Irvin D. Yalom: When Nietzsche wept, 9780062009302, Harper Perennial Modern Classics,

German Edition: Und Nietzsche weinte, btb Taschenbuch

In my opinion, Irvin Yalom is one of the wisest thinkers and friend to mankind, a psychotherapist one hopes to encounter when in troubled waters. His work as an author spans from reflections on his long time experience as a therapist to novels. One of my favorite pieces of his work is a film called “Yalow’s cure” (Anleitung zum Glücklichsein in German). He has a unique gift of passing on invaluable philosophical knowledge and advice about life’s perils and how to become closer to happiness based on his own life experience and that of his patients. The film is superior to anything I have seen available on the subject matter. 

I have read several of his books and am currently reading "Staring at the sun"  but “When Nietzsche wept” has been on my “Want to read list” for quite some time. I finally bought a second hand copy in Austin/Texas and read it over months alongside other novels. 

It is a fascinating imagined account of an encounter in 1882 by two great men that actually never happened but nearly did: Friedrich Nietzsche, the tormented philosopher and Dr. Josef Breuer,a famous Viennese physician who today is regarded as the originator of the talking cure, eventually introduced by his friend Sigmund Freud, then a young doctor he had regular intellectual exchanges with. When Dr. Breuer agrees to treat Friedrich Nietzsche, who had been plagued by terrible, debilitating migraine headaches almost his entire life using his “talking cure”, both men have no idea that the exchange between doctor and patient will eventually be reversed over the months they regularly meet. Breuer himself is plagued by inner demons and marriage problems and finds great comfort in their philosophical, often painful yet healing exchanges. Yalom blends fiction with acknowledged facts creating a powerful novel prompting the reader to reflect on one’s own life experiences. 

If you are interested in philosophy or psychology, this is a wonderful, thought provoking novel I loved reading.