When Nietzsche Wept

New York: Basic Books, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good. Honi Werner (Hand lettering). [10], 306, [4] pages. Author's Note. No Dust Jacket present. Front edges of fep and next page creased. Cover has some wear and soiling. Irvin David Yalom (born June 13, 1931) is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction. After graduating with a BA from George Washington University in 1952 and a Doctor of Medicine from Boston University School of Medicine in 1956 he went on to complete his internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and his residency at the Phipps Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and completed his training in 1960. After two years of Army service at Tripler General Hospital in Honolulu, Yalom began his academic career at Stanford University. He was appointed to the faculty in 1963 and promoted over the following years, being granted tenure in 1968. Soon after this period he made some of his most lasting contributions by teaching about group psychotherapy and developing his model of existential psychotherapy. In 1970, Yalom published The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, speaking about the research literature around group psychotherapy and the social psychology of small group behavior. This work explores how individuals function in a group context, and how members of group therapy gain from his participation group. In addition to his scholarly, non-fiction writing, Yalom has produced a number of novels and experimented with writing techniques. In Every Day Gets a Little Closer Yalom invited a patient to co-write about the experience of therapy. Asked to treat Friedrich Nietzsche for his suicidal despair following a broken love affair, eminent Viennese physician Josef Breuer devises an ingenius approach that would force Nietzsche to apply his own theories to cure himself. The book takes place mostly in Vienna, Austria, in the year 1882, and relates a fictional meeting between the doctor Josef Breuer and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The novel is a review of the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis and some of the main personalities of the last decades of the 19th century, and revolves around the topic of "limerence". Lou Salomé, who was involved with Friedrich Nietzsche, has written a letter stating that the future of the philosophy of Germany is at stake and that Nietzsche needs help desperately. The plot develops into a therapy in which Doctor Josef Breuer needs to have his soul treated to help him get over a patient whom he treated for hysteria and with whom he has fallen in love, while Nietzsche needs help with his migraines. Influenced by the revolutionary ideas of his young disciple Sigmund Freud, Josef Breuer starts the dangerous strategy that will become the origin of psychoanalysis. Thanks to their unusual relation, both of them will see how their perspective of life changes completely. The story also explains how Friedrich Nietzsche received the inspiration to write his famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.