When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession
"Magical." -Washington Post Book World
"The best dramatization of a great thinker’s thought since Sartre’s The Freud Scenario." -Chicago Tribune
From renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom, acclaimed author of The Schopenhauer Cure and Love’s Executioner, the international bestseller When Nietzsche Wept is a richly imagined tale of two brilliant and enigmatic men plumbing the depths of their psyches to discover the redemptive power of friendship.
From Publishers Weekly
This talky first novel by psychotherapist Yalom ( Love's Executioner ) is set in 1882 Vienna, where Joseph Breuer, an eminent physician and mentor of Sigmund Freud, has applied his recently discovered talking cure to a woman afflicted with multiple symptoms of hysteria. But now it is Breuer who needs help, for he has become obsessed with the beautiful Anna O. although she is no longer his patient. On vacation in Venice, he is asked by Lou Salome, an imperious Russian woman, to treat German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who has threatened suicide because of her rejection. Nietzsche consults Breuer in Vienna and, after a series of subtle subterfuges, agrees to a month of daily meetings; Breuer's plan is to employ the talking cure on the bristling Nietzsche under the guise of getting the philosopher to help him with his own obsession and related depression. In this intelligent, fully imagined tale, Yalom accurately evokes the encapsulated world of Breuer and Nietzsche's sessions as well as the social and intellectual milieu of the period, but the narrative is constrained by too much telling ("Perhaps dreams can express either wishes or fears," Freud observes in a discussion with Breuer)--at the expense of showing--and a manipulated, unconvincing resolution. Major ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
amazon.com
