Liliane Frey-Rohn – Friedrich Nietzsche A Psychological Approach to his Life and Work
Jungian psychologist Liliane Frey-Rohn describes the psychological factors that brought Nietzsche into the depths of his own nature through a process in which sacrifice, loss and intense loneliness alternated with hero worship and “audacious self-glorification.”
In this book, a number of human problems are explored and discussed in relation to the brilliant but haunted biography of the 19th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
The problem of good and evil, the search for personal truth, the questions of nihilism and life’s meaning, and the dangers of self-inflation in the wake of religious experience are each considered in this in-depth psychological analysis.
The author sheds new light on Nietzsche’s extraordinary life and work, illuminating many aspects of his personal spiritual struggle, while providing insights into some of the most basic and problematic questions that confront us all. Page 4
Foreword
Whoever involves himself with Nietzsche finds himself both forced into a
dialogue with this fervent spirit and compelled to take sides over his biting
criticism of culture.
Hardly any other thinker of the previous century has been the subject of so many contradictory assessments, with unconditional veneration standing alongside brusque rejection.
Condemned by some as a precursor of National Socialism and praised by others as the creator of a new vision of life, Nietzsche’s reputation is such that no one can remain indifferent to him.
The clashing evaluations of his personality are evidence enough of the profundity of his world of ideas, which always went directly to the central human core.
It was the extent to which the individual felt addressed by him that determined his (mis)understanding of Nietzsche, and it was mainly Nietzsche himself who was responsible for such a clash of interpretations.
He wrenched men out of their comfortable self-satisfaction not only through the radically new direction of his thought, but also by virtue of the untimeliness of his concerns, whether they dealt with the demise of the
Christian God, the ‘will to power’ or the inevitable nature of evil.
These comments of mine are not intended to lessen the standing of Nietzsche.
On the contrary, I am interested in shedding light on the exceptional greatness of this thinker who, haunted by prophetic misgivings, anticipated the nihilistic chaos of the future; who, profoundly moved by his conception of the ‘great man,’ regarded it his mission to perform a universal act of world-historical liberation that would ultimately prove his downfall.
Various phases may be determined in the reception of Nietzsche’s ideas that correspond to the high demands set by his writings.
After a period in which he was almost totally ignored, Nietzsche’s tragic breakdown brought him into the public eye.
It was amongst the youth of Germany in particular that a veritable storm of enthusiasm broke out.
Constricted by the rigidity of the bourgeois moral code prevalent at the end of the 19th century, they saw Nietzsche as the man who would free them from the pressure of the family home and a traditional morality still influenced by the Victorian era.
They were fascinated by the freedom of the individual and affirmation of life embodied by the ‘overman’ – though it must be added that they only seemed to grasp the deeper meaning of his work insofar as it coincided with the excesses of the movement they represented.
We will only briefly mention the fact that similarly strong movements existed in France, Italy and Latin America, albeit in more moderate forms.
Although critical voices – among them Gerhart Hauptmann’s – were raised
in all quarters, the enthusiastic response to Nietzsche’s writing lasted on into the 1930s.
However, as his distressing fate grew more distant and forgotten with the passing of time, and with political events in Germany beginning to take a striking turn, the waves of excitement died down considerably.
Lou Salomé was the first to give an objective insight into Nietzsche’s work
and personality in Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken [Friedrich Nietzsche in his Works] (1894), a study based on her real-life experience of the man.
Significant exponents of the reader-response approach to Nietzsche’s work
were Heinrich Mann and, more importantly, his brother Thomas, who
attempted to grasp the import of Nietzsche as a philosopher and cultural
critic.
For the latter, Nietzsche embodied a lifelong and highly valued spiritual phenomenon that was principally related to those of his early ideas influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner.
He became more moderate in his enthusiasm as a result of the atrocities perpetrated during the Hitler era and began to emphasize the dangers of interpreting Nietzsche too literally.
In Doctor Faustus, he created an unforgettable monument to Nietzsche’s “aweinspiring fate.”
Gottfried Benn, another admirer of Nietzsche’s writings, wrote
retrospectively of him: “In my time he was the earthquake that shook the
epoch,” the “greatest shock Germany had ever had.”
He was particularly concerned to prove that Nietzsche had nothing to do with the catastrophe of National Socialism, a defence that confronted many a charge levelled against Nietzsche after the Second World War.
In this respect, Ernst Bertram assumed a curious position. On the one hand,
he praised the mystical ascension of Nietzsche’s madness, which he
compared to the crucifixion of Christ, while on the other, he made
insinuations about the ambiguity of his philosophical views that made an
issue of Nietzsche’s reputation amongst the National Socialists.
He thus establishes a link with notions of the dubious role Nietzsche was rumored to have played as a pioneer of this movement.
Nietzsche’s sister, Frau Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, also had a hand in suggesting such supposed connections.
By means of clever deceptions, she clearly intended that her brother should
emerge as one sympathetic to anti-semitism and the National Socialist cause in order to increase the prestige of her husband, himself an inveterate antisemite.
Among other things, the quite tendentious and arbitrary assembly of parts of his literary bequest and their publication in the one-volume Will to
Power was an aspect of this intention, and produced an entirely distorted
picture of Nietzsche.
The various falsifications, suppressions and omissions made in the first editions of his works, and later uncovered by Schlechta and Podach, were similarly designed to serve this end.
It was substitutions such as these that formed the basis of the so-called legend of Nietzsche pieced together by Bäumler, a writer and philosopher in the service of National Socialism.
In truth and deed, Nietzsche fought against both anti-semitism and German nationalism, not least as embodied by the whole Bismarckian era.
He had already described nationalism as “the malady of the century” at the time of his professorship in Basle, and it was a thought as alien to him as racism.
Yet it cannot be denied that Nietzsche’s glorifications of power and strength
easily lent themselves to certain misinterpretations of him as a harbinger of
National Socialism.
So much for the initial reception of Nietzsche’s work in Germany, which tended to be a confusion of disparate interpretations derived from a lack of reliable information, a situation that was only remedied with the publication of Curt F. Janz’s biography of Nietzsche some 80 years after
his death.
Janz’s three-volume work is extremely reliable and as such immeasurable
valuable in filling a crucial gap in our knowledge of the life and work of
Nietzsche.
Equally helpful is the critical edition of his works brought out by Colli and Montinari, who follow a strictly chronological order in the publication of the literary bequest and thus facilitate an historical understanding of Nietzsche’s gradual development and of the specific motivation behind the isolated and often disconnected aphorisms scattered throughout the works.
My own interest in Nietzsche, the human being, stretches back to my high
school days
. An early fascination on my part for Richard Wagner inevitably spilled over to the figure of his sometime friend Nietzsche.
My thesis on Wilhelm Dilthey then brought me into contact with Nietzsche’s philosophy of life.
Some years later, I deepened my psychological understanding of him
by attending a seminar, held for many years by C.G. Jung, on the work
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
I shall never forget Jung’s illuminating comments on Nietzsche’s sufferings of the spirit, which he experienced both as a cruel hammer and a tortured anvil.
When I was later occupied with the psychology of evil, Nietzsche’s ‘revaluation of values’ once more proved invaluable.
Last but not least, throughout those years I was also able to recognize that his aphorisms on self-deception and the untruthfulness of morality reflected my own pain when moral values were corrupted.
The more I became involved with Nietzsche’s personality, the more intense
my desire grew to understand – as far as one may understand a creative figure at all – the work and fate of this thinker who stands at a turning point in the history of western culture.
My study on the gradual formation of his world of ideas limits itself to the presentation of a picture of Nietzsche based on my experiences in the field of psychology.
I remained uncertain for a long time whether to opt for a systematic or a
chronological method of presentation. Being principally concerned with
tracing the process of development and change undergone by Nietzsche, I
decided on the latter.
The division of my work into the periods before, during and after Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the result of the special position occupied by that work, which I regard as the most valuable document for a plotting of
his inner development.
Here we see spontaneous experience erupting forth directly from the unconscious and revealing an inner path of rare and inexhaustible richness to the student of psychology.
Before proceeding to this inner process and turning my attention to how
Nietzsche’s life is reflected in his works, I would like to supplement this with a look at Nietzsche’s external development, at the Nietzsche who emerges from such biographical data as his profession, his friendships and his illness.
As a psychologist I have had to forgo an assessment of his historical and
philosophical significance in order to get close to what finally turned out to
be the unfathomable mystery of his influential power.
I sought to close my study with a comprehensive critical appreciation in the form of an epilogue.
I would like to extend warmest thanks to my friend, Aniela Jaffé, for her
invaluable encouragement throughout the course of my work.
I am equally indebted to Dr. Helmut Barz, President of the C.G. Jung Institute, for kindly revising my manuscript and for his many fruitful comments.
I would like to thank the Psychological Club of Zürich, the Linda Fierz Foundation and the C.G. Jung Institute of Zürich for their financial support of the original German edition of this book, and the latter for renewed assistance with the present edition.
I am also grateful to Lela Fischli for her invaluable suggestions in working on the original manuscript, to Dr. Gary Massey for his faithful translation
index and general assistance with this English edition, and to Dr. Robert
Hinshaw, the publisher, for his many contributions and unflagging support of this project from the very beginning.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
revered teacher, C.G. Jung, for opening my eyes to the hidden secrets of the
soul.
L.F.-R. Zürich, April 1988 ~Liliane Frey-Rohn, Friedrich N1etzsche A Psychological Approach to his Life and Work, Page 12-16
Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond the Values of His Time
In this book, a number of human problems are explored and discussed in relation to the brilliant but haunted biography of the 19th century philosopher, Friedrich N1etzsche.
The problem of good and evil, the search for personal truth, the questions of nihilism and life’s meaning, and the dangers of self-inflation in the wake of religious experience are each considered in this in-depth psychological analysis.
The author sheds new light on N1etzsche’s extraordinary life and work, illuminating many aspects of his personal spiritual struggle, while providing insights into some of the most basic and problematic questions that confront us all.
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