius did not understand him?”

  The group remained silent. After several moments Pam turned to Philip. “You want to know the reason you felt understood by Schopenhauer and not Julius? I’ll tell you why: because Schopenhauer is dead, dead over one hundred and forty years, and Julius is alive. And you don’t know how to relate to the living.”

  Philip did not look as though he would respond, and Rebecca rushed in, “Pam, you’re being vicious. What will it take to appease you?”

  “Philip’s not evil, Pam,” said Bonnie, “he’s broken. Can’t you see that? Don’t you know the difference?”

  Pam shook her head and said, “I can’t go any farther today.”

  After a palpably uncomfortable silence Tony, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, intervened. “Philip, I’m not pulling a rescue here, but I’ve been wondering something. Have you had any follow-up feelings to Julius’s telling us a few months ago about his sexual stuff after his wife died?”

  Philip seemed grateful for the diversion. “What feelings should I have?”

  “I don’t know about the ‘should.’ I’m just asking what you did feel. Here’s what I’m wondering: when you were first seeing him in therapy, would you have felt Julius understood you more if he revealed that he too had personal experience with sexual pressure?”

  Philip nodded. “That’s an interesting question. The answer is, maybe, yes. It might have helped. I have no proof, but Schopenhauer’s writings suggest that he had sexual feelings similar to mine in intensity and relentlessness. I believe that’s why I felt so understood by him.

  “But there’s something I’ve omitted in talking about my work with Julius, and I want to set the record straight. When I told him that his therapy had failed to be of value to me in any way, he confronted me with the same question raised in the group a little while ago: why would I want such an unhelpful therapist for a supervisor? His question helped me recall a couple of things from our therapy that stuck with me and had, in fact, proved useful.”

  “Like what?” asked Tony.

  “When I described my typical routinized evening of sexual seduction—flirtation, pickup, dinner, sexual consummation—and asked him whether he was shocked or disgusted, he responded only that it seemed like an exceptionally boring evening. That response shocked me. It got me realizing how much I had arbitrarily infused my repetitive patterns with excitement.”

  “And the other thing that stuck with you?” asked Tony.

  “Julius once asked what epitaph I might request for my tombstone. When I didn’t come up with anything, he offered a suggestion: ‘He fucked a lot.’ And then he added that the same epitaph could serve for my dog as well.”

  Some members whistled or smiled. Bonnie said, “That’s mean, Julius.”

  “No,” Philip said, “it wasn’t said in a mean way—he meant to shock me, to wake me up. And it did stick with me, and I think it played a role in my decision to change my life. But I guess I wanted to forget these incidents. Obviously, I don’t like acknowledging that he’s been helpful.”

  “Do you know why?” asked Tony.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. Perhaps I feel competitive. If he wins, I lose. Perhaps I don’t want to acknowledge that his approach to counseling, so different from mine, works. Perhaps
I don’t want to get too close to him. Perhaps she,” Philip nodded toward Pam, “is right: I can’t relate to a living person.”

  “At least not easily,” said Julius. “But you’re getting closer.”

  And so the group continued over the next several weeks: perfect attendance, hard productive work, and, aside from repeated anxious inquiries into Julius’s health and the ongoing tension between Pam and Philip, the group felt trusting, intimate, optimistic, even serene. No one was prepared for the bombshell about to hit the group.

  35

  Self-Therapy

  * * *

  When a man like me is born there remains only one thing to be desired from without—that throughout the whole of his life he can as much as possible be himself and live for his intellectual powers.

  * * *

  More than anything else, the autobiographical “About Me” is a dazzling compendium of self-therapy strategies that helped Schopenhauer stay afloat psychologically. Though some strategies, devised in anxiety storms at 3 A.M. and rapidly discarded at dawn, were fleeting and ineffective, others proved to be enduring bulwarks of support. Of these, the most potent was his unswerving lifelong belief in his genius.

  Even in my youth I noticed in myself that, whereas others strived for external possessions, I did not have to turn to such things because I carried within me a treasure infinitely more valuable than all external possessions; and the main thing was to enhance the treasure for which mental development and complete independence are the primary conditions…. Contrary to nature and the rights of man, I had to withdraw my powers from the advancement of my own well-being, in order to devote them to the service of mankind. My intellect belonged not to me but to the world.

  The burden of his genius, he said, made him more anxious and uneasy than he already was by virtue of his genetic makeup. For one thing, the sensibility of geniuses causes them to suffer more pain and anxiety. In fact, Schopenhauer persuades himself, there is a direct relationship between anxiety and intelligence. Hence, not only do geniuses have an obligation to use their gift for mankind, but, because they are meant to devote themselves entirely to the fulfilling of their mission, they were compelled to forego the many satisfactions (family, friends, home, accumulation of wealth) available to other humans.