The Schopenhauer Cure: A Novel Paperback – November 10, 2020

... yet, this book is still a page turner. A novel, and part fiction, indeed, yet the parts based on true life events are not limited to Schopenhauer's life. Just finished reading it for the third time in about ten years. I believe I read all that Yalom wrote including his recent autobiography (except for his academic writings) and the wonderful, nonfiction, The Gift of Therapy.A psychiatrist (MD) with a lifelong interest in literature, leaving the modern neurotransmitter regulating drugs to others, Yalom dedicates his life to practicing and teaching group and individual psychotherapy, the existential kind, if such a thing is admissible, and attacks with full force the varied neuroses that trouble the modern town-dweller human beings..The stage is the living room in the main protagonist's house with seven or eight chairs where a well functioning group meets regularly for support and therapy. Most of the action of the novel does, and indeed mostly did, happen outside, and it includes flashbacks to Schopenhauer's life as well as a trip by one of the members of the therapy group to modern day India to the ashram of famous vipassana guru Goenka.If you'd like to understand what goes on in the minds of many of us, how we relate, or not, to others, how we make up so much of our own suffering by keeping others away from us, and how, at the end, forgiveness, not in the common sense of pardon that assumes and accepts crime and pretends superior morality, but, in the Socratic sense, that we all do wrong when we don't know any better, gives us everything we need, read this book. It might provide you the support group you may not have readily available and change your life. And if not, it will give you enough pointers to go and relate to everybody in your circle in a more open, authentic and healing way..

Julius Hertzfeld is a therapist whose terminal cancer leaves him with about a year to live. As he racks his memory, his bookshelves, and his patient files for an answer to the question of whether he's lived a meaningful life, he happens across his file on Philip Slate. Decades before, Julius attempted to treat Philip for his voracious sex addiction and failed. A meeting with Philip reveals to Julius that he's conquered his sex addiction with a combination of philosophical wisdom--especially Schopenhauer--and total withdrawal from human relationships.Philip's need to support himself motivates him to become a philosophical counselor: a teacher who guides his clients through the parts of the philosophical tradition that speak to their condition. But Philip needs supervision from a licensed therapist to complete his counseling credential, and he proposes to Julius a trade: in exchange for supervision, Philip will offer Julius a course of philosophical counseling focused on Schopenhauer, which Philip thinks will alleviate Julius's anxiety about his approaching death.Philip offers to Julius The Schopenhauer Cure: the wisdom of Schopenhauer that Philip thinks will ease Julius's mind. It's the same cure that transformed Philip's life. But Julius isn't interested, and he sees that he can offer Philip a different kind of Schopenhauer Cure: a cure *from* the disease of Schopenhauerian isolation that has caused Philip to go twelve years without so much as sharing a meal with another person. Philip joins Julius's therapy group in partial satisfaction of his supervision requirement, and Julius leaves open the remote possibility that he will accept guidance on Schopenhauer from Philip.As the book proceeds we read a philosophical biography of Schopenhauer alternating mostly with group therapy sessions. Turns out, Philip *is* Yalom's version of Schopenhauer living in late 20th Century San Francisco. This allows Yalom to explore some fascinating questions: What if Schopenhauer had had access to outstanding group therapy during his lifetime? What effect might Schopenhauer have had on those around him? What might fill the gaps in our knowledge of Schopenhauer's life-- the parts of it that were either too painful, too shameful, or too unconscious to make it into his writing?The gripping portraits of Philip and Schopenhauer are the best parts of the book. Those interested in the dynamics of group therapy will also find lots to dig into. But those searching for the stunning transformations in Philip to be mirrored by Julius's growth will be disappointed. Whether he wanted it or not, Julius, and all the members of the group, *does* receive the philosophical counseling that Philip intended to offer him at their reacquaintance. But it leaves Julius's understanding of his life, and the good human life in general, mostly untouched. Had Yalom allowed Philip to unsettle and educate Julius more deeply in his last year, this book would have reached even greater depths.