Had he gone too far? Nietzsche’s hand, Breuer noticed, had slid down the side of his chair and was slowly inching its way to the handle of his briefcase. But there was no turning back now. Breuer went for checkmate.
“But I have even more powerful support for my position—a brilliant recent book”—he reached out and tapped his copy of Human, All Too Human—“by a soon-to-be, if there be any justice in this world, eminent philosopher. Listen!”
Opening the book to the passage he had described to Freud, he read: “‘Psychological observation is among the expedients by means of which one can alleviate the burden of living.’ A page or two farther, the author asserts that psychological observation is essential and that—here, in his words—(Mankind can no longer be spared the cruel sight of the moral dissecting table.’ A couple of pages later, he points out that the errors of the greatest philosophers usually stem from a false explanation of human actions and sensations which ultimately results in (the erection of a false ethics and religious and mythological monsters.’
“I could go on”—and Breuer flipped through the pages—“but the point made by this excellent book is that, if human belief and behavior are to be understood, one must first sweep away convention, mythology, and religion. Only then, with no preconceptions whatsoever, should one presume to examine the human subject.”
“I am quite familiar with that book,” said Nietzsche sternly.
“But will you not follow its prescription?”
“I devote my life to its prescription. But you have not read far enough. For years now, I alone have performed such a psychological dissection: I have been the subject of my own study. But I am not willing to be your subject! Would you yourself be willing to be the subject of another? Allow me to put a direct question to you, Doctor Breuer. What is your motivation in this treatment project?”
“You come to me for help. I offer it. I am a doctor. That’s what I do.”
“Far too simple! Both of us know that human motivation is far more complex, and at the same time more primitive. I ask again, what is your motivation?”
“It is a simple matter, Professor Nietzsche. One practices one’s profession—a cobbler cobbles, a baker bakes, and a doctor doctors. One earns one’s living, one practices one’s calling, and my calling is to be of service, to alleviate pain.”
Breuer tried to convey confidence but began to feel queasy. He did not like Nietzsche’s latest move.
“These are not satisfactory answers to my question, Doctor Breuer. When you say a doctor doctors, a baker bakes, or one practices one’s calling, that is not motivation: that is habit. You’ve omitted from your answer consciousness, choice, and self-interest. I prefer it when you say one earns one’s living—that, at least, one can understand. One strives to put food in one’s stomach. But you don’t request money from me.”
“I might pose you the same question, Professor Nietzsche. You say you earn nothing from your work: Why, therefore, do you philosophize?” Breuer tried to stay on the offensive but felt his momentum ebbing.
“Ah, but there is one important distinction between us. I do not claim that I philosophize for you, whereas you, Doctor, continue to pretend that your motivation is to serve me, to alleviate my pain. Such claims have nothing to do with human motivation. They are part of the slave mentality artfully engineered by priestly propaganda. Dissect your motives deeper! You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving.”
Nietzsche’s words came faster, and he rushed on.
“You seem surprised by that comment? Perhaps you think of those you love. Dig deeper, and you will learn that you do not love them: what you love is the pleasant sensations such love produces in you! You love desire, not the desired. So, may I ask again why you wish to serve me? Again, I ask, Doctor Breuer”—here Nietzsche’s voice grew stern—“what are your motives?”
Breuer felt dizzy. He choked back his first impulse: to comment on the ugliness and crassness of Nietzsche’s formulation, and thus inevitably put an end to the aggravating case of Professor Nietzsche. He imagined, for a moment, the sight of Nietzsche’s back as he stomped out of his office. God, what a relief! Free at last of this whole sorry, frustrating business. Yet it saddened him to think he would not see Nietzsche again. He was drawn to this man. But why? Indeed, what were his motives?
Breuer found himself thinking again of chess games with his father. He had always made the same error—of concentrating too much on attack, pressing it beyond his own supply lines, and ignoring his defense until, like lightning, his father’s queen struck behind his lines and threatened mate. He brushed the fantasy away, not failing, however, to take note of its meaning: he must never, never again underestimate this Professor Nietzsche.
“Again, I ask, Doctor Breuer, what are your motives?”
Breuer struggled to respond. What were they? He marveled at the way his mind resisted Nietzsche’s question. He forced himself to concentrate. His desire to help Nietzsche—when had it begun? In Venice, of course, bewitched by Lou Salomé’s beauty. So charmed had he been that he had readily agreed to help her friend. To undertake the healing of Professor Nietzsche had provided not only an ongoing link with her but an opportunity to elevate himself in her eyes. Then there was the link with Wagner. Of course, that was conflicted: Breuer loved Wagner’s music but hated his anti-Semitism.
What else? Over the weeks, Lou Salomé had dimmed in his mind. She was no longer the reason for his engagement with Nietzsche. No, he knew he was intrigued by the intellectual challenge before him. Even Frau Becker the other day had said no other physician in Vienna would have taken on such a patient.
Then there was Freud. Having proposed Nietzsche to Freud as a teaching case, he’d look foolish if the professor spurned his help. Or was it that he wished to be near greatness? Perhaps Lou Salomé was right in saying that Nietzsche represented the future of German philosophy: those books by Nietzsche—they had the smell of genius.
None of these motives, Breuer knew, had any relevance to the man Nietzsche, to the flesh-and-blood person before him. And so he had to remain silent about his contact with Lou Salomé, his glee at going where other physicians feared to tread, his craving for the touch of greatness. Perhaps, Breuer grudgingly acknowledged, Nietzsche’s ugly theories about motivation have merit! Even so, he had no intention of abetting his patient’s outrageous challenge to his claim of service. But how, then, to respond to Nietzsche’s annoying and inconvenient question?
“My motives? Who can answer such a question? Motives exist in many layers. Who decrees that only the first layer, the animalistic motives, are the ones that count? No, no—I see you’re ready to repeat the question; let me attempt to answer the spirit of your inquiry. I spent ten years in medical training. Shall I waste those years of training because I no longer need money? Doctoring is my way of justifying the effort of those early years—a way of providing consistency and value to my life. And of providing meaning! Should I sit all day and count my money? Would you do that? I am certain you would not! And then there is another motive. I enjoy the intellectual stimulation I receive from my contacts with you.”
“These motives have at least the aroma of honesty,” Nietzsche conceded.
“And I’ve just thought of another—I like that granite sentence: ‘Become who you are.’ What if what I am, or what I was destined for, is to be of service, to aid others, to contribute to medical science and the relief of suffering?”
Breuer felt much better. He was regaining his composure. Perhaps I’ve been too argumentative, he thought. Something more conciliatory is needed. “Here’s still another motive. Let us say—and I believe it to be so—that your destiny is to be one of the great philosophers. Thus my treatment not only may help your physical being but will also aid you in your project of becoming who you are.”
“And if I am, as you say, to become great, then you as my animator, my saviour, beco
me even greater!” Nietzsche exclaimed as if he knew he’d just fired the telling shot.
“No! I didn’t say that!” Breuer’s patience, generally inexhaustible in his professional role, was beginning to shred. “I am the physician to many individuals who are eminent in their field—the leading scientists, artists, musicians in Vienna. Does that make me greater than they? No one even knows I treat them.”
“But you have told me, and now use their eminence to enhance your authority with me!”
“Professor Nietzsche, I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Do you actually believe that, if your destiny is fulfilled, I shall go about proclaiming that it is I, Josef Breuer, who created you?”
“Do you actually believe that such things do not happen?”
Breuer tried to settle himself. Careful, Josef, keep your temper. Consider things from his standpoint. Try to understand the source of his distrust.
“Professor Nietzsche, I know you have been betrayed in the past and are therefore justified to anticipate betrayal in the future. You have my word, however, that it will not happen here. I promise you that your name will never be mentioned by me. Nor shall it even appear in clinic records. Let us invent a pseudonym for you.”
“It’s not what you may tell others, I accept your word on that. What matters is what you will tell yourself, and what I will tell myself. In all that you have told me of your motives, there was, despite your continuing claims of service and the alleviation of distress, nothing really of me in it. That is how it should be. You will use me in your self-project: that, too, is expected—it is the way of nature. But do you not see, I will be used up by you! Your pity for me, your charity, your empathy, your techniques to help me, to manage me—the effects of all these make you stronger at the expense of my strength. I am not rich enough to afford such help!”
This man is impossible, Breuer thought. He dredges up the worst, the basest, motives for everything. Breuer’s few remaining tatters of clinical objectivity fluttered away. He could no longer contain his feelings.
“Professor Nietzsche, allow me to speak frankly. I have seen much merit in many of your arguments today, but this last assertion, this fantasy about my wishing to weaken you, about my strength feeding on yours, is total nonsense!”
Breuer saw Nietzsche’s hand slipping farther down toward the handle of his briefcase, but could not stop himself! “Don’t you see, here’s a perfect example of why you cannot dissect your own psyche. Your vision is blurred!”
He saw Nietzsche grasp his briefcase and start to rise. Nonetheless, he continued, “Because of your own unfortunate problems with friendships, you make bizarre mistakes!”
Nietzsche was buttoning up his coat, but Breuer could not hold his tongue: “You assume your own attitudes are universal and then you try to comprehend for all mankind what you cannot comprehend about yourself.”
Nietzsche’s hand was on the doorknob.
“I apologize for interrupting you, Doctor Breuer, but I must arrange for this afternoon’s train to Basel. May I return in two hours to pay my bill and collect my books? I shall leave a forwarding address for your consultation report.” He bowed stiffly and turned. Breuer winced at the sight of his back as he walked out of the office.
CHAPTER 10
BREUER DIDN’T MOVE when the door shut—and was still sitting, frozen, at his desk when Frau Becker hurried in.
“What happened, Doctor Breuer? Professor Nietzsche just bolted out of your office, muttering that he’d return shortly to get his bill and his books.”
“Somehow I botched everything this afternoon,” said Breuer, and briefly recounted the events of his last hour with Nietzsche. “When, at the end, he picked up and left, I was almost shouting at him.”
“He must have goaded you into it. A sick man comes for treatment, you do your best, then he fights with you about everything you say. My last employer, Doctor Ulrich, would have thrown him out long before, I swear it.”
“The man needs help badly.” Breuer got up and, going to the window, mused softly, almost to himself, “Yet he’s too proud to accept it. But this pride of his—it’s part of his illness, just as much as if it were a diseased body organ. So stupid of me to raise my voice at him! There must have been a way to have approached him—to have engaged him, and his pride, in some treatment program.”
“If he’s too proud to accept help, how can you treat him? At night, while he’s sleeping?”
There was no response from Breuer, who stood looking out the window, rocking slightly back and forth, full of self-recrimination.
Frau Becker tried again. “Remember a couple of months ago, when you were trying to help that old woman, Frau Kohl, the one who was afraid to leave her room?”
Breuer nodded, still with his back to Frau Becker. “I remember.”
“And then she suddenly broke off treatment just as you had gotten her to the point where she’d walk into another room if you were holding her hand. When you told me about it, I remarked how frustrated you must feel to bring her so close to cure and then have her quit.”
Breuer nodded impatiently; he wasn’t clear about the point, if there was one. “So?”
“Then you said something very good. You said that life is long and patients often have long careers in treatment. You said they may learn something from one doctor, carry it inside their heads, and, sometime in the future, be ready to do more. And that meanwhile you had played the role she was ready for.”
“So?” Breuer asked again.
“So, maybe that’s true for Professor Nietzsche. Maybe he’ll hear your words when he’s ready—perhaps sometime in the future.”
Breuer turned to look at Frau Becker. He was moved by what she had said. Not so much by the content, for he doubted whether anything that had transpired in his office would ever prove useful to Nietzsche. But by what she had tried to do. When he was in pain, Breuer—unlike Nietzsche—welcomed help.
“I hope you’re right, Frau Becker. And thanks for trying to cheer me up—that’s a new role for you. A few more patients like Nietzsche, and you’ll be an expert at it. Who are we seeing this afternoon? I could do with something simpler—perhaps a case of tuberculosis or congestive heart failure.”
Several hours later, Breuer presided over the Friday evening family supper. In addition to his three older children, Robert, Bertha, and Margarethe (Louis had already fed Johannes and Dora), the party of fifteen included three of Mathilde’s sisters, Hanna and Minna—still unmarried—and Rachel with her husband, Max, and their three children, Mathilde’s parents, and an elderly widowed aunt. Freud, who had been expected, was not present—he had sent word that he would be dining alone on bread and water while working up six late hospital admissions. Breuer was disappointed. Still agitated by Nietzsche’s departure, he had looked forward to a discussion with his young friend.
Although Breuer, Mathilde, and all her sisters were partially assimilated “three-day Jews,” observing only the three highest holidays, they sat in respectful silence while Aaron, Mathilde’s father, and Max—the two practicing Jews in the family—chanted prayers over the bread and wine. The Breuers followed no dietary restrictions; but for Aaron’s sake, Mathilde served no pork that evening. Ordinarily, Breuer enjoyed pork, and his favorite dish, a prune-latticed pork roast, was often served at his table. Moreover, Breuer, and Freud as well, were great devotees of the crisp juicy pork wieners sold at the Prater. While walking there, they never failed to stop for a sausage snack.
This meal, like all Mathilde’s meals, began with hot soup—tonight a thick one of barley and lima beans—and was followed by a large carp baked with carrots and onions, and the main course, a succulent goose stuffed with Brussels sprouts.
When the cinnamon-cherry strudel, hot and crisp from the oven, was served, Breuer and Max picked up their plates and walked down the hall to Breuer’s study. For fifteen years after Friday-night dinners, they had always taken their dessert and played chess in the study.
Josef had know
n Max long before they had married the Altmann sisters. But had they not been brothers-in-law, they would never have remained friends. Though Breuer admired Max’s intelligence, surgical skills, and chess virtuosity, he disliked his brother-in-law’s limited ghetto mentality and vulgar materialism. Sometimes Breuer disliked. even looking at Max: not only was he ugly—bald, blotchy-skinned, and morbidly obese—but he looked old. Breuer tried to forget that he and Max were the same age.
Well, there would be no chess tonight. Breuer told Max he was too agitated and wished to talk instead. He and Max rarely talked intimately; but aside from Freud, Breuer had no other male confidant—in fact, no confidant at all since the departure of Eva Berger, his previous nurse. Now, though he had misgivings about the extent of Max’s sensitivity, he nevertheless plunged in and, for twenty minutes without pause, spoke about Nietzsche, referring to him, of course, as Herr Müller and unburdening himself of everything, even the meeting with Lou Salomé in Venice.
“But, Josef,” Max began in an abrasive, dismissive tone, “why blame yourself? Who could treat such a man? He’s crazy, that’s all! When his head hurts bad enough, he’ll come begging!”
“You don’t understand, Max. Part of his disease is not to accept help. He’s almost paranoid: he suspects the worst of everybody.”
“Josef, Vienna is filled with patients. You and I could work one hundred fifty hours a week and still have to refer patients out every day. Right?”
Breuer didn’t reply.
“Right?” Max asked again.
“That’s not the point, Max.”
“It is the point, Josef. Patients are banging at your door to get in, and here you are begging someone to let you help him. It doesn’t make sense! Why should you beg?” Max reached for a bottle and two small glasses. “Some slivovitz?”
Breuer nodded, and Max poured. Despite the fact that the Altmann fortune was founded on wine sales, their small glass of chess slivovitz was the only alcohol either man ever drank.