When Nietzsche Wept — review
A Novel of Obsession
Dr. Breuer (a distinguished physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology) and Nietzsche swap their roles. The doctor here is the patient.
At some point, Nietzsche advises Dr. Breuer to
“Be a man and do not follow me but yourself”.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer never met.
Prof. Yalom, the author, is a 90 years old emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford. He approaches a grandiose writing with such candor that each character seems to be himself as their struggles were once his own.
Review:
As someone who has been honing my writing and reading throughout the years, I learned to be scrupulous yet fair — when it comes to recommendations and ratings.
This book is received as a “Perennial Classic” and held in such high regard which I’d personally believe its prominence must have been ebbed away by now.
Prof Yalom, similar to his Stanford textbooks manifests the subject matter with a comely approach of “show, don’t tell”. Contrarily, the book is a must-read-to-the-end one to realize the historical accuracy of its premise (especially Prof Yalm’s note at the end). But, I found 310 pages of talking heads a bit too verbose and disproportionate. It’s not much beyond some personal epiphanies for a new ideology to emerge nor new disciplines to burst out.
The novel still offers some easy to forget and fascinating elements. Yet, they are rare and mostly from Nietzsche.
Remarks:
We spend 46.9% of our waking hours thinking about what is NOT going on — something other than immediate surroundings, and most of this daydreaming does make us happy. Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth (right) and Daniel Gilbert (left) used an iPhone app “Track Your Happiness” to gather this observational research in the journal Science.
If you spend half as much time in your head, this book might (or completely might not) be a good read. If you analyze yourself and your actions, enjoy the process of self-discovery then I suggest you hit your nearest used book shop.
