From: "John T. Duryea" <jtduryea-AT-dmv.com>
Subject: Re: N's final years
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 19:22:36 -0500


>It is a tad vile, not to say a little wicked, to suppose that
>Nietzsche's apathy during the last decade of his life was the result of
>a manic-depressive temperament.  If this were not taunted, to top it
>all, as some form of physiological and genetic marker of genius, one
>might suppose it merely another Förster-type myth - feces in the drawer,
>poisoning by chloral hydrate, by hashish tinctures, etc.  Apart from the
>facts that manic-depressives form the compact majority, and managed
>neurosis is the objective of all psychiatric models of cure, there
>stands a simple fact staring every one in the face: no one dies of
>progressive paralysis caused by manic-depression (yes, we know that
>manic depressives can do a good imitation of mental incompetence, but
>their "paralytic" depression is not a sensori-motor paralysis, viz
>catatonia, nor is it brought about by biological factors, but by
>*actual* factors).
>
>Whatever the aetiology of Nietzsche's final collapse into apathy, any
>intelligent surmise must at least address the central component of a
>progressive paralysis (including left facial hemiparesis) as diagnosed
>by Prof. Wille as early as Jan. 1889 (and confirmed by Binswanger as
>well as Stutz and Hildebrandt), in the context of the involvement of a
>biological factor.  Subsequent medical appraisals (Emanuel, Michaelis,
>etc) that did not take the paralysis as being proven by the early
>diagnostics (focusing on 1889, and largely due to absence of speech
>troubles at the time) suggested instead a "schizophrenic psychosis", or
>"a schizophrenic process likely stemming from supraorbital stimulation
>having a syphilitic origin".  The syphilis hypothesis has of course the
>capacity to explain the euphoria in Torino and link it directly both to
>the anteceding episodes of violent headaches and gastrointestinal
>problems (from 1873 on), and to the subsequent collapse and progressive
>paralysis (which by 1892 is inescapable).  The syphilis diagnostic
>appears to have originated with Binswanger himself, who communicated it
>to Overbeck in Feb. 1890.
>
>Of course, part of the century-old vile and wicked attempts at
>rehabilitation of Nietzsche's thought by debilitating "Nietzsche the
>man" stem from the perceived need to psychiatrize his euphorias and
>catatonias.  What better form of psychiatrization is there than to
>reduce his euphorias to mania, or his catatonias to depression?  It
>makes one immediately think of the sordid attempts of a Langbehn bent on
>proving that the Dionysiac state, far from being healthy and full of
>vitality, "presupposes weakness and decay" - with the inevitable
>reduction of Dionysus to Bacchus and the usual eulogy of alcohol-induced
>manic-depressive behaviour.
>
>It is likely that no one has ever seen a schizophrenic, since all the
>entities of the type are already clinical productions of psychosis.  But
>the euphorias (dating back at least to 1881), the breakthroughs, the
>experiences of a "real *abyss* of feelings", the premonitions of menace
>or impending disaster, the episodes of autism, catatonia and melancholy
>(See for instance what Nietzsche writes about his experience of
>inspiration in EH, "Thus spoke Zarathustra", 3), are all indices of a
>schizoid *process*, whether provoked by the onset of the tertiary
>syphilitic process or instead strictly functional, it matters little.
>Moreover, they point to the combat - in Nietzsche's body - between the
>forces of illness and the "great health", "the kind that one does not
>merely possess but repeatedly acquires at will and must acquire, because
>one gives it up again and again, and must give it up": "the will to
>health itself, the pretending to be healthy, was *my* remedy".
>
>It is equally vile, not to say outright stupid, to judge Nietzsche's
>thought from the standpoint of his final collapse, as if one issued from
>the other as a necessary consequence.  At the very least, as Jaspers
>puts it: "It is unscientific and dishonest first to reject as
>pathological the work before us and then present the rejection as the
>result of an objective ascertainment of damming facts by way of a
>psychopathological investigation".  Yet, attracted by morbid curiosity,
>this is the most common and gratuitous procedure of all those who want
>to denigrate the philosopher - and of prompt use to others with hidden
>agendas.
>
>More important still is the fact that these gratuitous opinions
>obliterate completely what is Nietzsche's deep thought regarding the
>relation between illness, health and nihilism.  Health, in a strictly
>orthodox and clinical sense is to be seen as a sign of true sickness -
>the paradigm of normality being precisely the management of a
>socially-promoted, manic-depressive core-reaction basis.  The manic
>depressive regime, whether manageable or psychoticized, is the only real
>sickness there is: an imbalance of the autonomic nervous system, an
>overaffectation of the sympathetic system (sympatheticotonia).  This
>overaffectation - which is marked by secondary anguish("anxiety") - was
>shown by Reich to be the result of a chronic stasis of sexual energy
>promoted by social and political factors and expressed by
>overorganization of the body (armor).  As a second nature,
>manic-depression constitutes the libidinal regime of neurosis as
>inseparable from the axiological constraints of a specific type of
>social organization of desire which debases life in order to establish
>values "superior" to it.  Culture, even an active one, when such a beast
>existed, was never a plastic force; it needed an alliance with the
>active forces of the unconscious to yield consciousness, and this was
>the cruel work of primitive society over the body.  But that alliance
>has long been severed.  The decay of culture and the concomitant rise of
>nihilism - and its development through different stages- is only a
>singular and very specific development of culture designed to exalt
>death and lower life to the status of heredity+survival, eventually
>making but the apology of 'vegetative coma'.
>
>Undoubtedly Nietzsche, like anybody else, suffered from this sickness
>and was exposed to its contagion - since  it has become the very
>condition of being human - and was, in his case, the very focus of his
>task of disassemblage.  Nihilism is, in this sense, the only sickness
>there is, both the cause and the effect of true illness, the damming up
>of primary unconscious drives and its reinforcement by a second nature.
>But the entirety of Nietzsche's journey into knowledge was spurned not
>by sickness, but by the resistance and overcoming of sickness.  As if he
>had made it into his ally, sickness would teach him "the way to many and
>opposing sorts of thinking".  Lou Salomé writes- "That was the way in
>which Nietzsche wished to have his story of suffering interpreted -
>especially during his sickliest moments - namely, as a story of
>*recovery*".  Even the difference between the exoteric and esoteric
>doctrines of the eternal recurrence is intimately tied in to the problem
>of sickness, the problem of nihilism: already Zarathustra's great
>disgust stems from the realization that pettiness, nihilism and reaction
>will return; but the escape from the repetition of the same as victory
>of the reactive forces and the negative element of the will, are equally
>connected to the overcoming of nihilism- "We cannot but begin to get
>well as soon as we shall have understood *how* we became ill" (N. to P.
>Rée, Oct. 1879).  Certainly, Reich's discovery that a mere breakthrough
>regarding the topical standpoint (deconstruction of the ego) was of
>little therapeutic value unless coupled to libidinal-economic
>alterations (deconstruction of the armor, deployment of altered objects
>of cathexis) does relativize the "immediatism" or "volitionism" of
>Nietzsche's intuition that mere understanding should suffice.  Yet,
>maybe this volitionism, at this point of the argument, is a symptom of
>some profound biological alteration he was undergoing.  If his process
>was entirely lost or not, we submit such judgement call is no one
>else's, but Nietzsche's.
>
>This highlights the obvious need to distinguish between Nietzsche's
>combat against the nihilist sickness, and any possible element of
>biological disease such as syphilis.  One can conceive that the latter
>might have helped him to combat the nihilist sickness, both in the body
>and in his writing and thinking.  One can also conceive that the very
>task of overcoming nihilism contributed to the deterioration of his
>state of health ("This task has made me ill"), but likewise it
>contributed to his "great health" ("it will also make me well again").
>But there is no way one can or should confuse the two: Nietzsche
>triumphed over the nihilist sickness ("Now I know how, have the
>know-how, to *reverse perspectives*: the first reason why a
>"re-evaluation of values" is perhaps possible for me alone" EH) even if
>he lost his battle against whatever biological factor was involved in
>promoting his dementia paralytica, what Nietzsche calls 'his illness':
>"My illness gave me the right to a complete reversion of my habits (...)
>it presented me with the necessity for lying still, for idleness, for
>waiting and being patient. (...) But that really means thinking!"
>
>Lastly, however, it never hurts to consider that - just as he refrained
>from divulging much of the esoteric doctrine of the ER - he might have
>been ushered somewhat into his final silence by the insights which
>breaking through his catatonic experiences (often provoked by somatic
>troubles, headaches, clouding eyesight, digestive troubles) had left
>him: the rule of inhuman silence - it suffices for one to browse through
>what others have the temerity to write on one's thought, to wish silence
>for oneself: "(...) This common experience has already disgusted many
>writers: they had too great a respect for the intellectuality of men,
>and when they perceived their error vowed themselves to silence." (HATH,
>II, 2, 246).  Granted that his fears rarely seem to focus here - since
>it was his "complete solitude that made [him] discover [his] own
>resources".  Nor was he aware of any subterranean biological factor at
>work in his body - other than maybe through his premonitions of menace.
>Hence, he would tell Overbeck, in May 1895, that while he suspects
>Overbeck might have at times considered him "whacky", "my danger is
>indeed very great, but is not of *this* kind".  Yet, Nietzsche would
>underline that it is not doubt but certainty which renders one insane.
>
>Indeed, in this sense, one should not ignore the emotional impact of the
>realization of his utter solitude ("Then there is the gruesome silence
>one hears all around one.  Solitude has seven skins; nothing penetrates
>them any more.  One comes to men, one greets friends - more desolation,
>no eye offers a greeting.") and the decision to keep the esoteric
>elements of the doctrine of the ER from the public eye once his
>objective was no longer to improve mankind.  There is a nexus here with
>his actions in Torino - even Overbeck doubts that Nietzsche was insane,
>sensing a controlled self-parody, a self-derision, a "world-historical
>laughter" reflected on his last letters (To Overbeck and his wife "I am
>a person who pays his debts- for example, my debts to you both...I am
>just having all Anti-Semites shot", Jan. 1889): "Il *simule* Dionysus ou
>le Crucifié et se délecte de cette enormité.  C'est dans cette
>délectation que consiste la folie: nul ne peut juger jusqu'à quel degré
>*cette simulation est parfaite, absolue* (...) Il semble (...) que
>Nietzsche n'ait jamais été plus lucide que durant ces dernières journées
>de Turin: *ce dont il a conscience, c'est justement qu'il a cessé d'être
>Nietzsche*, qu'il s'est vidé comme personne" (Klossowski, "Le cercle
>vicieux," p. 334).
>
>As the song he sang on the train from Torino, runs-
>
>"And my soul, a stringed instrument,
>sang, touched by invisible hands,
>to itself a secret gondola song,
>trembling with all the colors of bliss.
>-Can someone have been listening?"
>
>Lambda C
>
>
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>
>PS -Evan, try reading this again.


Nietzsche' s collapse was due to the frustration entailed in being "in
between" times. What a horror to be condemned to existence with a herd of
"dead to the world" zombies with the idiocy of "modern ideas" (rationalism)
completely dominating the waking being of these decadent comtemporaries.

John T. Duryea



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