A Nietzsche Reader

by Friedrich Nietzsche

I find no more than six essentially different methods of combating the vehemence of a drive. Firstly, one can avoid opportunities for gratification of the drive, and through long and ever longer periods of non-gratification weaken it and make it wither away. Then, one can impose upon oneself strict regularity in its gratification […] one has then gained intervals during which one is no longer troubled by it – and from there one can perhaps go over to the first method. Thirdly, one can deliberately give oneself over to the wild and unrestrained gratification of a drive in order to generate disgust with it and with disgust to acquire a power over the drive […] Fourthly, there is the intellectual artifice of associating its gratification in general so firmly with some very painful thought that, after a little practice, the thought of its gratification is itself at once felt as very painful. […] Fifthly, one brings about a dislocation of one’s quanta of strength by imposing on oneself a particularly difficult and strenuous labour, or by deliberately subjecting oneself to a new stimulus and pleasure and thus directing one’s thought and plays of physical forces into other channels […] Finally, sixth: he who can endure it and finds it reasonable to weaken and depress his entire bodily and physical organization will naturally thereby also attain the goal of weakening an individual violent drive.