When Nietzsche Wept

by Irvin D. Yalom

“In the beginning,” Nietzsche replied, “I was embarrassed for you—never had I heard such candid revelations. Next I grew impatient, then critical and judgmental. Later I turned again: I grew to admire your courage and honesty. Turning still further, I felt touched by your trust in me. And now, today, I am left with great melancholy at the thought of leaving you. I dreamed of you last night—a sad dream.”

  “What was your dream, Friedrich?”

  Returning from the window, Nietzsche sat and faced Breuer. “In the dream, I wake up here in the clinic. It is dark and cold. Everyone is gone. I want to find you. I light a lamp and search in vain through empty room after empty room. Then I descend the stairs to the common room where I see a strange sight: a fire—not in the fireplace, but a neat wood fire in the center of the room—and around that fire are eight tall stones, sitting as if they are warming themselves. Suddenly I feel tremendous sadness and start to weep. That’s when I really woke up.”

  “A strange dream,” Breuer said. “Any ideas about it?”

  “I have just a feeling of great sadness, a deep longing. I’ve never wept in a dream before. Can you help?”

  Breuer silently repeated Nietzsche’s simple phrase, “Can you help?” It was what he had longed for. Three weeks ago could he ever have imagined such words from Nietzsche? He must not waste this opportunity.

  “Eight stones warmed by the fire,” he replied. “A curious image. Let me tell you what occurs to me. You remember, of course, your severe migraine in Herr Schlegel’s Gasthaus?”

  Nietzsche nodded. “Most of it. For some of it, I was not present!”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Breuer said. “When you were comatose, you uttered some sad phrases. One of them was, ‘No slot, no slot.’ ”

  Nietzsche looked blank. “ ‘No slot’? What could I have meant?”

  “I think ‘no slot’ meant that you had no place in any friendship or any community. I think, Friedrich, you long for a hearth but fear your longing!”

  Breuer softened his voice. “This must be a lonely time of the year for you. Already many of the other patients here are leaving to rejoin their families for the Christmas holidays. Perhaps that’s why the rooms are empty in your dream. When searching for me, you find a fire warming eight stones. I think I know what that means: around my hearth my family is seven—my five children, my wife, and I. Might you not be the eighth stone? Perhaps the dream is a wish for my friendship and my hearth. If so, I welcome you.”

  Breuer leaned forward to clasp Nietzsche’s arm. “Come home with me, Friedrich. Even though my despair is alleviated, we have no need to part. Be my guest for the holiday season—or better, stay for the entire winter. It would give me the greatest pleasure.”

  Nietzsche rested his hand on top of Breuer’s for a moment—just for a moment. Then he rose and walked again to the window. Rain, driven by the northeastern wind, violently lashed the glass. He turned.

  “Thank you, my friend, for inviting me into your home. Yet I cannot accept.”

  “But why? I’m convinced it would benefit you, Friedrich, and me as well. I have an empty room about the size of this one. And a library in which you could write.”

  Nietzsche shook his head gently but firmly. “A few minutes ago when you said you had gone to the outermost limits of your limited ability, you were referring to facing isolation. I, too, face my limits—the limits of relatedness. Here, with you, even now as we talk face to face, soul to soul, I abut against these limits.”

  “Limits can be stretched, Friedrich. Let us try!”

  Nietzsche paced back and forth. “The moment I say, ‘I cannot bear loneliness any longer,’ I fall to untold depths in my own estimation—for I’ve deserted the highest that is in me. My appointed path requires me to resist the dangers that may lure me away.”

  “But, Friedrich, joining another is not the same as abandoning yourself! Once you said there was much you could learn from me about relationships. Then allow me to teach you! At times it’s right to be suspicious and vigilant, but at other times one must be able to relax one’s guard and permit oneself to be touched.” He stretched his arm out to him. “Come, Friedrich, sit.”

  Obediently, Nietzsche returned to his chair and, closing his eyes, took several deep breaths. Then he opened his eyes and plunged. “The problem, Josef, is not that you might betray me: it is that I have been betraying you. I’ve been dishonest with you. And now, as you invite me into your home, as we grow closer, my deceit eats away at me. It is time to change that! No more deceit between us! Permit me to unburden myself. Hear my confession, my friend.”

  Turning his head away, Nietzsche fixed his gaze on a small floral cluster in the Kashan rug and, in a quavering voice, began. “Several months ago, I became deeply involved with a remarkable young Russian woman named Lou Salomé. Before then I had never allowed myself to love a woman. Perhaps because I was inundated with women early in life. After my father died, I was surrounded by cold, distant women—my mother, my sister, my grandmother and aunts. Some deep noxious attitudes must have been laid down because ever since I have regarded with horror a liaison with a woman. Sensuality—a woman’s flesh—seems to me the ultimate distraction, a barrier between me and my life mission. But Lou Salomé was different, or so I thought. Though she was beautiful, she also appeared a true soulmate, my twin brain. She understood me, pointed me in new directions—toward dizzying heights I had never before had the courage to explore. I thought she would be my student, my protégée, my disciple.

  “But then, catastrophe! My lust emerged. She used it to play me off against Paul Rée, my close friend who had first introduced us. She led me to believe I was the man for whom she was destined, but when I offered myself, she spurned me. I was betrayed by everyone—by her, by Rée, and by my sister, who attempted to destroy our relationship. Now everything has turned to ashes, and I live in exile from all whom I once held dear.”

  “When you and I first talked,” Breuer interjected, “you alluded to three betrayals.”

  “The first was Richard Wagner, who betrayed me long ago. That sting has now faded. The others were Lou Salomé and Paul Rée. Yes, I did allude to them. But I pretended that I had resolved the crisis. That was my deception. The truth is that I have never, even to this moment, resolved it. This woman, this Lou Salomé, invaded my mind and set up housekeeping there. I still cannot dislodge her. Not a day passes, sometimes not an hour, without my thinking of her. Most of the time I hate her. I think of striking out at her, of publicly humiliating her. I want to see her grovel, beg me to take her back! Sometimes the opposite—I long for her, I think of taking her hand, of our sailing on Lake Orta, of greeting an Adriatic sunrise together——”

  “She is your Bertha!”

  “Yes, she is my Bertha! Whenever you described your obsession, whenever you tried to root it out from your mind, whenever you tried to understand its meaning, you were speaking for me as well! You were doing double work—mine as well as yours! I concealed myself—like a woman—then crawled out after you had left, placed my feet in your footprints, and attempted to follow your path. Coward that I was, I crouched behind you and allowed you alone to face the dangers and humiliations of the trail.”

  Tears were running down Nietzsche’s cheeks, and he wiped them dry with a handkerchief.

  Now he raised his head and faced Breuer directly. “That is my confession and my shame. Now you understand my intense interest in your liberation. Your liberation can be my liberation. Now you know why it is important for me to know precisely how you cleansed Bertha from your mind! Now will you tell me?”

  But Breuer shook his head. “My trance experience is now hazy. But even if I were able to recall precise details, what value would they be to you, Friedrich? You yourself told me that there is no the way, that the only great truth is the truth we discover for ourselves.”

  Bowing his head, Nietzsche whispered, “Yes, yes, you are right.”

  Breuer cleared his throat and took a deep br
eath. “I can’t tell you what you wish to hear, but, Friedrich”—he paused, his heart racing. Now it was his turn to plunge—“there is something I must tell you. I, too, have not been honest, and it is time now for me to confess.”

  Breuer had a sudden awful premonition that, no matter what he said or did, Nietzsche would regard this as the fourth great betrayal in his life. Yet it was too late to turn back.

  “I fear, Friedrich, that this confession may cost me your friendship. I pray it does not. Please believe that I confess out of devotion, for I cannot bear the thought of your learning from another what I am about to say, of your feeling once again—a fourth time—betrayed.”

  Nietzsche’s face froze into deathmask stillness. He sucked in his breath as Breuer began: “In October, a few weeks before you and I first met, I took a brief holiday with Mathilde to Venice, where there was a strange note waiting for me at the hotel.”

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, Breuer handed Nietzsche Lou Salomé’s note. He watched Nietzsche’s eyes widen in disbelief as he read.

  21 October 1882

  Doctor Breuer,

  I must see you on a matter of great urgency. The future of German philosophy hangs in the balance. Meet me at nine tomorrow morning at the Cafe Sorrento.

  Lou Salomé

  Holding the note in his trembling hand, Nietzsche stammered, “I don’t understand. What—what———”

  “Sit back, Friedrich, it’s a long story, and I must tell it from the beginning.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Breuer related everything—the meetings with Lou Salomé; her learning about Anna O.’s treatment from her brother, Jenia; her plea on Nietzsche’s behalf; and his own agreeing to her request for help.

  “You must be wondering, Friedrich, whether a physician has ever agreed to a more bizarre consultation. Indeed, when I look back on my talk with Lou Salomé, I find it hard to believe I agreed to her request. Imagine! She was asking me to invent a treatment for a nonmedical ailment and to apply it surreptitiously to an unwilling patient. But somehow she persuaded me. In fact, she regarded herself a full partner in this endeavor and, in our last meeting, demanded a report of the progress of ‘our’ patient.”

  “What!” exclaimed Nietzsche. “You saw her recently?”

  “She appeared unannounced in my office a few days ago, and insisted I provide her with information about the progress of the treatment. Of course, I gave her nothing, and she left in a huff.”

  Breuer continued, revealing all his perceptions about the course of their work together: his frustrated attempts to help Nietzsche; his knowing that Nietzsche concealed his despair about the loss of Lou Salomé. He even shared his master plan—how he pretended to seek treatment for his own despair in order to keep Nietzsche in Vienna.

  Nietzsche jerked upright at this revelation. “So, all this has been pretense? ”

  “At first,” Breuer acknowledged. “My plan was to ‘handle’ you, to play the cooperative patient while I gradually reversed the roles and eased you into becoming a patient. But then the real irony occurred when I became my role, when my pretense of patienthood became reality.”

  What else was there to tell? Searching his mind for other details, Breuer found none. He had confessed all.

  Eyes closed, Nietzsche bowed his head and clutched it with both hands.

  “Friedrich, are you all right?” asked Breuer in concern.

  “My head—I’m seeing flashing lights—both eyes! My visual aura———”

  Breuer immediately assumed his professional persona. “A migraine is trying to materialize. At this stage, we can stop it. The best thing is caffeine and ergotamine. Don’t move! I’ll be right back.”

  Rushing from the room, he dashed downstairs to the central nursing desk and then to the kitchen. He returned in a few minutes carrying a tray with a cup, a pot of strong coffee, water, and some tablets. “First, swallow these pills—ergot and some magnesium salts to protect your stomach from the coffee. Then I want you to drink this entire pot of coffee.”

  Once Nietzsche swallowed the pills, Breuer asked, “Do you want to lie down?”

  “No, no, we must talk this through!”

  “Lean your head back in your chair. I’ll darken the room. The less visual stimulation, the better.” Breuer lowered the shades on the three windows and then prepared a cold wet compress, which he draped over Nietzsche’s eyes. They sat silent for a few minutes in the dusk. Then Nietzsche spoke, his voice hushed.

  “So Byzantine, Josef—everything between us—all so Byzantine, so dishonest, so doubly dishonest!”

  “What else could I have done?” Breuer spoke softly and slowly so as not to rouse the migraine. “Perhaps I should never have agreed in the first place. Should I have told you earlier? You would have turned on your heel and walked away, forever!”

  No response.

  “Not true?” Breuer asked.

  “Yes, I’d have caught the next train out of Vienna. But you lied to me. You made promises to me——”

  “And I honored every promise, Friedrich. I promised to conceal your name, and I kept that promise. And when Lou Salomé inquired about you—demanded to know is more accurate—refused to speak of you. I refused even to let her know we were meeting. And one other promise I kept, Friedrich. Remember I said that when you were comatose you uttered some phrases?”

  Nietzsche nodded.

  “The other phrase was ‘Help me!’ You repeated it over and over.”

  “‘Help me!’ I said that?”

  “Again and again! Keep drinking, Friedrich.”

  Nietzsche having emptied his cup, Breuer filled it once more with the thick black coffee.

  “I remember nothing. Neither ‘Help me’ nor that other phrase, ‘No slot’—that wasn’t me talking.”

  “But it was your voice, Friedrich. Some part of you spoke to me, and I gave that ‘you’ my promise to help. And I never betrayed that promise. Drink some more coffee. Four full cups is my prescription.”

  As Nietzsche drank the bitter coffee, Breuer rearranged the cold compress on his brow. “How does your head feel? The flashing lights? Do you want to stop talking for a while and rest?”

  “I’m better, much better,” said Nietzsche in a weak voice. “No, I don’t want to stop. Stopping would agitate me more than talking. I’m used to working while feeling like this. But first let me try to relax the muscles in my temples and scalp.” For three or four minutes, he breathed slowly and deeply while counting softly, and then spoke. “There, that’s better. Often I count my breaths and imagine my muscles relaxing with each count. Sometimes I keep focused by concentrating only on the breathing. Have you ever noticed that the air you breathe in is always cooler than the air you breathe out?”

  Breuer watched and waited. Thank God for the migraine! he thought. It forces Nietzsche, even for a short time, to remain where he is. Under the cold compress, only his mouth was visible. The mustache quivered as if he were on the verge of saying something and then, apparently, thought better of it.

  Finally, Nietzsche smiled. “You thought to manipulate me, and all the while I thought I was manipulating you.”

  “But, Friedrich, what was conceived in manipulation has now been delivered into honesty.”

  “And—ach!—behind everything there was Lou Salomé, in her favorite position, holding the reins, whip in hand, controlling both of us. You’ve told me a great deal, Josef, but one thing you’ve left out.”

  Breuer stretched out his hands, palms up. “I have nothing more to hide.”

  “Your motives! All of this—this plotting, this deviousness, the time consumed, the energy. You’re a busy physician. Why did you do this? Why did you ever agree to become involved?”

  “That’s a question I have often asked myself,” said Breuer. “I don’t know the answer other than to say it was to please Lou Salomé. Somehow she enchanted me. I could not refuse her.”

  “Yet you refused her the last time she appeared in your office.�
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  “Yes—but by then I had met you, made promises to you. Believe me, Friedrich, she was not pleased.”

  “I salute you for standing up to her—you did something I never could. But tell me, at the beginning, in Venice, how did she enchant you?”

  “I’m not sure I can answer that. I only know that after half an hour with her I felt I could refuse her nothing.”

  “Yes, she had the same effect on me.”

  “You should have seen the bold way she strode to my table in the café.”

  “I know that walk,” said Nietzsche. “Her imperial Roman march. She doesn’t bother to watch for obstacles, as though nothing would dare block her path.”

  “Yes, and such an air of unmistakable confidence! And something so free about her—her clothes, her hair, her dress. She’s entirely released from convention.”

  Nietzsche nodded. “Yes, her freedom is striking—and admirable! In that one thing we can all learn from her.” He slowly turned his head and appeared pleased at the absence of pain. “I’ve sometimes thought of Lou Salomé as a mutation, especially when one considers that her freedom blossomed in the midst Of a dense bourgeois thicket. Her father was a Russian general, you know.” He looked sharply at Breuer. “I imagine she was immediately personal with you? Suggested you call her by her first name?”

  “Exactly. And she gazed directly into my eyes and touched my hand as we spoke.”

  “Oh yes, that sounds familiar. The first time we met, Josef, she disarmed me completely by taking my arm when I was leaving and offering to walk me back to my hotel.”

  “She did precisely the same thing with me!”

  Nietzsche stiffened, but went on. “She told me that she didn’t want to leave me so quickly, that she had to have more time with me.”

  “Her precise words to me, Friedrich. And then she bristled when I suggested my wife might be unsettled by seeing me walking with a young woman.”

  Nietzsche chuckled. “I know how she’d have reacted to that. She doesn’t look kindly on conventional marriage—she considers it a euphemism for female indenture.”