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1-Page Summary of When Nietzsche Wept
Overall Summary
When Nietzsche Wept is a novel that takes place in Vienna during the 1880s. The main character, Dr. Josef Breuer, meets with Friedrich Nietzsche and helps him through his mental illness. This meeting leads to the creation of modern psychotherapy. It’s been adapted into a movie by Millennium Films in 2007.
This story is told in the third person limited point of view. The main character, Lou Salome, meets Dr. Josef Breuer at a café in Vienna, Austria to discuss her friend Friedrich Nietzsche’s migraines and his despair over them. She asks him to treat Nietzsche because he is the only one who can help Nietzsche deal with his illness. However, she asks that he keep their meeting secret from everyone else so as not to hurt Nietzsche’s pride or reputation.
A doctor named Breuer was fascinated by a patient who suffered from sexual obsession. He believed that the cure for her problem could be found in “talking treatment,” which he called psychoanalysis.
Nietzsche reluctantly travels to Vienna because he’s been advised by a doctor that he needs treatment. He decides not to go, but later on is persuaded to stay at the clinic for one month. However, there’s only one condition attached: Dr. Breuer must allow Nietzsche to help him with his own despair as well as helping Nietzsche with his migraine headaches.
Dr. Breuer decides to try out Nietzsche’s radical new treatment on himself, as he is in a bad place with his wife and has lost the will to live. He starts therapy sessions with Nietzsche, but they start off rocky because of their personal issues. However, after talking about those issues and healing from them, Dr. Breuer begins feeling better both mentally and physically.
Nietzsche and Dr. Breuer have both been obsessed with women, but they’re not too happy about it. Nietzsche is in love with Lou Salome, while Dr. Breuer has a crush on Bertha Pappenheim. Both men are affected by their desires for these women; they can’t be good fathers or husbands because of them. They talk about how much time they waste thinking about the women instead of doing other things like eating or sleeping, and how much they want to leave their lives behind to be with those women in Italy (or wherever else).
The author consults his close friend and medical student, Sigmund Freud. They bounce ideas back and forth to each other. In exchange, the author helps Freud with his studies. Freud becomes intrigued by Dr. Breuer’s therapy sessions with Friedrich Nietzsche (a famous German philosopher). After visiting a cemetery one day, in which Dr. Breuer’s mother, father, and brother are interred (buried), Nietzsche realizes that Dr. Breuer’s mother was named Bertha (which is also the name of Nietzsche’s sister). This opens up a philosophical well of untapped emotion regarding the unconscious fear of aging, dying, regretting things from the past that can’t be changed or undone anymore because they’re part of history now; it also brings up an emotional fear about letting go of those people who have died before you so you can move on with your own life without them being there anymore—and then there’s this whole thing about not wanting to lose someone else too soon because they’ve been such an important person in your life for so long already…
When Dr. Breuer returns home, he calls Freud and asks him to hypnotize him because he wants to get rid of his obsession with Bertha. When he is under hypnosis, Dr. Breuer dreams about leaving his family for a life with Bertha in Italy. He emphasizes the importance of making conscious decisions that will lead us towards happiness: choosing our profession, whom we marry, where we live etcetera are all things that can make us happy if done consciously. When Dr. Breuer wakes up from hypnosis, he realizes that subconsciously (the day before) he had already made the decision to leave his wife and children for a new life with Bertha in Italy.
