Maxime's Reviews > When Nietzsche Wept

Wow. Simply fantastic. If you spend half as much time in your own head as I do mine, this might be the book for you. If you analyze yourself and your actions, enjoy the process of self discovery, or simply love psychology then I suggest you hit your nearest used book shop ASAP. This book makes no effort to hide its loftier aspects. I was not in the least surprised to learn that its author is a professor of psychology at Stanford and has written several text books on the subject. Yalom, however, approaches his grandiose subject matter with such candor that each character seems to be himself written from a different angle as though their struggles were once his own. All inquiries of the self aside, this book is also a cool piece of historical fiction. For those who do not know, historical fiction is a book where the main characters, setting, and certain events may be historically accurate while the plot (or some part of it) is fictional. This book is a peek into what quite possibly might have gone through the minds of the renowned physician/psychologist Josef Breuer and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche during the 1880s. Until reading the author's note at the end of the book I did not realize just how much of it was historically accurate. What makes this book so fascinating is that it wrestles with questions we all have about life, goes through the same arguments that we might, runs into the same dead ends, then refusing to take no for an answer dives deeper down the rabbit hole arriving at what I find to be some profound truths regarding love, life, and existence. Now I know not everyone will experience what I did reading this book so do not go reading it expecting to find the meaning of life or anything. But at the same time do not go reading it expecting not to find it either. At the very least you will find yourself pondering some classic philosophical questions while you observe the unfolding of a fascinating fictional psychology experiment. And if that sounds too exhausting, do not fret. Undoubtedly someone will make a lackluster film version within the decade.