"When Nietzsche Wept", the name of the book itself has an appeal, the philosopher Nietzsche, Nietzsche's crying, we all know that Nietzsche is an extraordinary person, and this extraordinary person's ordinary crying, and ordinary people's crying, how is it different? The author Owen Yaron is a master of existential psychotherapy, and before reading this book, it is necessary to understand a little bit of "existential" philosophy, because the core of the story of this book is.
The whole book does not deal with existential philosophy, but it does run through existential ideas. The more superficial understanding of existentialism is: to become your being, to break the shackles of external morality, norms, etc., not to be required by virtue, to start completely from within yourself, to live to pursue, to complete yourself. Knowing this, half of the book is understood, and the other half must be read with the search for the reason for Nietzsche's crying.
The story line of the novel is very clear, Nietzsche's friend Salome approached the doctor Brel, hoping that Brel would provide Nietzsche with treatment - talk therapy - in the case of Nietzsche's unknown Salome seeking a doctor. After the initial contact, Nietzsche refused Breyer's treatment, but Brel still wanted to treat Nietzsche, so Brel adopted a strategy: disguised himself as a patient, and made a deal with Nietzsche, and the two treated each other as each other's doctors and as each other's patients.
Dr. Breel is a well-known doctor in Vienna, well-known at home and abroad, at the age of forty, full of achievements and careers. The family is bustling with five children, and the wife is the richest and most beautiful woman in Vienna. There is no doubt that Brel is at the peak of his life in the eyes of everyone. Nietzsche, who was originally a professor, was unable to continue his work due to migraines. Nietzsche in the book is truly nothing: no family, no career, no social status, and only a few readers. This difference just happens to be the basis for the two to be able to treat each other—each has something that the other doesn't have.
Although the title of the book is "When Nietzsche Wept", most of the content of the book focuses on Nietzsche's treatment of Brehr, and the treatment provided by Brehr is only interspersed with it, and this arrangement naturally has its own reasons. Breyer was a Jew. As we all know, the Jews have been persecuted throughout their long history, and their relatively underdogling, necessitate unity among Jews, and unity means personal sacrifice. They shared a common goal—to survive, to develop, to be strong—and this norm usually bound every Jew. From an early age, Brehr was told by the environment in which he lived: to learn, to grow, to achieve a career, to marry and have children, to succeed.
But as a man,Blair, what does he really want? What is it about living? After following the so-called enterprising path of success prescribed by others, Brehr was successful in this regulation, but he has gradually aged. Standing at the peak of life, he has been unable to climb upwards, and society is still developing and progressing, requiring everyone to work hard, to struggle, to realize the value of life. But when people reach this middle age, how can they follow the expectations of others to forge ahead and be more successful?
Driven by anxiety and sexual desire, Brel wants to escape from the family, escape his still beautiful wife, and find a safe haven, so Brel mentally cheats on his patient Bertha. Bertha, the young bird's human form, is enough to make Brel forget all the burdens, but Bertha's hysterical attack and nonsense pregnant with Brel's child, so that Brel, at the request of his wife, has to refer Bertha to another doctor. This incident made Brehr even more regard anxiety and despair as caused by family.
In the book, the author gives the character of Brehr a lot of things, a lot of achievements, a lot of responsibilities and burdens. Instead, nietzsche was given very little: no achievement, no career, no family, no status, no freedom and solitude. If Nietzsche is regarded as a superhuman being, then Brehr is the existence of ordinary people, the existence of most of us. So it is not surprising that the author uses a great deal of ink to focus on Nietzsche's treatment of Brehr, and the values conveyed by the author, or the basic method of the author's psychotherapy, is to promote the individual to be his own being. Therapy, then, is no longer the treatment of Brehr alone, but the treatment of most people in society.
Nietzsche instructed Brehr to give up, to give up his career, to give up his family, to destroy his marriage, to end all past relationships, to give up and get at the same time, to get no longer carrying the weight forward, no longer need to respond to the expectations of the academic world, no longer feel bound, get free!
Breyer tries to abandon everything under Nietzsche's guidance, but the author does not really let Brel abandon it, but cleverly asks Breyer's student Freud to use hypnotherapy to make Brel abandon everything in his dream. At a distance— after abandoning everything, looking at himself, looking at himself who has everything, Brehr was shocked to find that he was afraid of freedom, and even wanted to betray freedom, because after abandoning everything, he fell into an unbearable lightness of life, and at the same time, freedom was endless loneliness.
It turns out that responsibilities, burdens and shackles are only because we ourselves see them as burdens, and in fact they are not necessarily the existence of burdens. When Brel woke up, he understood one thing: "I know that the key to a happy life is to choose what is necessary first, and then to love what is chosen." "Select, yes, select. We often choose out of necessity, but we hate the price we pay to make a choice, without first loving what we choose.
Nietzsche heals Brehr, allowing him to look into his own existence and find the real cause of his anxiety and despair—aging and death. Breyer, after realizing that it wasn't his family, wife and children, etc. that made him want to flee, turned and embraced everything he already had.
Nietzsche, a superhuman being, but always a man. Seeing that Brehr was healed from his heart and could embrace what he had, Nietzsche suddenly found himself lonely than he thought, and was afraid of loneliness, once using loneliness as a strength to help move forward, but finally found that he did not become his own existence, did not accept his needs as a person - the need for friends and love. In the past forty years, the despair he had fallen into was actually of his own making, and he was never willing to admit it, and finally in the influence and conversation therapy of Brehr, he honestly faced himself, released all the accumulated loneliness, and gained his true freedom. Nietzsche's tears stem from the recognition of his own humanity, from the sudden awakening after a long period of confusion, and from the powerful feeling of suddenly seeing the light after waking up.
The author finds a middle point between the two states of total independence of the self and total dependence on social pushing. The superhuman Nietzsche cannot be completely detached from the need to be a human being, so the author adds a condition to "be your being"—in society, in the crowd, to be your being. Finding that balance for oneself, choosing what is necessary, and then loving one's own choices may be the only way one can live this life happily for a long time.