Philosophic Praxis & Yalom 3

PRAISE FOR the schopenhauer cure
"Yalom´s melding of philosophy, ... psychiatry, and literature results in an engaging novel of ideas"
- San Francisco Chronicle

Phil had intellectually intrigued him.at the time of their first meeting Julius had been working on a paper on psychotherapy and the will , and Phil´s question -- why can´t I do what I truely want to do? -- was  a fascinating beginning

Der Wille ist das Gewisseste. >Wille< ist (bei Schopenhauer) der Name für die Selbsterfahrung des eigenen Leibes...Die Selbsterfahrung des eigenen Leibes ist der einzige Punkt, wo ich erfahren kann, was die Welt ist, außer dass sie meine Vorstellung ist.   - Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer 317

translated by  Ewald Osers the passage reads: The will is what we are most certain of. `Will` is (in Schopenhauer) the name for the self-experience of our own body ... Self-experience of my own body is the only point at which I can discover what the world is apart from its being my representation. Rudiger Safranski 212

Philosophic Praxis & Yalom 2

in Yalom´s novel Julius is a San Francisco psychotherapist whose life is threatened by cancer. Julius was just informed about that at a routine health check. He is in the mood to question whether he could consider himself in his active life as an effective healer or not: "were you really, truly, helpful to your patients? maybe you´ve just learned to pick patients who were going to improve on their own anyway"

Phil (Philip Slate) is a counter example so far. Julius remembers that he failed to cure him from sex drivenness, "preferring to skate on the surface of life and devote all his vital energy to fornication". Julius remarked in a therapy session that the inscription on his tomb stone could read HE LOVED TO FUCK. 

"why would Phil continue for three years if he had gotten nothing? and god knows Phil hated to spend money"

Julius gets into contact with Phil 20 odd years later ...

Philosophic Praxis & Yalom 1

as a novelist the american psychoanalist irvin d. yalom loves to portray 2 or more figures, one of them being a philosopher. Freud and Nietzsche. Rosenberg and Spinoza. in 2006 he published the schopenhauer cure. "many fine books guided me in my writing. by far, I am most heavily indebted to Rüdiger Safranski´s magnificent biography, schopenhauer and the wild years of philosophy".

the author´s alter ego in this novel is Julius: "decades ago he had studied (the philosophical novel) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1891) while writing an article on the significant but unacknowledged influence of  Nietzsche on Freud". And another source of inspiration (not only on Freud) is Schopenhauer.