When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel Of Obsession

Freud and Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria,

Your task is to accept yourself—not to find ways to gain my acceptance.”

he says that we feel hatred toward those who see our secrets and catch us in tender feelings. What we need at that moment is not sympathy but to regain our power over our own emotions.”

The joy of being observed ran so deep that Breuer believed the real pain of old age, bereavement, outliving one’s friends, was the absence of scrutiny—the horror of living an unobserved life.

The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.

“Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.”

“Nor have I ever allowed others to unburden themselves to me—I was unwilling to incur the debt of reciprocation. I avoided all this—until the day, of course”—he turned to face Breuer—“that I shook your hand and agreed to our strange contract.

Also, he now alludes to the methods he uses to help himself—for example his “perspective-changing” approach in which he views himself from a more distant, cosmic perspective. He’s right: if we view our trivial situation from the long skein of our lives, from the life of the whole race, from the evolution of consciousness, of course it loses its ove

I must change his trivial misery back into the noble misery it once was.