Текст книги "The Schopenhauer Cure"

Автор книги: Наталия Май

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applauding you today? Wasn`t it because you were finally refusing to be defined by her

wishes? In other words, I`m asking whether your work on yourself has been delayed or

derailed by your preoccupation with your wife`s wishes.»

Gill listened, mouth gaping, gaze fixed on Philip. «That`s deep. I know there`s

something deep and important in what you`re saying—in this double despair idea—but

I`m not getting it all.»

All eyes were now on Philip, who continued to have eyes only for the ceiling.

«Philip,” said Rebecca, now finished with replacing her barrettes, «weren`t you saying

that Gill`s personal work won`t really begin until he liberates himself from his wife?»

«Or,” Tony said, «that his involvement with her prevents him from knowing how

fucked–up he really is? Hell, I know this is true for me and the way I relate to my work—

I been thinking this past week that I`m so busy being ashamed of being a carpenter—

being blue–collar, being low–income, being looked down on—that I never get around to

thinking about the real shit I should be dealing with.»

Julius watched in amazement as others, thirsty for Philip`s every word, chimed in.

He felt competitive urges rising but quelled them by reminding himself that the group`s

purposes were being served.Cool it, Julius, he said to himself,the group needs you;

they`re not going to desert you for Philip. What`s going on here is great; they are

assimilating the new member, and they are also each laying out agendas for future work.

He had planned to talk about his diagnosis in the group today. In a sense his hand

was now forced because he had already told Philip he had a melanoma and, to avoid the

impression of a special relationship with him, had to share it with the whole group. But

he had been preempted. First there was Gill`s emergency, and then there was the group`s

total fascination with Philip. He checked the clock. Ten minutes left. Not enough time to

lay this on them. Julius resolved that he would absolutely begin the next meeting with the

bad news. He remained silent and let the clock run out.

12

1799—Arthur

Learns about

Choice and

Other Worldly

Horrors

_________________________

Thekings left their crowns and

scepters behind here, and the

heroes their weapons. Yet the

great spirits among them all,

whose splendor flowed out of

themselves, who did not

receive it from outward

things, they take their

greatness across with them.

–Arthur Schopenhauer, age sixteen at

Westminster Abbey

_________________________

When the nine–year–old Arthur returned from Le Havre, his father placed him in a private

school whose specific mandate was to educate future merchants. There he learned what

good merchants of the time had to know: to calculate in different currencies, to write

business letters in all the major European languages, to study transport routes, trade

centers, yields of the soil, and other such fascinating topics. But Arthur was not

fascinated; he had no interest in such knowledge, formed no close friendships at school,

and dreaded more each day his father`s plan for his future—a seven–year apprenticeship

with a local business magnate.

What did Arthur want? Not the life of a merchant—he loathed the very idea. He

craved the life of a scholar. Though many of his classmates also disliked the thought of a

long apprenticeship, Arthur`s protests ran far deeper. Despite his parents` strong

admonitions—a letter from his mother instructed him to «put aside all these authors for a

while...you are now fifteen and have already read and studied the best German, French

and, in part, also English authors»—he spent all his available free time studying literature

and philosophy.

Arthur`s father, Heinrich, was tormented by his son`s interests. The headmaster of

Arthur`s school had informed him that his son had a passion for philosophy, was

exceptionally suited for the life of a scholar, and would do well to transfer to a

gymnasium which would prepare him for the university. In his heart, Heinrich may have

sensed the correctness of the schoolmaster`s advice; his son`s voracious consumption and

comprehension of all works of philosophy, history, and literature in the extensive

Schopenhauer library was readily apparent.

What was Heinrich to do? At stake was his successor, as well as the future of the

entire firm and his filial obligation to all his ancestors to maintain the Schopenhauer

lineage. Moreover, he shuddered at the prospect of a male Schopenhauer subsisting on

the limited income of a scholar.

First, Heinrich considered setting up a lifelong annuity through his church for his

son, but the cost was prohibitive; business was bad, and Heinrich also had obligations to

guarantee the financial future of a wife and daughter.

Then gradually a solution, a somewhat diabolical solution, began to form in his

mind. For some time he had resisted Johanna`s pleas for a lengthy tour of Europe. These

were difficult times; the international political climate was so unstable that the safety of

the Hanseatic cities was threatened and his constant attention to business was required.

Yet because of weariness and his yearning to shed the weight of business responsibilities,

his resistance to Johanna`s request was wavering. Slowly there swiveled into mind an

inspired plan that would serve two purposes; his wife would be pleased, and the dilemma

of Arthur`s future would be resolved.

His decision was to offer his fifteen–year–old son a choice. «You must choose,” he

told him. «Either accompany your parents on a year`s grand tour of all of Europe or

pursue a career as a scholar. Either you give me a pledge that on the day you return from

the journey you will begin your business apprenticeshipor forego this journey, remain in

Hamburg, and immediately transfer to a classical educational curriculum which will

prepare you for the academic life.»

Imagine a fifteen–year–old facing such a life–altering decision. Perhaps the ever–pedantic Heinrich was offering existential instruction. Perhaps he was teaching his son

that alternatives exclude, that for every yes there must be a no. (Indeed, years later Arthur

was to write, «He who would be everything cannot be anything.»)

Or was Heinrich exposing his son to a foretaste of renunciation, that is, if Arthur

could not renounce the pleasure of the journey, how could he expect himself to renounce

worldly pleasures and live the impecunious life of a scholar?

Perhaps we are being too charitable to Heinrich. Most likely his offer was

disingenuous because he knew that Arthur would not, could not, refuse the trip. No

fifteen–year–old could do that in 1803. At that time such a journey was a priceless once–in–a–lifetime event granted only to a privileged few. Before the days of photography,

foreign places were known only through sketches, paintings, and published travel

journals (a genre, incidentally, that Johanna Schopenhauer was later to exploit

brilliantly).

Did Arthur feel he was selling his soul? Was he tormented by his decision? Of

these matters history is silent. We know only that in 1803, in his fifteenth year, he set off

with his father, mother, and a servant on a journey of fifteen months throughout all of

western Europe and Great Britain. Adele, his six–year–old sister, was deposited with a

relative in Hamburg.

Arthur recorded many impressions in his travel journals written, as his parents

required, in the language of the country visited. His linguistic aptitude was prodigious;

the fifteen–year–old Arthur was fluent in German, French, and English and had working

knowledge of Italian and Spanish. Ultimately, he was to master a dozen modern and

ancient languages, and it was his habit, as visitors to his memorial library have noted, to

write his marginal notes in the language of each text.

Arthur`s travel journals offer a subtle prefiguring of interests and traits which were

aggregating into a persistent character structure. A powerful subtext in the journals is his

fascination with the horrors of humanity. In exquisite detail Arthur describes such

arresting sights as starving beggars in Westphalia, the masses running in panic from the

impending war (the Napoleonic campaigns were incubating), thieves, pickpockets, and

drunken crowds in London, marauding gangs in Poitiers, the public guillotine on display

in Paris, the six thousand galley slaves, on view as in a zoo, in Toulon doomed to be

chained together for life in landlocked naval hulks too decrepit to put out to sea ever

again. And he described the fortress in Marseilles, which once housed the Man in the Iron

Mask, and the black death museum, where letters from quarantined sections of the city

were once required to be dipped into vats of hot vinegar before being passed on. And, in

Lyon, he remarked on the sight of people walking indifferently over the very spot where

their fathers and brothers were killed during the French Revolution.

At a boarding school in Wimbledon where Lord Nelson had once been a student in

England, Arthur perfected his English and attended public executions and naval

floggings, visited hospitals and asylums, and walked by himself through the massive

teeming slums of London.

The Buddha as a young man lived in his father`s palace, where the common lot of

mankind had been veiled from him. It was only when he first journeyed outside of his

father`s palace that he saw the three primal horrors of life: a diseased person, a decrepit

old man, and a corpse. His discovery of the tragic and terrible nature of existence led the

Buddha to his renunciation of the world and the search for a relief from universal

suffering.

For Arthur Schopenhauer, too, early views of suffering profoundly influenced his

life and work. The similarity of his experience to that of the Buddha was not lost on him,

and years later, when writing about his journey, he said, «In my seventeenth year, without

any learned school education, I was gripped by the misery of life, just like Buddha in his

youth, when he saw sickness, pain, aging, and death.»

Arthur never had a religious phase; he had no faith but, when young, had a will to

faith, a wish to escape the terror of a totally unobserved existence. Had he a belief in the

existence of God, though, it would have been sorely tested by his teenaged tour of the

horrors of European civilization. At the age of eighteen he wrote, «This world is

supposed to have been made by a God? No, much better by a devil!»

13

_________________________

When,at the end of their

lives, most men look back they

will find that they have lived

throughout ad interim. They

will be surprised to see that

the very thing they allowed to

slip by unappreciated and

unenjoyed was just their life.

And so a man, having been

duped by hope, dances into the

arms of death.

_________________________

The trouble with a kitten is that

Eventually it becomes a cat.

The trouble with a kitten is that

Eventually it becomes a cat.

Jerking his head to dislodge the annoying couplet from his mind, Julius sat up in bed and

opened his eyes. It was 6A.M. , a week later, the day of the next group meeting, and those

odd Ogden Nash lines looping around in his mind had been the background music for yet

another night of unsatisfying sleep.

Though everyone agrees that life is one goddamned loss after another, few know

that one of the most aggravating losses awaiting us in later decades is that of a good

night`s sleep. Julius knew that lesson all too well. His typical night consisted of tissue–thin dozing which almost never entered the realm of deep, blessed delta–wave slumber, a

sleep that was interrupted by so many awakenings that he often dreaded going to bed.

Like most insomniacs, he awoke in the morning believing either that he had slept far

fewer hours than he actually had or that he had been awake all night long. Often he could

assure himself that he had slept only by carefully reviewing his nocturnal thoughts and

realizing that he would never, in a waking state, have ruminated at such length about such

bizarre, irrational things.

But this particular morning he was entirely confused about how much he had slept.

The kitten–cat couplet must have emerged from the dream realm, but his other nocturnal

thoughts fell into a no–man`s–land, with neither the clarity and purposefulness of full–fledged consciousness nor the quirky caprice of dream thoughts.

Julius sat in bed, reviewing the couplet with his eyes closed, following the

instructions he offered patients to facilitate the recall of nighttime fantasies, hypnagogic

images, and dreams. The poem was pointed at those who loved kittens but not their

coming to age as cats. But what did that have to do with him? He loved kittens and cats

alike, had loved the two adult cats in his father`s store, loved their kittens and their

kittens` kittens, and couldn`t understand why the couplet lodged in his mind in such

tiresome fashion.

On second thought, perhaps the verse was a grim reminder of how, all his life, he

had embraced the wrong myth: namely, that everything about Julius Hertzfeld—his

fortune, stature, glory—was spiraling upward, and that life would always get better and

better. Of course, now he realized that the reverse was true—that the couplet had it

right—that the golden age came first, that his innocent, kittenly beginnings, the

playfulness, the hide–and–seek, the capture–the–flag games, and the building of forts out

of the empty liquor boxes in his father`s store, while unburdened by guilt, guile,

knowledge, or duty, was the very best time of life and that as the days and years passed,

the intensity of his flame dimmed, and existence grew inexorably more grim. The very

worst was saved for last. He recalled Philip`s words about childhood in the last meeting.

No doubt about it: Nietzsche and Schopenhauer had that part right.

Julius nodded his head sadly. It was true he had never truly savored the moment,

never grasped the present, never said to himself, «This is it, this time, this day—this is

what I want! These are the good old days, right now. Let me remain in this moment, let

me take root in this place for all time.» No, he had always believed that the juiciest meat

of life was yet to be found and had always coveted the future—the time of being older,

smarter, bigger, richer. And then came the upheaval, the time of the great reversal, the

sudden and cataclysmic deidealization of the future, and the beginning of the aching

yearning for what used to be.

When was that reversal? When did nostalgia replace the golden promise of

tomorrow? Not in college, where Julius considered everything as prelude (and obstacle)

to that grand prize: admission to medical school. Not in medical school, where, in his first

years, he yearned to be out of the classrooms and onto the wards as a clinical clerk, with

white jacket and stethoscope hanging out of pocket or slung casually about his neck like a

steel–and–rubber shawl. Not in the clerkships of his third and fourth medical school years,

when he finally took his place on the wards. There he yearned for more authority—to be

important, to make vital clinical decisions, to save lives, to dress in blue scrubs and

careen a patient on a gurney down the corridor to the OR to perform emergency trauma

surgery. Not even when he became chief resident in psychiatry, peeked behind the curtain

of shamanism, and was stunned at the limits and uncertainty of his chosen profession.

Without doubt Julius`s chronic and persistent unwillingness to grasp the present

had played havoc with his marriage. Though he had loved Miriam from the moment he

laid eyes on her in the tenth grade, he simultaneously resented her as an obstacle blocking

him from the multitude of women he felt entitled to enjoy. He had never completely

acknowledged that his mate–search was over or that his freedom to follow his lust was in

the slightest way curtailed. When his internship began he found that the house staff

sleeping quarters were immediately adjacent to the nursing school dorm brimming with

nubile young nurses who adored doctors. It was a veritable candy store, and he stuffed

himself with a rainbow of flavors.

It was only after Miriam`s death that the reversal must have occurred. In the ten

years since the car crash took her from him, he had cherished her more than while she

was alive. Julius sometimes heaved with despair when he thought of how his lush

contentment with Miriam, the true idyllic soaring moments of life, had come and gone

without his fully grasping them. Even now, after a decade, he could not speak her name

quickly but had to pause after each syllable. He knew also that no other woman would

ever really matter to him. Several women temporarily dispelled his loneliness, but it

didn`t take long for him, and for them, to realize they would never replace Miriam. More

recently, his loneliness was attenuated by a large circle of male friends, several of whom

belonged to his psychiatric support group, and by his two children. For the past few years

he had taken all his vacationsen famille with his two children and five grandchildren.

But all these thoughts and reminiscences had been only nocturnal trailers and short

subjects—the main feature of the night`s mentation had been a rehearsal of the speech he

would deliver to the therapy group later that afternoon.

He had already gone public about his cancer to many of his friends and his

individual therapy patients, yet, curiously, he was painfully preoccupied with his «coming

out» in the group. Julius thought it had something to do with his being in love with his

therapy group. For twenty–five years he had looked forward eagerly to every meeting.

The group was more than a clump of people; it had a life of its own, an enduring

personality. Though none of the original members (except, of course, he himself) was

still in the group, it had a stable persisting self, a core culture (in the jargon, a unique set

of «norms»—unwritten rules) that seemed immortal. No one member could recite the

group norms, but everyone could agree whether a certain piece of behavior was

appropriate or inappropriate.

The group demanded more energy than any other event of his week, and Julius had

labored mightily to keep it afloat. A venerable mercy ship, it had transported a horde of

tormented people into safer, happier harbors. How many? Well, since the average stay

was between two and three years, Julius figured at least a hundred passengers. From time

to time, memories of departed members wafted through his mind, snippets of an

interchange, a fleeting visual image of a face or incident. Sad to think that these wisps of

memory were all that remained of rich vibrant times, of events bursting with so much

life, meaning, and poignancy.

Many years ago Julius had experimented with videotaping the group and playing

back some particularly problematic interchanges at the next meeting. These old tapes

were in an archaic format no longer compatible with contemporary video playback

equipment. Sometimes he fancied retrieving them from his basement storage room,

having them converted, and bringing departed patients back to life again. But he never

did; he couldn`t bear exposing himself to proof of the illusory nature of life, how it was

warehoused on shiny tape and how quickly the present moment and every moment to

come will fade into the nothingness of electromagnetic wavelets.

Groups require time to develop stability and trust. Often a new group will spin off

members who are unable, for reasons of either motivation or ability, to engage in the

group task (that is, interacting with other members and analyzing that interaction). Then

it may go through weeks of uneasy conflict as members jockey for position of power,

centrality, and influence, but eventually, as trust develops, the healing atmosphere grows

in strength. His colleague, Scott, had once likened a therapy group to a bridge built in

battle. Many casualties (that is, dropouts) had to be taken during the early formative

stage, but once the bridge was built it conveyed many people—the remaining original

members and all those who subsequently joined the group—to a better place.

Julius had written professional articles about the various ways that therapy groups

helped patients, but he always had difficulty in finding the language to describe the truly

crucial ingredient: the group`s healing ambience. In one article he likened it to

dermatological treatments of severe skin lesions in which the patient was immersed into

soothing oatmeal baths.

One of the major side benefits of leading a group—a fact never stated in the

professional literature—is that a potent therapy group often heals the therapist as well as

the patients. Though Julius had often experienced personal relief after a meeting, he

never was certain of the precise mechanism. Was it simply a result of forgetting himself

for ninety minutes, or of the altruistic act of therapy, or of enjoying his own expertise,

feeling proud of his abilities, and enjoying the high regard of others? All of the above?

Julius gave up trying to be precise and for the past few years accepted the folksy

explanation of simply dipping into the healing waters of the group.

Going public with his melanoma to his therapy group seemed a momentous act. It

was one thing, he thought, to be open with family, friends, and all the other folks residing

backstage, but quite another to unmask himself to his primary audience, to that select

group for whom he had been healer, doctor, priest, and shaman. It was an irreversible

step, an admission that he was superannuated, a public confession that his life no longer

spiraled upward toward a bigger, brighter future.

Julius had been thinking a good bit of the missing member, Pam, now traveling

and not due to return for a month. He regretted she would not be there today for his

disclosure. For him, she was the key member of the group, always a comforting, healing

presence for others—and for him as well. And he felt chagrined by the fact that the group

had not been able to help with her extreme rage and obsessional thinking about her

husband and an ex–lover and that Pam, in desperation, had sought help at a Buddhist

meditation retreat in India.

And so, heaving and churning with all these feelings, Julius entered the group

room at four–thirty that afternoon. The members were already seated and poring over

sheets of paper which were whisked out of sight when Julius entered.

Odd, he thought. Was he late? He took a quick look at his watch. Nope, four–thirty

on the dot. He put it out of mind and began the recitation of his prepared statement.

«Well, let`s get started. As you know, I never make a practice of starting the

meeting, but today`s an exception because there`s something I need to get off my chest,

something that`s hard for me to say. So here goes.

«About a month ago I learned that I have a serious, I`ll be frank, more than

serious—a life–threatening form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma. I thought I was in

good health; this turned up at a recent routine physical exam....»

Julius stopped. Something was off kilter: The members` facial expression and

nonverbal language weren`t right. Their posture was wrong. They should have been

turned toward him; focusing on him; instead no one fully faced him, no one met his gaze,

all eyes were averted, unfocused, except for Rebecca, who covertly studied the sheet of

paper in her lap.

«What`s happening?» asked Julius. «I feel like I`m not making contact. You all

seem preoccupied with something else today. And, Rebecca, what is it that you`re

reading?»

Rebecca immediately folded the paper, buried it in her purse, and avoided Julius`s

gaze. Everyone sat quietly until Tony broke the silence.

«Well, I gotta talk. I can`t talk for Rebecca but I`ll talk for myself. My problem

when you were speaking was that I already know what you`re going to tell us about

your...health. So it was hard to look at you and pretend I was hearing something new.

And yet I just couldn`t interrupt you to tell you that I knew it already.»

«How? What do you mean you knew what I was going to say? What in hell is

going on today?»

«Julius, I`m sorry, let me explain,” said Gill. «I mean, in a way I`m to blame. After

the last meeting I was still frazzled and not clear about when or whether to go home or

where to sleep that night. I really put pressure on everyone to come to the coffee shop,

where we continued the meeting.»

«Yeah? And?» Julius coaxed, moving his hand in a small circle as though

conducting an orchestra.

«Well, Philip told us what the score was. You know—about your health and about

the malignant myeloma—”

«Melanoma,” Philip softly interjected.

Gill glanced at the paper in his hand. «Right, melanoma. Thanks, Philip. Keep

doing that. I get mixed up.»

«Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the bone,” said Philip. «Melanoma is a cancer of

the skin, think of melanin, pigment, skin coloring—”

«So those sheets are...,” interrupted Julius, gesturing with his hands to invite Gill

or Philip to explain.

«Philip downloaded information about your medical condition and prepared a

summary, which he handed out just as we entered the room a few minutes ago.» Gill

extended his copy toward Julius, who saw the heading: Malignant Melanoma.

Staggered, Julius sat back in his chair. «I...uh...don`t know how to put it...I feel

preempted, I feel like I had a big news story to tell you and I`ve been scooped, scooped

on my own life story—or death story.» Turning and speaking directly to Philip, Julius

said, «Had you any guesses about how I`d feel about that?»

Philip remained impassive, neither replying nor looking at Julius.

«That`s not entirely fair, Julius,” said Rebecca, who removed her barrette, loosened

her long black hair, and twisted it into a coil on the top of her head. «He`s not at fault

here. First of all, Philip did not, in the worst way, want to go to the coffee shop after the

meeting. Said he didn`t socialize, said he had a class to prepare. We had to practically

drag him there.»

«Right.» Gill took over. «We talked mostly about me and my wife and where I

should sleep that night. Then, of course, we all asked Philip about why he was in therapy,

which is only natural—every new member gets asked that—and he told us about your

phone call to him which was prompted by your illness. That news jolted us, and we

couldn`t let it pass without pressing him to tell us what he knew. Looking back, I don`t

see how he could have withheld that from us.»

«Philip even asked,” Rebecca added, «whether it was kosher for the group to meet

without you.»

«Kosher? Philip saidthat ?» asked Julius.

«Well, no,” said Rebecca, «come to think of it,kosher was my term, not his. But

that was his meaning, and I told him that we often had a postgroup session at the coffee

shop and that you`ve never raised objections about it except to insist that we debrief

everyone who wasn`t there in the next meeting so that there be no secrets.»

It was good that Rebecca and Gill gave Julius time to calm himself. His mind

churned with negativity:That ungrateful prick, that undercutting bastard. I try to do

something for him, and this is what I get for it—no good deed goes unpunished. And I can

just imagine how little he told the group about himself and why he had been in therapy

with me in the first place.... I`d lay big money that he conveniently forgot to tell the group

that he had screwed about a thousand women without an ounce of care or compassion

for a single one of them.

But he kept all these thoughts to himself and gradually cleansed his mind of rancor

by considering the events following the last meeting. He realized thatof course the group

would have pressured Philip to attend a postgroup coffee and that Philip would have been

swayed by the group pressure to attend—indeed he himself was at fault for not having

informed Philip about these periodic postgroup get–togethers. And,of course, the group

would have questioned Philip about why he was in therapy—Gill was right—the group

never failed to pose this question to a new member, andof course Philip would have to

reveal the story of their unusual history and subsequent contract for therapy—what

choice did he have? As for his distributing medical information on malignant

melanoma—that was Philip`s own idea, no doubt his way of ingratiating himself with the

group.

Julius felt wobbly, couldn`t pull off a smile, but braced himself and continued.

«Well, I`ll do my best to talk about this. Rebecca, let me take a good look at that sheet.»

Julius quickly scanned it. «These medical facts seem accurate so I won`t repeat them, but

I`ll just fill you in on my experience. It started with my doctor spotting an unusual mole

on my back, which a biopsy confirmed was a malignant melanoma. Of course that`s why

I canceled the group—had a rough couple of weeks, really rough, letting it sink in.»

Julius`s voice quavered. «As you see, it`s still rough.» He paused, took a deep breath, and

continued. «My doctors can`t predict my future, but what is important here is they feel

strongly that I have at least a year of good health ahead. So this group will be open for

business as usual for the twelve months. No, wait, let me put it this way: health

permitting, I commit myself to meet with you for one more year, at which time the group

will terminate. Sorry to be clumsy about it, but I`ve had no practice at this.»

«Julius, is this seriously life threatening?» asked Bonnie. «Philip`s Internet

information...all these statistics based on stages of the melanoma.»

«Straight question and the straight answer is ‘yes`—definitely life threatening. The

chances are good that this thing will get me in the future. I know that wasn`t an easy

question to ask, but I appreciate your straightforwardness, Bonnie, because I`m like most

people with major illness—I hate everyone to be pussyfooting around. That would just

isolate and frighten me. I`ve got to get used to my new reality. I don`t like it, but life as a

healthy carefree person—well,that life is definitely coming to an end.»