The Schopenhauer Cure

by Irvin D. Yalom

The looming end of the group propelled members to address their core issues with increased ardor. A visible end to therapy always has that result; for that reason pioneer practitioners like Otto Rank and Carl Rogers often set a termination date at the very onset of therapy.

The second essay, “What a Man Has,” dissects one of the major techniques used to compensate for inner poverty: the endless accumulation of possessions, which ultimately results in one becoming possessed by one’s possessions.

(Schopenhauer always viewed happiness as a negative state—an absence of suffering—and treasured Aristotle’s maxim “Not to pleasure but to painlessness do the prudent aspire.”)

Accordingly, Parerga and Paralipomena offers lessons on how to think independently, how to retain skepticism and rationality, how to avoid soothing supernatural emollients, how to think well of ourselves, keep our stakes low, and avoid attaching ourselves to what can be lost.

We should treat with indulgence every human folly, failing, and vice, bearing in mind that what we have before us are simply our own failings, follies, and vices. For they are just the failings of mankind to which we also belong and accordingly we have all the same failings buried within ourselves. We should not be indignant with others for these vices simply because they do not appear in us at the moment.

At the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and in possession of his faculties, would ever wish to go though it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete nonexistence.

Congruence is what therapy is all about.”

“Perhaps,” responded Philip in a conciliatory fashion, “neurosis is a social construct, and we may need a different kind of therapy and a different kind of philosophy for different temperaments—one approach for those who are replenished by closeness to others and another approach for those who choose the life of the mind.

And Aristotle’s definition of a friend—one who promotes the better and the sounder in the other—comes close to my idea of the ideal therapist.”