Description

From the acclaimed author of Love's Executioner and Schopenhauer’s Couch, comes a “fascinating…shrewd intellectual thriller” (Los Angeles Times Book Review) about pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst Josef Breuer and his intriguing patient—Friedrich Nietzsche

In nineteenth-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him.

When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental “talking cure,” Breuer never expects that he too will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient. In When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense, to unfold an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of friendship. 

About the Author

Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., is one of the world’s foremost psychiatrists, a visionary therapist and internationally bestselling author. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Love’s Executioner, Momma and the Meaning of Life, When Nietzsche Wept, the Schopenhauer Cure, and most recently A Matter of Death and Life, a dual memoir written with his late wife, Marilyn Yalom, PhD. His textbooks Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy and Existential Therapy are standards for therapists in training worldwide. In 2014 he was the subject of the documentary Yalom's Cure. Now in his nineties, Dr. Yalom continues to live and write in Northern California.

Benjamin Yalom is a San Diego-based psychotherapist, with an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who focuses on values, relationships, and existential concerns. He is a long-time writing collaborator with his father, Irvin D. Yalom. Prior to his doctoral studies in Marriage and Family Therapy, Ben was the visionary force behind foolsFURY theater, which helped transform San Francisco’s performing arts scene in the early 2000s. He is also an award-winning fiction writer. www.yalomtherapy.com

Praise For…

“An intelligent, carefully researched, richly imagined novel.” — Boston Globe

“Strong and authentic. The element of surprise is a magical, jolting moment.” — Washington Post Book World

“When Nietzsche Wept is the best dramatization of a great thinker’s thought since Sartre’s The Freud Scenario.” — Chicago Tribune