The Schopenhauer Cure

A Novel

Irvin D. Yalom

To my community of older buddies who grace me with their friendship, share life`s

inexorable diminishments and losses, and continue to sustain me with their wisdom and

dedication to the life of the mind: Robert Berger, Murray Bilmes, Martel Bryant, Dagfinn

Føllesdahl, Joseph Frank, Van Harvey, Julius Kaplan, Herbert Kotz, Morton Lieberman,

Walter Sokel, Saul Spiro, and Larry Zaroff.

6

Mom and Pop

Schopenhauer

—

Zu Hause

_________________________

Thesolid foundations of our

view of the world and thus its

depth or shallowness are

formed in the years of

childhood. Such a view is

subsequently elaborated and

perfected, yet essentially it

is not altered.

_________________________

What kind of a man was Heinrich Schopenhauer? Tough, dour, repressed, unyielding,

proud. The story is told that in 1783, five years before Arthur`s birth, Danzig was

blockaded by the Prussians and food and fodder were scarce. The Schopenhauer family

was forced to accept the billeting of an enemy general at their country estate. As a

reward, the Prussian officer offered to grant Heinrich the privilege of forage for his

horses. Heinrich`s reply? «My stable is well stocked, sir, and when the food supply runs

out I will have my horses put down.»

And Arthur`s mother, Johanna? Romantic, lovely, imaginative, vivacious,

flirtatious. Though all of Danzig in 1787 considered the union of Heinrich and Johanna a

brilliant event, it proved to be a tragic mismatch. The Troiseners, Johanna`s family, came

from a modest background and had long regarded the lofty Schopenhauers with awe.

Hence, when Heinrich, at the age of thirty–eight, came to court the seventeen–year–old

Johanna, the Troiseners were jubilant and Johanna acquiesced to her parents` choice.

Did Johanna regard her marriage as a mistake? Read her words written years later

as she warned other young women facing a matrimonial decision: «Splendor, rank, and

title exercise an all too seductive power over a young girl`s heart luring women into tying

a marriage knot...a false step for which they must suffer the hardest punishment the rest

of their lives.»

«Suffer the hardest punishment the rest of their lives»—strong words from Arthur`s

mother. In her journals she confided that before Heinrich courted her she had had a young

love, which fate took from her, and it was in a state of resignation that she had accepted

Heinrich Schopenhauer`s marriage proposal. Did she have a choice? Most likely not. This

typical eighteenth–century marriage of convenience was arranged by her family for

reasons of property and status. Was there love? There was no question of love between

Heinrich and Johanna Schopenhauer. Never. Later, in her memoirs, she wrote, «I no more

pretended ardent love than he demanded it.» Nor was there abundant love for others in

their household—not for the young Arthur Schopenhauer, nor for his younger sister,

Adele, born nine years later.

Love between parents begets love for the children. Occasionally, one hears tales of

parents whose great love for each other consumes all the love available in the household,

leaving only love–cinders for the children. But this zero–sum economic model of love

makes little sense. The opposite seems true: the more one loves, the more that one

responds to children, to everyone, in a loving manner.

Arthur`s love–bereft childhood had serious implications for his future. Children

deprived of a maternal love bond fail to develop the basic trust necessary to love

themselves, to believe that others will love them, or to love being alive. In adulthood they

become estranged, withdraw into themselves, and often live in an adversarial relationship

with others. Such was the psychological landscape that would ultimately inform Arthur`s

worldview.