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Nietzsche's radiologist
personality and his poor health are discussed in
Therivel's GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity.
Nietzsche as GAM Radiologist
The above is the title of chapter 9 of volume 2 of
William A. Therivel's The GAM/DP Theory of Personality
and Creativity (G stands for genetic
endowment, A for assistances of youth, M
for misfortunes of youth, DP for division of
power, UP for unity of power). For an introduction
to the GAM part of the theory click "Introduction
to GAM"; for an introduction to the DP
part click on "Introduction
to DP".
In this website, the reader is also offered a shortcut:
The GAM/DP Synopsis
and an expanded version, The GAM/DP
Summary of volumes 1 through 4.
Hereafter, I report a few pages from this chapter.
I. Introduction
The GAM theory was supported,
as discussed in chapter 26 of volume 1, when it successfully
proved-on the basis of Heidegger's personality-that
Heidegger had suffered a major physical infirmity of
youth. That was a case of predicting a cause from the
result. This chapter discusses the forecasting of a
major aspect of Friedrich Nietzsche's personality and
thinking, from a description of his misfortunes of youth:
this time, a prediction of results from a cause.
Basically, having read
of his long and painful physical infirmities of childhood,
adolescence and adulthood, I concluded that Nietzsche
should have become a GAM radiologist, and, as
such, he should have acquired the key characteristic
of the radiologists, as listed in table 1 of
chapter 3, vol.1: "Keen eye for anything that is
sick in people and society."
Further on, in that same
chapter, I said:
| In
the radiologists, strong physical infirmity,
either very painful or humiliating, leaves (even
with the best loving assistance) very deep scars,
especially by bringing isolation from family members
and peers, and making even the dream of a normal
life impossible. Persons so afflicted see themselves
as sick or deformed, and cannot but look at the
others, at life itself, through the lenses of their
infirmity. The high level of their GxAxM will make
of them first class diagnosticians -- expert 'radiologists.'....
Proust's novels illustrate the working of the radiologist
mentality in its diagnostic for what is sick in
man, for what is foul behind the most healthy appearances.
In Remembrance of Things Past, the characters
are either found wanting since the beginning, or
are presented as morally healthy first and then
proven sick. |
In this chapter I will
deal with two separate issues: First, I will explain
how I was able to forecast Nietzsche's radiological
personality from his misfortunes of youth. Second,
I will present a new way of reading Nietzsche, as a
self-proclaimed chief physician of humanity who
thinks that he has been able to finally diagnose the
major infirmities that afflict the world, especially
the Western world, and who feels capable of prescribing
the right cure.
2. Evidence for GAM: Forecasting personality from
misfortunes of youth.
While working at the
preceding chapter, I wondered about an explanation for
Nietzsche's fascination with the ancient Greeks, as
I thought I had found one for Schiller and Goethe. In
this search-as usual-I started with a number of biographies
of Nietzsche.
In Ronald Hayman's Nietzsche
-- A critical life (1980/1982), my attention was
drawn to the following lines: "When he was twelve
he began to have serious trouble with his eyes. He had
inherited myopia from his father, and one of his pupils
was slightly larger than the other,.. This can be a
symptom of syphilis" (p. 24). Remembering James
Joyce's eye problems (see chapter 10, vol. 1), I decided
to focus on Nietzsche's health, specifically on his
eye problems. What I read-see Table 1-convinced me that
Nietzsche must have become a GAM radiologist:
so strong was his physical infirmity, and starting so
early.
Table 1
Nietzsche's History of Physical Infirmities
At
Age |
| Nietzsche
was born October 15, 1844 |
|
Source
&
Page Nr. |
| 9 |
| His
headaches were already bad enough to keep
him in bed, and from the age of nine onwards
he missed a good deal of school through illness.
Between Easter 1854 and 1855 he was absent
for five weeks and six days. After starting
at the Dom Gymnasium in the autumn of 1855,
he missed twenty days of schooling in his
first year and thirteen in his second. Then
when he was twelve he began to have serious
trouble with his eyes. He had inherited myopia
from his father, and one of his pupils was
lightly larger than the other, a feature he
had inherited from his mother. This can be
a symptom of syphilis, and it could mean that
his father had infected his mother with the
disease, and that Fritz acquired it congenitally. |
|
Ha
24 |
| 15 |
| Nietzsche
required both reading-glasses and dark glasses
to protect his eyes from strong sunlight.
In his second letter home he had listed the
things he needed: "Above all a strong
pair of spectacles - send them to me as quickly
as possible." |
|
Ha
30 |
| 16 |
| He
continues, however, to figure in the sickness
register. The headaches which had started
when he first went to school were getting
worse. He had a particularly bad attack in
mid-January 1861 and again in February, and
he was allowed home for two weeks; but the
headaches still persisted, and he wrote in
his diary: "I must learn to get used
to it." There are twenty entries in the
sickness register between March 1859 and May
1864 recording his having suffered from rheumatism,
catarrh, colds and head congestion, in addition
to headaches, while he was at Pforta, the
spells of sickness lasting on an average a
week. |
|
Ho
26 |
| 18 |
| The
medical records of the school contain an entry,
recorded in 1862:". . . shortsighted
and often plagued by migraine headaches. His
father died early of softening of the brain
and was begotten in old age [actually when
his father was fifty-seven, his mother thirty-five];
the son at a time when the father was already
sick [most experts deny this]. As yet no grave
signs are visible, but the antecedents require
consideration". |
|
Ka
23 |
| 20 |
| "My
eyes are obviously becoming worse. Working
by lamplight is a great effort and a great
strain." |
|
Ha
53 |
| 28 |
| After
suffering a great deal of pain in his eyes
while dictating the essay, ... |
|
Ha
170 |
| 29-36 |
| The
disturbances began gradually but became frequent
from 1873 on. Above all, attacks of violent
headaches, together with sensitivity to light,
vomiting, a general paralysis-like feeling,
and conditions such as those experienced in
seasickness more and more often caused him
to be bedridden. Several times he was unconscious
for prolonged periods (to Eiser, Jan. '80).
The nearsightedness from which he suffered
since his youth was aggravated by permanent
eye trouble; in addition to acute attacks
there was constant pain and pressure in his
head (to Eiser, Feb., '80). More and more
his intellectual existence came to depend
upon having others read to him and take his
dictation. |
|
J
90-91 |
29-36
cont. |
| These
illnesses afflicted him throughout his entire
life in varying degrees of severity; improvements
and exacerbations alternated irregularly.
Thus in 1885 he wrote again of a "rapid
diminution of eyesight." On the one hand,
the year 1879 was the worst according to his
letters ("I experienced 118 days of serious
attacks; I did not count the milder ones,"
to Eiser, Feb. '80); on the other hand, improvements
occurred ("and now this remarkable improve-
ment! To be sure, it has lasted only five
weeks so far." (to Marie Baumgartner,
Oct. 20 '79). |
|
J
90-91
cont. |
| 36 |
| "My
existence is a fearful burden,"
Nietzsche wrote to his doctor, Otto Eiser
of Frankfurt am Main, in January 1880: "I
should have thrown it off long ago ... and
yet! continual pain; for many hours of the
day a feeling much like seasickness; a semi-paralysis
which makes it hard for me to talk, alternating
with furious attacks (the last one had me
vomiting for three days and nights, I longed
for death)." |
|
Ho
151 |
| 33 |
| [Dr.
Otto] Eiser arranged a joint consultation
in Frankfurt with the ophthalmologist Dr.
Otto Kruger. Their verdict was that the headaches
were due partly to severe damage sustained
by the retinas in both eyes--choroidoretinitis
is frequently syphilitic in origin--and partly
to "a predisposition in the irritability
of the central organ", originating out
of excessive mental activity. The patient
could not be allowed to read or write for
several years. |
|
Ha
203 |
| 45 |
| Period
of collapse. Early in January 1889, Nietzsche
collapsed in the street in Turin. Carried
back to his room, he sent out some mad but
meaningful letters and postcards. Overbeck
came to take him back to Basel. He spent the
last 11 1/2 years of his life first in an
asylum, then in his mother's care in Naumburg,
and finally in Weimar, where his sister took
him after his mother's death (1897). He died
in Weimar on August 25, 1900. During this
last period he wrote nothing and was incapable
of conversation. Informed opinion favours
the diagnosis of an atypical general paralysis,
which would indicate tertiary syphilis. |
|
K2
79 |
| 56 |
| In
1899 he was treated by Doctor Vulpius for
inflammation of the iris of the left eye.
The pigment spots on the front of the lens
capsule and the failure of the pupil to react
to light made him conclude that the disease
was syphilitic. |
|
Ha
349 |
Having concluded that
Nietzsche was, indeed, a radiologist, because
of his strong, painful, and humiliating physical infirmities
of childhood, adolescence and adulthood (together with
a high GxA), I felt comfortable in forecasting that
his thinking was radiological, and that his works
would reveal it. The results of my reading, as reported
in Table 2, confirmed my prediction.
Table 2
Nietzsche's Radiological Statements *
|
From |
Human
All Too Human (1878):
Advisor to the ill. Whoever gives an
ill man advice gains a feeling of superiority
over him, whether the advice is accepted or
rejected. For that reason, irritable and proud
ill people hate advisors even more than their
illness. (p.177) |
|
| From |
Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85):
Zarathustra is gentle with the sick.Truly,
he is not angry at their manner of consolation
and ingratitude. May they become convalescents
and overcomers and make for themselves a higher
body! Neither is Zarathustra angry with the
convalescent if he glances tenderly at his
illusions and creeps at midnight around the
grave of his God: but even his tears still
speak to me of sickness and a sick body. There
have always been many sickly people among
those who invent fables and long for God:
they have a raging hate for the enlightened
man and for that youngest of virtues which
is called honesty. (pp.60-61) |
|
| From |
Thus
Spoke Zarathustra:
The evil deed is like a boil: it itches and
irritates and breaks forth--it speaks honourably.
"Behold, I am disease" thus speaks
the evil deed; that is its honesty. But the
petty thought is like a canker: it creeps
and hides and wants to appear nowhere --until
the whole body is rotten and withered by little
cankers. (p. 113) |
|
| From |
Thus
Spoke Zarathustra:
And this is the tale of Zarathustra's conversation
with the fire-dog:
"The earth" (he said) "has
a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of
these diseases, for example is called Man."
(p. 153) |
|
| From |
Beyond
Good and Evil (1886):
There is the loveliest false finery available
for this disease; and that most of that which
appears in the shop windows today as "objectivity",
"scientificality", "l'art
pour l'art", "pure will-less
knowledge" is merely skepticism and will-paralysis
dressed up - for this diagnosis of the European
sickness I am willing to go bail. Sickness
of will is distributed over Europe unequally;
it appears most virulently and abundantly
where culture has been longest, indigenous
it declines according to the extent to which
"the barbarian" still - or again
- asserts his rights under the loose-fitting
garment of Western culture. In present-day
France, consequently, as one can as easily
deduce as actually see, the will is sickest;
(p. 118) |
|
| From |
The
Genealogy of Morals (1887):
The bad conscience is an illness, there is
no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy
is an illness. Let us seek out the conditions
under which this illness has reached its most
terrible and most sublime height; we shall
see what it really was that thus entered the
world. but for that one needs endurance--and
first of all we must go back again to an earlier
point of view. (p. 88) |
|
| From |
The
Genealogy of Morals:
All this is interesting, to excess, but also
of a gloomy, black, unnerving sadness, so
that one must forcibly forbid oneself to gaze
too long into these abysses. Here is sickness,
beyond any doubt, the most terrible sickness
that has ever raged in man; ... There is so
much in man that is hideous! - Too long the
earth has been a madhouse! (p. 93) |
|
| From |
Ecce
Homo (1888):
When the least organ in an organism fails,
however slightly, to enforce with complete
assurance its self-preservation, its "egoism",
restitution of its energies--the whole degenerates.
The physiologist demands excision of
the degenerating part; he denies all solidarity
with what degenerates; he is worlds removed
from pity for it. (p. 292) |
|
| From |
The
Case of Wagner (1888):
I place this perspective at the outset: Wagner's
art is sick. ... Precisely because nothing
is more modern than this total sickness, this
lateness and overexcitement of the nervous
mechanism, ... Only sick music makes money
today; our big theaters subsist on Wagner.
(p. 166) |
|
| From |
The
Twilight of Idols (1889):
A moral code for physicians. - The
invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain
state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate
on in cowardly dependence on physicians and
medicaments after the meaning of life, the
right to life, has been lost ought
to entail the profound contempt of society.
Physicians, in their turn, ought to be the
communicators of this contempt - not prescriptions,
but every day a fresh dose of disgust
with their patients. ... (p. 88) |
|
| From |
The
Anti-Christ (1895):
These are the blessings of Christianity! -
Parasitism as the sole practice of
the Church; with its ideal of green-sickness,
of "holiness" draining away all
blood, all love, all hope for life; the Beyond
as the will to deny reality of every kind;
the Cross as the badge of recognition for
the most subterranean conspiracy there has
ever been--a conspiracy against health, beauty,
well-constituted- ness, bravery, intellect,
benevolence of soul , against life
itself ... (p. 186) |
|
| From |
The
Will to Power (written 1883-88):**
What is inherited is not the sickness but
sickliness: the lack of strength to
resist the danger of infections, etc., the
broken resistance; morally speaking,
resignation and meekness in face of the enemy.
I have asked myself if all the supreme values
of previous philosophy, morality, and religion
could not be compared to the values of the
weakened, the mentally ill, and neurasthenics:
in a milder form, they represent the same
ills. (p. 29) |
|
| From |
The
Will to Power:
To what extent sickliness, owing to the symbiosis
of centuries, goes much deeper:
modern
virtue,
modern
spirituality, } as forms
of sickness
our science
}
(p. 32) |
|
| From |
The
Will to Power:
The "good man." Or: the hemiplegia
of virtue. ... Whence, then, comes the sickness
and ideological unnaturalness that rejects
this doubleness--that teaches that it is a
higher thing to be efficient on only one side?
Whence comes the hemiplegia of virtue, the
invention of the good man? (pp. 191-92) |
|
* For the text, please refer to the references. Italics
are in the originals.
** First published by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
in 1901, revised and enlarged in 1910-11.
III. Nietzsche as Radiologist philosopher
A GAM radiologist who is a philosopher will
develop a radiological philosophy, and indeed,
this is the case with Nietzsche. Being used to seeing
himself sick from the earliest age, being used to asking
constantly the help of a physician, the radiologist
sees the world as sick, in need of a physician. Gradually,
thanks also to his high GxA, Nietzsche felt that he
was that physician the world needed, that he was the
great observer who finally had understood how
sick humanity was. He saw himself as the great doctor
who not only had made the right diagnosis, but could
prescribe the right cure. In his own words from The
Will to Power:
Part 1: Diagnosis
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A physiologist interested in a disease and an
invalid who claims to be cured of it do not have
identical interests. Let us suppose that the disease
is morality--for it is a disease--and that we
Europeans are the invalids: what subtle torment
and difficulties would arise if we Europeans were
at the same time inquisitive spectators and physiologists!
Would we then really desire to be free of morality?
Would we want to be ? Quite apart from the question
whether we could be, Whether we could be 'cured.'
(1967, pp. 155-6).
The 'improvement of man,' regarded as a whole,
e.g., the undeniable softening, humanizing, mellowing
of the European within the last millennium--is
it perhaps the result of the long hidden and mysterious
suffering and failure, abstinence, stunning? Has
'illness' made the European 'better'? Or, in other
words; is our morality--our modern sensitive European
morality, which may be compared with the morality
of the Chinese--the expression of a physiological
regression? (ib., p. 212)
Morality as the supreme value, in all phases
of philosophy (even among the skeptics). Result:
this world is good for nothing, there must be
a 'real world.'...
Question: why did life, physiological well-constitutedness
everywhere succumb? Why was there no affirmative
philosophy, no affirmative religion?... The strong
and the weak: the healthy and the sick; the exception
and the rule. There is no doubt who is the stronger--...
The declining instincts have become master over
the ascending instincts--The will to nothingness
has become master over the will to life! (ib.
, p. 216-7).
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The cure
My
innovations-Further development of pessimism:
intellectual pessimism; critique of morality, disintegration
of the last consolation. Knowledge of the signs
of decay; Veils with illusion every firm action;
culture isolates, is unjust and therefore strong.
1. My endeavor is to oppose decay and increasing
weakness of personality. I sought a new center ....
(ib., p. 224)
Let us abolish the real world: and to be able to
do this we first have to abolish the supreme value
hitherto, morality-- It suffices to demonstrate
that even morality is immoral, in the sense in which
immorality has always been condemned. If the tyranny
of former values is broken in this way, if we have
abolished the 'real world,' then a new order of
values must follow of its own accord.(ib., p. 254) |
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