When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
Both parents worked impossibly hard in the store six days a week from 8:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M.—Fridays and Saturdays until midnight. An incident of which I used in Lying on the Couch is a true story about my father:
He had a tiny, six-by-six grocery store on Fifth and R streets in Washington, DC. We lived upstairs over the store. One day a customer came in and asked for a pair of working gloves. My father pointed to the back door saying he had to get them out of the back room and that it would take him a couple of minutes. Well, there was no back room—the back door opened onto the alley—and my father slipped out and galloped to the open market two blocks down, bought a pair of gloves for twelve cents, rushed back, and sold them to the customer for fifteen cents.
Where were you educated? Have you any good collegiate anecdotes?
At George Washington University, which offered me a full-tuition scholarship—three hundred dollars. I lived at home and drove or bussed to school each day. College years were lost years with few good memories. I was a major grind, taking only pre-med courses and completing my studies in three years. One of my great regrets in life is having missed out on those glorious college days so often portrayed in films and literature. Why the rush and the grind? In those years medical school admission was extremely difficult for Jews: all medical schools had a fixed five-percent class quota. I had a straight A record in college but was turned down by nineteen of the twenty medical schools to which I applied. I and four of my close friends were admitted to George Washington School of Medicine and three of us have remained close to this day—all of us, incidentally, in our original and stable marriages. Much of the sense of urgency stemmed from my relationship with Marilyn, whom I met when fifteen; I wanted to nail down our relationship in marriage as quickly as possible—before she changed her mind.
You had medical and psychiatric training and yet incorporate a great deal of philosophy in your work. Can you tell us about your training in philosophy and your favorite philosophers?
During my first year of psychiatric residency at Johns Hopkins, I felt dissatisfied with the major frames of reference I was encountering: biological psychiatry and psychoanalytic theory. Both seemed to omit much that made us truly human and it was about that time that I read Rollo May’s new book, Existence, and was enthralled by the fact that there was a third way to understand the source and treatment of human despair. I had had no formal philosophy training at that time and embarked upon educating myself in philosophy. I signed up for a yearlong philosophy survey course using Bertrand Russell’s text, History of Western Philosophy, and since then have never stopped learning about philosophy, auditing (and later teaching) in the Stanford department of philosophy, and reading extensively. My favorite thinkers are ones who dealt explicitly with the problems of being human: lebensphilosophers such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Sartre, Camus, and Heidegger.
What does your wife do?
Marilyn was a professor of French, then director of the Stanford Women’s Research Center. She is also a writer of cultural history. Her works include A History of the Wife, A History of the Breast, Birth of the Chess Queen, and her new book, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds.
What are some of the jobs you had before settling into your medical profession?
I worked extensively in my parents’ store throughout childhood as well as delivering Liberty magazines and—at a nearby Safeway—helping to carry shoppers’ bags to cars. I passed a summer as a soda jerk for Peoples Drug Store—for money to buy a microscope—and passed another summer on a dairy farm—the classified ad had a typo, “fine” work instead of “farm”work, but I took the job anyway. I worked Saturdays for three years as a clothing and shoe salesman at Bonds Clothing store. I owned a fireworks stand for many Fourth of July seasons and spent several summers as a camp counselor and tennis instructor. I tutored organic chemistry in college. Once I began medical school, extra income was available only from laboratory jobs, selling blood and sperm, and assisting professors with library research. I held a myriad of post-MD consultation jobs at prisons and psychiatric hospitals.
What recent work of fiction would you recommend?
The best new fiction I’ve read in several years is the novel Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell—a work of genius. I’ve been reading and loving several books by Murakami, Roth, and Paul Auster. And I’ve just reread Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens, and The German Lesson, by Siegfried Lenz—what masterpieces!
Have you any writerly quirks?
I write every morning starting early—7:00 A.M.—till early afternoon, when I begin seeing patients. I get lots of material from my dreams. I’m very single-minded when writing and always put the writing first. I do a lot of active planning for my next day’s work on a bicycle and while soaking in a hot tub every night.
What do you rely upon for stimulation?
My stimulation as a writer is mental, from reading philosophy and fiction, and from my clinical work—hardly an hour of therapy with a patient goes by without some ideas being generated that may find their way into my writing. I don’t mean that I use content from the patients, but that the issues discussed stimulate some thoughts about the way our minds work.
What are your hobbies or outdoor pursuits?
Biking, chess, walks in San Francisco, and reading, always reading. My wife and I enjoy walks in Palo Alto and San Francisco; we go to the theater, meet with friends, and stay close to our four children. We are often engrossed in their careers: Eve is a gynecologist; Reid, a talented art photographer; Victor, a psychologist and entrepreneur; and Ben, a theater director. And we have an annual vacation with all the children and grandchildren, often in Hawaii.
What are you working on now?
My last book was Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death and before that I finished a revision—fifth edition—of my textbook, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. For the past three years I’ve been immersed in writing a novel about Benedict de Spinoza. It’s been a challenging task to write a novel about an individual whose life was lived primarily in his mind and whose external life was so devoid of relationships or dramatic events. But, gradually, it has taken shape and will consist of alternating chapters set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam and in twentieth-century Nazi Germany. Events of Spinoza’s life will alternate with life events of the Nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. The novel, thus, imagines the intersecting lives of two characters, one being one of the most noble men in history and the other, one of the most ignoble.
Read on
Have You Read?
More by Irvin D. Yalom
THE SCHOPENHAUER CURE
Suddenly confronted with his own mortality after a routine checkup, eminent psychotherapist Julius Hertzfeld is forced to reexamine his life and work—and seeks out Philip Slate, a sex addict whom he failed to help some twenty years earlier. Yet Philip claims to be cured—miraculously transformed by the pessimistic teachings of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer—and is, himself, a philosophical counselor in training. Philip’s dour, misanthropic stance compels Julius to invite Philip to join his intensive therapy group in exchange for tutoring on Schopenhauer. But with mere months left, life may be far too short to help Philip or to compete with him for the hearts and minds of the group members. And then again, it might be just long enough.
“A beautifully wrought tale of a therapy group’s final year and a moving debate about the end of life.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Meticulous. Yalom often refers to his books as ‘teaching novels,’ and his re-creation of a working therapy group is utterly convincing.”
Publishers Weekly
THE GIFT OF THERAPY
The culmination of master psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom’s more than thirty-five years in clinical practice, The Gift of Therapy is a remarkable and essential guidebook that illustrates through real case studies how patients and therapists alike can
A book aimed at enriching the therapeutic process for a new generation of patients and counselors, Yalom’s Gift of Therapy is an entertaining, informative, and insightful read for anyone with an interest in the subject.
“Yalom writes with the narrative wit of O. Henry and the earthy humor of Isaac Bashevis Singer.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A call of arms for the couch. . . . [Yalom is] a wizard for whom no curtain is left drawn.”
—Metro Times (Detroit)
LYING ON THE COUCH
A provocative exploration of the unusual doctor-patient relationships formed by three therapists: Seymour, who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients; Marshal, who worries about the role money plays in his dealings with his patients; and Ernest, who, driven by his sincere faith in psychoanalysis, invents a radical, and potentially devastating, approach to therapy.
“If Freud or Jung had set out to write a psychological thriller, I doubt that either one could have come up with a yarn as taut and telling.” —Los Angeles Times
LOVE’S EXECUTIONER
In this bestselling collection of absorbing tales, Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter.
“Dr. Yalom demonstrates once again that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction.” —New York Times
MOMMA AND THE MEANING OF LIFE
The long-awaited follow-up to Love’s Executioner probes the marvels at the heart of the therapeutic encounter, revealing the confrontations of both the author and his patients with life’s most profound challenges.
“These six engrossing narratives are very valuable gleanings from a master therapist’s professional and personal experience.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept