Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

How much of life have I missed, he wondered, simply by failing to look? Or by looking and not seeing?

Suddenly Breuer’s mind ceased its chattering. Now looking required no concentration. Now retina and cortex cooperated perfectly, allowing the image of Lou Salomé to pour freely into his mind.

tête-à-tête

Anna O. and your friend have very different illnesses. She was afflicted with hysteria and suffered from certain disabling symptoms, as your brother may have described to you. My approach consisted of systematically wiping out each symptom by helping my patient to recall, with the help of mesmerism, the forgotten psychic trauma in which it originated. Once the specific source was uncovered, the symptom dissolved.”

“to me, the word ‘duty’ is weighty and oppressive. I’ve pared down my duties to only one—to perpetuate my freedom. Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit. They will never have dominion over me. I hope, Doctor Breuer, the time will come when neither men nor women are tyrannized by each other’s frailties.”

Breuer, ever the scientist, recalled the facility with which he had, in only a few minutes, switched from one mental state to another—from arrogance to unpretentiousness. What an interesting phenomenon! Could he replicate it?

He knew about their leakages, dysmenorrheic problems, sciatica, and various irregular protrusions—prolapsed bladders and uteruses, and bulging blue hemorrhoids and varicosities. But then there were other times—times of enchantment, of being captured by women who were larger than life, their breasts swelling into powerful, magical globes—when he was overcome by an extraordinary craving to merge with their bodies, to suckle at their nipples, to slip into their warmth and wetness.

It was all a matter of perspective,

His mentor in these matters was Schopenhauer. No one desires, he believes, to help another: instead, people wish only to dominate and increase their own power.

Breuer nodded. He was familiar with Malwida von Meysenbug’s work, especially

The first words he spoke to me were: ‘From what stars have we dropped down to each other here?’

“Go on, Josef, the astounding discovery was——?” “Well, we found that when she went back to the very source of a symptom and described it all to me, then that symptom disappeared on its own—with no need for any hypnotic suggestion——” “Source?” asked Freud, now so fascinated that he dropped his cigar into the ashtray and left it there, smoldering and forgotten. “What do you mean, Josef, the source of the symptom?” “The original irritant, the experience that gave rise to it.” “Please!” Freud demanded. “An example!” “I’ll tell you about her hydrophobia. Bertha had been unable or unwilling to drink water for several weeks. She had great thirst, but when she picked up a glass of water, she couldn’t bring herself to drink and was forced to quench her thirst with melons and other fruits. Then one day in a trance—she was a self-mesmerizer and automatically entered a trance every session—she recalled how, weeks before, she had entered her nurse’s room and witnessed her dog lap water from her drinking glass. No sooner did she describe this memory to me, along with discharging her considerable anger and disgust, than she requested a glass of water and drank it with no difficulty. The symptom never returned.”

“But let’s go back to the psychological problem, Josef. Your Fraulein says this man won’t acknowledge his psychological distress. If he won’t even admit he is suicidal, how will you proceed?” “That shouldn’t pose a problem,” Breuer said confidently. “When I take a medical history, I can always find opportunities to glide into the psychological realm. When I inquire about insomnia, for example, I often ask about the type of thoughts that keep the patient awake. Or after the patient has recited the entire litany of his symptoms, I often sympathize and inquire, off-handedly, whether he feels discouraged by his illness, or feels like giving up, or doesn’t want to live anymore. That rarely fails to persuade the patient to tell me everything.”

No surprise, of course, to Breuer. He had never encountered a patient who did not secretly enjoy a microscopic examination of his life. And the greater the power of magnification, the more the patient enjoyed it.

The joy of being observed ran so deep that Breuer believed the real pain of old age, bereavement, outliving one’s friends, was the absence of scrutiny—the horror of living an unobserved life.

“A flash of bestial pleasure followed by hours of self-loathing, of cleansing myself of the protoplasmic stink of rutting, is not, in my view, the route to—how did you put it?—‘organismic totality.’ ”

“Truth,” Nietzsche continued, “is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your patient’s wish to be in God’s hands is not truth. It is simply a child’s wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the everlastingly bloated nipple we have labeled ‘God’!

“It is not the truth that is holy, but the search for one’s own truth! Can there be a more sacred act than self-inquiry? My philosophical work, some say, is built on sand: my views shift continually. But one of my granite sentences is: ‘Become who you are.’ And how can one discover who and what one is without the truth?”

“If he doesn’t know he is about to die, how can your patient make a decision about how to die?”

“Hope? Hope is the final evil!”

“Dying is hard. I’ve always felt the final reward of the dead is to die no more!”

He had known that Bertha was unnaturally attached to her father. Yet hadn’t he, her physician, exploited this attachment for his own benefit? Why else would she have loved a man of his years, of his homeliness?

boot. At first, Breuer had laughed at his foolish reaction. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that, rationalist and freethinker though he might be, his mind nonetheless harbored clusters of supernatural terror. And not too deep either: they were “on call,” only seconds from the surface

At first, Breuer had laughed at his foolish reaction. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that, rationalist and freethinker though he might be, his mind nonetheless harbored clusters of supernatural terror. And not too deep either: they were “on call,” only seconds from the surface.

There was something cleansing about discourse in the realm of pure ideas. It was there, perhaps only there, that he was unsullied by Bertha and carnality. What would it be like to dwell all the time, like Nietzsche, in that realm?

truth is an error without which we cannot live!

the enemies of truth are not lies, but convictions!

“What is the seal of liberation?—No longer being ashamed in front of oneself!”

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier and simpler.”

For a psychologist, personal suffering is a blessing—the training ground for facing the suffering of existence.”

Perhaps the conscious mental representations are afterthoughts—ideas thought after the deed to provide us with the illusion of power and control.

Do you know what the real question for a thinker is?” He did not pause for an answer. “The real question is: How much truth can I stand?

I do not claim that I philosophize for you, whereas you, Doctor, continue to pretend that your motivation is to serve me, to alleviate my pain. Such claims have nothing to do with human motivation. They are part of the slave mentality artfully engineered by priestly propaganda. Dissect your motives deeper! You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.”

You love desire, not the desired.

Perhaps you think of those you love. Dig deeper, and you will learn that you do not love them: what you love is the pleasant sensations such love produces in you! You love desire, not the desired.

it contains no professional jargon, which, though offering the illusion of knowledge, is in reality the language of ignorance.

I’m convinced there’s something healing in unburdening. Look at the Catholics. The priests have been offering confessional relief for centuries.”

Perhaps simply revealing himself would constitute such a major achievement, such a change in his way of life, that it would be in itself sufficient

“Maybe,” Breuer replied, “there doesn’t have to be a next step? Perhaps simply revealing himself would constitute such a major achievement, such a change in his way of life, that it would be in itself sufficient?”

“Yes, that’s good, Josef. But is ‘liberation’ the term? After all, he has no separate existence; he’s an unconscious part of Müller. Isn’t integration what we’re after?”

And Breuer proceeded to describe how he had erased not only each of Bertha’s symptoms by tracking down its original cause but, finally, every part of her illness when he helped her discover and re-experience its fundamental cause—the horror of her father’s death.

An excellent beginning! Much accomplished He developed a list of my problems and plans to focus on one at a time. Good. Let him think this is what we are doing. To encourage him to confess, I bared myself today. He did not reciprocate but, in time, it will come. Certainly he was astounded, and impressed, by my openness. I have an interesting tactical idea! I shall describe his situation as if it were my own. Then I let him counsel me and, in so doing, he will silently counsel himself. Thus, for example, I can help him work on his triangle—with Lou Salomé and Paul Rée—by asking for help with my triangle with Bertha and her new doctor. He is so secretive that this may be the only way to help him. Perhaps he will never be honest enough to ask for help directly.

Will the list ever end? Will each day spawn new problems? How do I make him see that his problems clamor for attention only in order to obscure that which he does not wish to see? Petty thoughts infiltrate his mind like a fungus. They will eventually rot his body. As he left today, I asked him, what he would see if he were not blinded by trivia. Thus I pointed the way.

The greatest tree reaches for the highest heights and sinks the deepest roots, into darkness—even into evil; but he neither reaches up nor thrusts downward. Animal lust drains his strength—and his reason. Three women rend him, and he is grateful to them. He licks their bloody fangs.

fears are not born of darkness; rather, fears are like the stars—always there, but obscured by the glare of daylight.

“Yes, particularly in The Gay Science. There I state that sexual relationships are no different from other relationships in that they, too, involve a struggle for power. Sexual lust is, at bottom, lust for total dominance over the mind and body of the other.” “That doesn’t ring true. Not for my lust!” “Yes, yes!” Nietzsche insisted. “Look deeper, and you will see that lust is also a lust for dominance over all others. The ‘lover’ is not one who ‘loves’: instead, he aims for sole possession of his loved one.

he who does not obey himself is ruled by others. It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.”

those who wish for peace of soul and happiness must believe and embrace faith, while those who wish to pursue the truth must forsake peace of mind and devote their life to inquiry.

creativity and discovery are begotten in pain.

‘One must have chaos and frenzy within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’

“Don’t you see, Josef, that the problem is not that you feel discomfort? What importance is tension or pressure in your chest? Who ever promised you comfort? So you sleep poorly! So? Who ever promised you good sleep? No, the problem is not discomfort. The problem is that you have discomfort about the wrong thing!”

He expects from me relief, comfort, and happiness. But I must give him more misery. I must change his trivial misery back into the noble misery it once was.

“Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.”

Don’t try to reason it out. Just chimneysweep.

“A cosmic perspective always attenuates tragedy. If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.”

All seeing is relative, and so is all knowing. We invent what we experience. And what we have invented, we can destroy.”

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

He is civilized, polite, a man of manners. He has tamed his wild nature, turned his wolf into a spaniel. And he calls this moderation. Its real name is mediocrity!

Perhaps you cured Bertha by discovering not the origin, but the meaning of each symptom! Perhaps”—here Nietzsche almost whispered as if he were conveying a secret of great significance—“perhaps symptoms are messengers of a meaning and will vanish only when their message is comprehended.

“Stop pacing. Close your eyes and try to describe what you see on the back of your eyelids. Just let the thoughts flow—don’t control them.”

That’s what Bertha means, passion and magic. Life without passion—who can live such a life?”

“Living safely is dangerous.”

“ ‘In the presence of Bertha’s beauty, I feel—I feel—’ What do I feel? I feel I’m in the bowels of the earth—in the center of existence. I’m just where I should be. I’m in the place where there are no questions about life or purpose—the center—the place of safety. Her beauty offers infinite safety.” He lifted his head. “See, I tell you this makes no sense!”

We must look to meaning. The symptom is but a messenger carrying the news that Angst is erupting from the innermost realm! Deep concerns about finitude, the death of God, isolation, purpose, freedom—deep concerns locked away for a lifetime—now break their bonds and bang at the doors and windows of the mind. They demand to be heard. And not only heard, but lived!

Consider what Bertha means to Josef. She is escape, dangerous escape, escape from the danger of the safe life. And passion as well, and mystery and magic. She is the great liberator bearing the reprieve from his death sentence.

Bertha is a cornucopia of mystery, protection, and salvation! Josef Breuer calls this love. But its real name is prayer.

We skeptics have our enemies, our Satans who undermine our doubting and plant the seeds of faith in the most cunning places.

“Life—a spark between two voids. A nice image, Josef. And isn’t it strange how we are so preoccupied with the second void and never think upon the first?”

If your image dwells eternally in her mind, then where is it housed during the moments she’s thinking of something else? Obviously there must be a vast reservoir of unconscious memories.”

tête-à-tête.

“I dream of a love in which two people share a passion to search together for some higher truth.

He thought of Nietzsche’s definition of friendship: two who join together in a search for some higher truth.

We have not chosen the right enemy.” “And that is—?” “You know, Josef! Why make me say it? The right enemy is the underlying meaning of your obsession. Think of our talk today—again and again, we’ve returned to your fears of the void, of oblivion, of death.

Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!

“Josef, try to clear your mind. Imagine this thought experiment! What if some demon were to say to you that this life—as you now live it and have lived it in the past—you will have to live once more, and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and everything unutterably small or great in your life will return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this wind and those trees and that slippery shale, even the graveyard and the dread, even this gentle moment and you and I, arm in arm, murmuring these words?”

To annex the responsibility of others—that way lies entrapment, for me and for them.

You have a burden: the richer the soil, the more unforgivable the failure to cultivate it.”

looking at her. It was fun to see Mathilde flustered.

‘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?”

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.

‘Offer a suffering friend a resting place,’ he said, ‘but take care it be a hard bed or field cot.’ ”

TRUTH, too, is an illusion—but an illusion without which we can’t survive.

Friedrich, please try an experiment with me. Can you imagine your tears having a voice?”

“Friedrich, please try an experiment with me. Can you imagine your tears having a voice?”

“It’s strange, but at the very moment when I, for the first time in my life, reveal my loneliness in all its depth, in all its despair—at that precise moment, loneliness melts away! The moment I told you I had never been touched was the very moment I first allowed myself to be touched. An extraordinary moment, as though some vast, interior icepack suddenly cracked and shattered.”

we are each composed of many parts, each clamoring for expression.

I’ve always dreamed of a friendship in which two people join together to attain some higher ideal. And here, now, it has arrived!

“History is fiction that did happen. Whereas fiction is history that might have happened.”

“Your highness, you, not I, should possess the keys to this ward.” The patient, his left eye twitching, pulled his cape about him and stared hard at the genuflecting psychiatrist. For a moment, just for a moment, he appeared perfectly sane, as he said, “Mistah, one of us here is very, very crazy.”

The Nietzschean overman loves his fate, embraces his suffering, and turns it into art and into beauty.

Here and there on earth we may encounter a kind of confirmation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire—a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship. (The Gay Science)