Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you." Hoist by his own pétard, at 45 years old, poor Nietzsche permanently lost his mind. This event was a long time coming but was triggered by an incident where he saw a horse being beaten. Considering his general philosophy of emotional hardness, I find this a telling event. It prompted me to explore Nietzsche's chart further.
In the process I found many references to him as a new kind of man. His chart is Uranian and Plutonic in tone. He is related in a chain of minds from Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, the latter being also very Uranian and Plutonic.
Perhaps Nietzsche was the prototype of humans to emerge in the Aquarian Age. It has to start somewhere in time ... this seeding of the new human being. Hopefully the model is being reworked to get the glitches out.
I have never been one to put much emphasis on the broader astrological predictions such as the Harmonic Conversion or the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, simply because as a historian and evolutionist, it is difficult to discern a dividing line between one era and another, one century and another, or one age and another. When exactly do we pass from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius? One astrological website I visited had found at least seventy different opinions.
I became interested in the Aquarian Age again, though, when I read some of the vocabulary used to describe these three Germans: Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher; Richard Wagner, German composer with an interest in philosophy, a follower of Schopenhauer; and Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher. All three were described as "willful", "will to power", "exceptional", "driving force", "radical revolutionary" ... Nietzsche even describes himself as a time bomb in so many words.
These are the kinds of images that arise when you combine Uranus and Pluto. As Barbara Watters so beautifully put it, Uranus is guns, Pluto is bombs.
The charts of these three men have Uranian/Plutonic themes. It was Nietzsche, you may recall, who made the dreadful, shocking statement, "God is dead," so many years ago that now we are used to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche's Astrology Chart - click here
- Article about Nietzsche and Schizophrenia by Al Siebert, PhD - click herE
- Learn more about Dr. Al Siebert
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Brilliance is fascinating and when it goes awry, I think we are all given pause to think for a moment ... just what is a "mind". We had a good movie about this recently called A Beautiful Mind in which Novel Prize winner John Nash's complete mental breakdown was dramatized.
ABOUT
DR. AL SIEBERT
Dr. Al Siebert (I am quoting now from his Resiliency
Center website) is "internationally recognized for his research
into the inner nature of highly resilient survivors. His book The Survivor
Personality is now in its ninth printing, and has been published in
German, Dutch, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, and United Kingdom editions.
"Articles quoting his work have appeared in Nation's Business, Family Circle, Men's Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, New Woman, Outdoor Life, Bottom Line/Personal, Good Housekeeping, USA Weekend, CBSHealthwatch.com, Human Resources Magazine, and many trade publications. His popular quiz "How Resilient Are You?" has been reprinted in many articles and books. He has been interviewed about the survivor personality on the NBC Today Show, The Unexplained, and OPRAH." (end of quote from Resiliency Center website)
Order Dr. Siebert's book The Survivor Personality: Why Some People
Are Stronger, Smarter, and More Skillful at Handling Life's Difficulties...and
How You Can Be, Too [click the book cover]
Dr. Al Siebert wrote an article on "survivor personalities", early in his career in which he used Friedrich Nietzsche as an illustration of this type of personality. He believes that "survivor personalities" are exceptional in some important ways. Currently these people make up only 1% or 2% of the population.
Siebert's article explores the emergence at the same time in history of a new psychological disorder called at first dementia praecox and later schizophrenia and a new, exceptional level of mental health, as presumably described if not exhibited by Friedrich Nietzsche and others. When something is described as "emerging" into the collective, I think evolution. I think Uranus and Pluto.
Dr. Siebert's research into the survivor personality and his call for further research into the real nature of schizophrenia has been invaluable as a tool of understanding for psychologists and psychiatrists. It also serves as a powerful bridge for spiritual healers.
Many healers like myself (I am an infp personality type, called The Healer) have commented through the years among ourselves on the resemblance between rising kundalini energy and what are labeled schizophrenic episodes by the medical community.
Kundalini is a force majeur or seemingly external event that has been recognized by most of the world's major religions in consciousness raising. When you have prepared yourself and asked to be awakened, at last you are awakened. You have waited so long. Sometimes you forget that this is the answer to your prayer and you feel like something is happening TO you.
Please read Historical Sources & Knowledge of Kundalini for an excellent though oversimplified introduction to the cross cultural recognition of the kundalini energy. Western psychology and medicine often stumble onto the path of the truths which have been self evident in most of the world's great religions since their inception. They are amazed at spiritual realities that we work to recognize through Yoga, meditation, silence and other religious means.
Dr. Siebert refers to "paradoxes" and the "breakdown of the bicameral mind" which the purpose of a Zen Buddhist statement such as, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" One day there will be a synthesis and the right hand will no longer be divided from the left.
Meditation, which is geared toward Eastern psyches, not Western, can easily trigger schizophrenic-like events in individuals who are not properly prepared to "contain the light", as it is called. Those of us who help others with their spiritual growth are watchful of this. In the Qabalah, this situation is symbolized by the path from Yesod to Tifereth. Those who are not as familiar with esoteric studies may not realize that all words referring to the Tree of Life symbol can be spelled a variety of different ways. It doesn't effect their meanings if I have spelled these words in a way you are not familiar with.
On this path from Yesod (the unconscious where we encounter all that we expect and fear, which is personal to each pathworker) to Tifereth (the Sun or Christ center), the Temperance Healing Angel stands guard to keep someone from taking in too much light. This is why studying the Kabalah is actually a much safer path of enlightenment for Western psyches than meditation, which is essentially geared to the Eastern psyche. Onem ight also differentiate between left and right brain psyches. Meditation is ideal for the Eastern or intuitive right brain psyche which honors transcendence rather than manifestation. Things like this are further discussed in my Online Tarot Course.
The Temperance Healing Angel XIV is the card in the Tarot Deck that symbolizes the end result of this process, where two become one in a creative and alchemical union. This process is also described in two-dimensional terms by Hegel's dialectic, thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
Plato described this process of "taking on the light" in his Allegory of the Cave. As you recall, people were not allowed to look directly on "reality", that is to say the Uranian kind of higher reality, except through mirrors as otherwise they would be blinded. They saw shadows cast against the wall. This is the way we see now until our eyes are opened.
In the Tarot Deck, this condition is symbolized on the Lovers card, which has to do with polarities, not romance. The Man cannot look directly at the Angel. He, who symbolizes the conscious, looks over at the Woman, who symbolizes the subconscious, and She looks up at the Angel. We discover what we know of the Nous or Divine, by looking into the subconscious; that is to say by dreams, psychoanalysis, Freudian slips, instincts (as revealed in fairy tales). collective myths, and with Tarot cards and other symbols, meaningful coincidences, meditation, Yoga and chanting.
Dr. Siebert writes that schizophrenia may actually be a "breakdown in the bicameral mind" and an "unrecognized process of neurological integration ... that takes years to occur". He further suggests that the classic dementia praecox form of schizophrenia [may be] a misunderstood, mishandled, disrupted, interfered with, version of the survivor personality and, conversely, a person with a survivor personality [may demonstrate] a successful form of schizophrenia. The survival personality has integrated major mental and emotional paradoxes.
We couldn't agree more. This is what we are trying to teach people to do when we have them look at the Lovers card in the Major Arcana. We are involving them in a voluntary process to break down their own bicameral mind and proceed through to a neurological integration, with support from healers, spiritual teachers and their own guides.
In this card,
it is the Woman who looks at the Angel. The Man cannot.
The Woman symbolizes the subconscious mind, the Man is the conscious mind.
This has nothing to do with feminism or chauvinism. It symbolizes a yin/yang
polarity.
By the way, healers do not believe there is any condition which cannot be healed. We do not believe in mental illness other than as a false belief. For this reason, we attract many people whom some psychiatrists or doctors have doomed "for life" by their diagnoses and labels.
You can see the process visually in the imagery of Crowley's Lovers and Temperance cards.
Lovers and
Temperance - notice exchange and resolution of images, colors, etc.
One card echoes or repeats the other at a a higher octave.
The Crowley Deck
Friedrich Nietzsche has many remarkable qualities which Siebert sets forth in his article below. But to me they seem to be largely intellectual, not moral. In other words, Nietzsche's mind was brilliant but as a person he had many challenges that make it difficult to imagine him as exceptional in any other way than mentally.
For example, Nietzsche describes the Uebermensch (the super-person) as cold or "hard" emotionally. And yet the straw that broke the camel's back ... the incident which triggered Nietzsche's final descent into permanent madness ... was his witnessing a horse being beaten. If indeed Nietzsche had been able to become "hard" emotionally, this incident could not have occurred. It sounds like it was an opposite and equal reaction to trying to be something one cannot be, inhuman. It is not possible to be a human being and not have feelings.
I am surprised that this incident is never, to my knowledge, discussed this way. Perhaps it is too embarrassing for men to admit that this could be the case. Philosophers are, I'm afraid, rather notorious for trying to remain "rational" at whatever cost. The stereotype, going all the way back to Socrates and his wife, Xantippe, is the unflappable scholarly wise man married to the screaming bitch from hell. If I am not mistaken, the Philosopher and the Hysteric are a natural pairing.
Nietzsche is credited with exceptional psychological abilities. He precedes Freud but their lives overlapped and Freud has this to say about Nietzsche, "he had more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live." (Jones, 1955 as quoted by Siebert, below) . As an astrologer, we would attribute this to Nietzsche's Scorpio Rising, ripe in the 29th degree.
If Nietzsche is so Uranian, so superior, so expressive of exceptional mental health, let's take a closer look at the Aquarian Age and what it is supposed to mean.
The real meaning of the term "Aquarian Age" comes from the Precession of Equinoxes. Because of the earth's rotation, the constellations seem to move very, very slowly backwards across the elliptic. Thus we begin in our dim past with the Age of Taurus, work backward through Aries and Pisces to the Aquarian Age. Each age lasts about 2,000 years and is marked by the sign the Sun appears in at the Vernal Equinox, currently still Pisces. Different individuals have had different ways of determining the start of the Aquarian Ag, even different reputable astrologers. Since we're talking in astronomical/geological time, a century doesn't matter much, one way or the other.
- Gemini,
the Twins - roughly 6,000 to 4,000 BCE
- the
star children, Adam and Eve
- the
star children, Adam and Eve
- Taurus,
the Fertility Goddesses - roughly 4,000 BCE to 2,000 BCE
- Astarte, Gaia, Diana of Ephesus, Inanna
- some bull gods such as Baal and the Golden Calf referred to in Moses
- Mithras
Mithras wrestling
a bull
Marduk and
Tiamat
- Aries,
the warrior Ram Gods - 2,000 BCE to 0 CE
- fearsome Yahweh of the Old Testament; Judaism and the scapegoat
- Jason and the Golden Fleece
Chaldean bull
- Pisces,
all sacrificed gods - 0 CE to 2,000 CE
- Jesus, the Lamb of God
- Odin or Wotan
- Aquarius
- the Magician, the Scientist, the Rational Man, the Group or Community
Member (??) - roughly the next 2,000 years ... let
me propose some examples just for purposes of discussionj
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- President Kennedy in his handling of the Bay of Pigs event (see an interesting discussion on this in The Mask of Command by Jonathan Keegan)
- the Computer
- Aleister Crowley (1904) says he personally brought in the Aquarian Age
You may also want to read some of Rob Hand's articles based on Jung's Aion which discuss the Precession into Aquarius. Please click here.
According to an excellent article at CrystalLinks, "we are presently ending a century, a millennium, and now 180 degrees around the star clock of the procession of the equinoxes. That was the time of the great flood. That was the Age of Leo.... Many ancient Star clocks depict the age of Leo. The Flood happened somewhere in the beginning to the middle of Leo. There are many stories of the flood in different cultures around the world." That was a v e r y long time ago.
According to Naomi Bennett at AccessNewAge, "Robert Hand in the essay, The Age and Constellation of Pisces, ... calculates the first star in Pisces to cross the vernal point at 111 BC, which would place the Age of Aquarius to begin near 2,060 AD. Carl Jung supposedly predicted 1997-2000. Aleister Crowley as noted above, feels he initiated the Age in 1904 (personally). And there are many more. I will suggest two more websites for further exploration if this interests you:
Illinois
State Museum -
scientific explanation
GreatDreams
- symbolism
and esoteric dates by various people
In the same way that Albrecht Dürer seems to be the harbinger of Modern Man, it seems that for many, Friedrich Nietzsche is the harbinger for the Aquarian Age. I have not personally read Nietzsche's philosophy other than his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, but in reviewing the details of his life and statements made by reputable people such as Dr. Siebert, it would seem that Nietzsche was a sort of Frankenstein prototype of this kind of New Creature we are becoming or new creature that has been predicted.
Up until the time of Dürer there was no such thing as the "self portrait" because the concept of "self" as we know it today had not emerged from the collectivization of the Middle Ages or evolved into the human condition you might say. Dürer painted himself more and more like Christ as he got older. There are three especially famous self portraits, two shown below.
Albrecht Dürer's
first self portrait
Dürer's famous self portrait as a well-to-do artist,
one of the first artists in history to figure out a way to make money
doing what he loved doing (1)
Nietzsche has predominantly Uranian energy in his chart and shows many Uranian characteristics, both good and bad. It almost feels like he blew his own fuse at the end. High voltage electrical energy running through weak mutable circuits can often cause a breakdown of some sort. Nietzsche's Scorpio Rising kept him together for many years but he always had a weak sensitivity and apparently took medicine for help with this.
What is most interesting to me, however, is that the damming of emotions seems to have been the event that sent him into the chasm of darkness for the final time, the last twelve years of his life.
Nietzche came from a long line of Lutheran ministers. His father died of a brain disorder when he was four and his little brother died within a year of that. Afterwards, he was raised by his mother, paternal grandmother, his father's two sisters, and his own younger sister, who also cared for him when he became incapacitated.
Nietzsche's first interest scholastically was in philology, a discipline which centers on the interpretation of classical and biblical texts. He discovered Schopenhauer at twenty one, which changed the course of his life.
In 1867, at 23, Nietzsche had a dreadful accident in his military service. He was trying to leap-mount a particularly difficult horse and suffered a serious chest injury which refused to heal.
Nietzsche met Richard Wagner, the composer, a year later. His health further deteriorated when he contracted dysentery and diphteria during the Franco-Prussian War.
Nietzsche seems to have been in love only once in his life, at age thirty-seven. He proposed to Lou Salomé, a twenty-one-year-old Russian woman who was studying philosophy and theology in Zurich but she turned him down. It is also suspected that he had a crush ono Wagner's wife Cosima. In later years, Salomé became an associate of Sigmund Freud.
On the morning of January 3, 1889, while in Turin, Nietzsche experienced a mental breakdown which left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Upon witnessing a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck and collapsed, never to return to full sanity.
Some reasons for this that have been suggested are: (1) syphilis (this was the original diagnosis), (2) his use of a sedative, chloral hydrate, which deteriorated his already weak nervous system, (3) the same brain disease as his father (4) a mental illness, (5) a gross betrayal by Richard Wagner which undermined his sense of well being.
It surprises me that no one wants to connect the horse-beating as the significant trauma which was repeated,in Freudian terms, or symbolically in Jungian terms. Was Nietzsche beaten as a boy? Did he tend to become agitated around horses after his accident in the military? Did he identify with the horse in some other way (he has Moon and North Node in Sagittarius in the first house)?
The exact cause of Nietzsche's incapacitation still remains unclear. That Nietzsche had an extraordinarily sensitive nervous constitution and took an assortment of medications is well-documented as a more general fact.
Nietzsche's mother took care of him until she died and then his sister took care of him. This must be the same sister with whom he had an incestuous affair. She did as much as she could to promote his philosophy. (Nietzsche has Gemini South Node.)
Specific 20th century figures who were influenced, either quite substantially, or in a significant part, by Nietzsche include painters, dancers, musicians, playwrights, poets, novelists, psychologists, sociologists, literary theorists, historians, and philosophers: Alfred Adler, Georges Bataille, Martin Buber, Albert Camus, E.M. Cioran, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Isadora Duncan, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Stefan George, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, Gustav Mahler, André Malraux, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Scheler, Giovanni Segantini, George Bernard Shaw, Lev Shestov, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Richard Strauss, Paul Tillich, Ferdinand Tönnies, Mary Wigman, William Butler Yeats and Stefan Zweig.
Source
of biographical material: Wicks, Robert, "Friedrich Nietzsche",
The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.).
Interesting in and of itself, the article sets forth definitive personality characteristics and is therefore also an easy way to learn more astrology.
Here is Nietzsche's chart. Take a look at the chart if you haven't already. Then read Dr. Al Siebert's article which is also an astrological tutorial.
Source
for Chart: Lois Rodden, Astrodatabank
RoddenRating:
C
DataSource: Accuracy in question
SourceNotes: Fagan states that the horoscope was calculated by Bishop
Lucas Gauricus and included in his Tractatus Astrologicus. (May
21 OS)
AN ASTROLOGICAL TUTORIAL
Here is Dr. Al Siebert's article which is also an astrological tutorial. I will underline characteristics which apply to Uranian energy in red (and its shadow, playful and creative Leo) and characteristics of the Gemini/Sagittarius axis in purple. Strictly mutable qualities will be shown in green. Characteristics that pertain to Nietzsche's Scorpio Rising are indicated like *this*.
Thus, the key"
Uraniam and its Shadow Side Leo
Gemini/Sagittarius
Mutable Qualities
*Scorpio Rising*
I would like to make clear that these are my viewpoints to Dr. Siebert's article. I have no idea if Dr. Siebert is familiar with astrology and I am quite sure that was not his intent in writing this article.
You may have answers of your own that don't agree with mine but it is a starting place for learning more astrology.
Similarities
Between Nietzsche's Uebermensch and The Survivor Personality
Al Siebert, Ph.D. (Revised May, 1996)
Historical Background
Emergence of a New Psychological Disorder
The Emergence of a New, Exceptional Level of Mental Health
The First Description
A Schizophrenic Connection
What Would Happen to Nietzsche Today?
There is No Proof That Schizophrenia is An Illness
Conclusions
Research Questions
References
Permission to Reprint Information
bottom of page
Historical Background
Two states of mental and emotional functioning, new to the human race, were observed in Germany about 100 years ago. Nietzsche recognized the emergence of a new human he called an "Uebermensch," a new, better human with personality qualities far beyond those of the ordinary person of that time. As described by Nietzsche, this higher, advanced person was a self-created person who was emotionally "harder" than the average person in part because of having synthesized many contradictory personality dimensions. In addition, such "free spirits" were morally stronger and easily resistant to external social controls because of the development of their own individual values for living.At the same time in Germany, Kraepelin observed the emergence of a new, spontaneously occurring mental disorder in young people which he called "dementia praecox." A few years later, Bleuler named the phenomenon "schizophrenia" (a splitting apart of the personality) to make the diagnostic term reflect the primary symptom of the condition.
The picture drawn from the long term study of people who are life's best survivors is similar to Nietzsche's description. Such persons are seen as deriving their flexibility, resiliency, and *psychological strengths* from the successful assimilation of many major paradoxes into their ways of thinking, feeling, and functioning. In addition, people with survivor personalities are above average in operating independently from external social forces, in successfully defending themselves against negative, judgmental reactions to their way of existing, and in resisting efforts by others to control or change them.
The Emergence of a New Psychological Disorder
E. Fuller Torrey writes in Surviving Schizophrenia that schizophrenia is a relatively new disease. (Torrey, 1985, p. 208.) He states, "The more one peruses these ancient sources, moreover, the more striking it becomes that nobody clearly described the disease we now call schizophrenia." (p. 209)Torrey goes on to observe, "Overall it is a strange history for a disease. Virtually unknown or at least undescribed for centuries, it suddenly appears all over the western world simultaneously and is noted to be increasing rapidly." He asks, "How could it have been missed if it affected one percent of the population, as it does now?" (p. 215)
Eugen Bleuler wrote Dementia Praecox or The Group of Schizophrenias, in 1908 and published it in 1911. From the beginning, the phenomenon of "schizophrenia" has been very difficult to name, describe, understand, and treat. According to Bleuler, Kraepelin used the term "dementia praecox" to refer to a dementing or deteriorating condition afflicting young adults, in 1896. Referring to the condition as a mental deterioration in young adults was an awkward diagnostic term, however, because a number of conditions could cause that. It was not very useful.
Bleuler suggested that the term "schizophrenia" be used instead. He wrote, "In every case we are confronted with a more or less clear-cut splitting of the psychic functions. If the disease is marked the personality loses its unity; at different times different complexes seem to represent the personality. Integration of different complexes and strivings appears insufficient or even lacking. The psychic complexes do not combine in a conglomeration of strivings with a unified resultant as they do in a healthy person; rather, one set of complexes dominates the personality for a time, while other groups of ideas or drives are 'split off' and seem either partly or completely impotent.... Thus the process of association often works with mere fragments of ideas and concepts. This results in associations which normal individuals will regard as incorrect, bizarre, and utterly unpredictable." (Bleuler, 1911, p. 9)
The Emergence of a New, Exceptional Level of Mental Health
A primary research activity of the author, for many years, has been to understand and describe people with such exceptional mental and emotional health that they gain strength from extreme adversities instead of becoming psychological casualties. For descriptive purposes an operational definition "the survivor personality" was created. Questions about why some people survive better than others, what consistent personality traits appear in life's best survivors, and how the survivor personality develops have been core questions. (Siebert, 1967; Water and Siebert, 1976; Siebert, 1983; Siebert, 1985a., Siebert, 1994; Siebert, 1996.) Other questions about the survivor personality include, "How many people have the survivor personality?" and "How long have there been people with this sort of personality?"The pattern of traits usually found in life's best survivors include:
Behavioral...
- A playful curiosity, an inclination to experiment, try things out on their own, a preference to find out for themselves how things work rather than accept other people's perceptions. They ask lots of questions. As adults they show that they have retained from childhood the ability to be playful, toy with things, and learn directly from experience.
- Laugh and play with life, with their own minds and feelings, with people and situations. They enjoy being mirthful, foolish, laugh at their own foibles.
- They enjoy finding out how things work. They show the natural neurogenic, self-motivation described by White in his classic paper on the concept of competence. (White, 1959)
Motives and personality characteristics...
- Their endurance, persistence, resiliency in new and complex situations is primarily derived from having integrated major mental and emotional paradoxes into their ways of functioning. They act with a selfish unselfishness, approach challenges with an optimistic pessimism, have a sensitive toughness, engage in self-confident self-criticism. They have achieved an independent dependency, the list goes on and on. Each person's paradoxical make up is unique, however, because their response patterns are a function of the world they interact with.
- A central motive emerging from self-managed learning is best described as a synergy motivation (Siebert, 1976, 1983, 1985a). They are good at making things work well, need to have things working well, expect to be able to make things work well, and are creative in coming up with unique solutions that work. They function well in ambiguous, confused situations because of their inner directed sense of direction. They feel motivated to change situations and conditions from low synergy to high synergy, this having many signs of being a neurologically based need.
- Capacity for empathy for people, groups, things. They have pattern empathy, can "read" situations quickly with their eyes and feelings; can draw meaningful impressions from little data; have empathy (not sympathy) for enemies and attackers.
- Consciously attuned to subliminal perceptions. They read their own bodies well, notice little physical clues that something is not right or that everything is OK. Will consider as valid hunches, intuitions, ESP experiences.
- Defend themselves well. Anticipate danger and take avoidance or preventative action before it can happen. They can be highly resistant to threats, con jobs, pressure, and trickery. They can be deadly opponents if forced into that position.
- Life gets better and better for them as the decades go by. *They get stronger and stronger from the various adversities, strains, and difficulties they encounter.* The best survivors have usually been through the worst experiences. They match up with descriptions of people who are the small percentage of individuals who recover from cancer, alcoholism, or major medical conditions. (Siegal, 1986)
- Function autonomously within society according to own personal values. They are responsible rebels, cooperative non-conformists. While they can't be controlled or made to be responsible citizens, they voluntarily participate in making things run well.
- Exercise a talent for serendipity. They convert misfortune into good luck. Typically refer back to the worst things that ever happened to them as being the best thing that ever happened.
The First Description
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a trained observer. He called himself a philosopher and a *psychologist*. He was a *superb observer of the workings of the human mind*, including his own, and the processes promoting or impairing clear thinking and personal improvement.At the same time that Kraepelin, Bleuler, and other European psychiatrists were first observing a puzzling mental disorder, Nietzsche was observing and describing a new, better, "higher" Uebermensch. In his descriptions he describes almost every element of development and traits of the survivor personality:
- Playful curiosity -- the final metamorphosis of spirit is to be a child, a free spirit who dances across truths, beliefs, and values. A free, independent mind and spirit "cannot be taught, one must 'know' it from experience" (Beyond Good and Evil, p. 155) and from questioning everything.
- Laughing -- throughout his writings he emphasizes laughing. Zarathustra says to laugh ten times a day (p. 24); it is important to laugh at oneself, confirm the validity of insights and discoveries with laughter, and let wisdom about all aspects of the human experiences be coupled with gaiety and joy.
- Self-actualization -- Nietzsche was compelled to explore and understand his own nature. He wanted to find out how his mind worked and the way that thoughts and sentiments influence human actions. He said, "We ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment." (Joyful Wisdom, p. 248)
- Paradoxical -- throughout his writing he makes reference to the paradoxes, opposites, and antitheses in himself and the new human. About Zarathustra he said, "all opposites are in him bound together into a new unity." (Ecce Homo, p. 106) He described himself as lonely and friendly, decadent and decent, terrible and beneficent, and Janus faced. He wrote "viewed from his angle, my life is simply amazing. For the task of transvaluing values, more abilities were necessary perhaps than could ever be found combined in one individual; and above all, opposing abilities which must not be mutually inimical and destructive." (Ecce Homo, p. 45 - Kaufmann F)
- Synergistic -- he was deeply bothered seeing how much human energy was wasted through people trying to live by values and beliefs taught to them. He was distressed by the harm people do to themselves and others in trying to act unselfishly. He tried to tell, teach, and show people how life could be better for everyone if, through a process of experimenting, developing their own values, and enjoying a healthy selfishness, they became free spirited individuals.
- Sensitivity -- he stated, *"I have in this sensitivity psychological antennae with which I touch and take hold of every secret: all the concealed dirt at the bottom of many a nature, perhaps conditioned by bad blood but whitewashed by education, is known to me on first contact."* Being around people was so difficult for him that he needed many periods of solitude to recover, and to return to himself with "the breath of a free light playful air...." (Ecce Homo, p. 48-49)
- Toughness -- with enthusiasm Nietzsche describes the new human as "better and badder," as needing hardness, as being strong willed. He says, "another form of sagacity and self-defense consists in reacting as seldom as possible." (EH p. 63) He observes that all creators are hard. They have to be because they are, in the act of creating something new, destroying the old. He says, "We premature born of a yet undemonstrated future need...a new health, a stronger, shrewder, tougher, more daring, more cheerful health than any has been hitherto...a great health." (Ecce Homo, p. 101)
- There are many more examples in Nietzsche's writing, but this is sufficient to demonstrate that he covered most of the elements in the survivor personality pattern. These qualities, traits, and abilities must be searched for among the many other things he wrote about, but they are present to a degree far beyond what appeared in any writing before his time.
In his writings, Nietzsche demonstrated more self-understanding than was ever recorded before his time. According to Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud's biographer, Freud said several times of Nietzsche that *"he had more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live."* (Jones, 1955)
Nietzsche obviously understood the process of self-actualization very well. Scattered throughout his volumes, he showed an awareness of the many abilities and traits that facilitate self-managed, self-motivated personal development. He had a good grasp of how to learn directly from experience while freeing one's thinking from perceptions and beliefs taught by others. And, of course, he knew this. He said, *"out of my writings there speaks a psychologist who has not his equal."* (Ecce Homo, p. 75)
More importantly, he understood that no one could equal him by attempting to act in the ways he described. He wanted no followers, no cult, and no believers. He saw that uniquely created, individual self-discovery was the only way to have a free spirit.
A Schizophrenic Connection
How is all this connected to the emergence of schizophrenia in Germany in the late 1800s? For a partial answer, let us look to Nietzsche himself...On July 24, 1876, at 32 years of age, he arrived in the city of Bayreuth to attend a festival. He experienced "a profound estrangement from all that surrounded me...It was as if I had been dreaming...'Where was I?' I recognized nothing. I hardly recognized Wagner." (His mentor and close friend.) (Ecce Homo, pp. 90-91) Nietzsche goes on to describe how he left, went to a forest retreat, sent a curt telegram to Wagner which ended their relationship, and withdrew from the world. Isolated from other humans, he spent months splitting his mind apart and clearing it of "ten years of a trash of dusty scholarship."
Did Nietzsche develop acute schizophrenia? If we look at Nietzsche from the perspective of clinician aided by DSM-III, we find in his self reports:
- the sudden onset of a state of mental deterioration triggered by a major depersonalization experience.
- withdrawal from contact with other humans, loss of capacity for close contact with others. History of many brief relationships with women. Never married, his strong sexual drives were usually satisfied through brief encounters with street women.
- stated that he purposefully worked at not responding to things said or done to him.
- claimed that his mind and feelings were controlled by others. Refused to read any books for years at a time claiming the authors were trying to put their thoughts into his head.
- deterioration from previous levels of functioning, had to take a long leave of absence from his work because of recurring physical problems, ill health, and migraine.
- rejected traditional values calling himself "the Anti-Christ" waging a war on Christianity, "an immoralist," "a decadent," a "Satyr" and "by far the most terrible human being there ever has been...." A sign of his moral deterioration and loss of capacity for judgment is that he had an incestuous relationship with his sister and wrote about it.
- expressed incongruous thought patterns. For example, he said most people disgusted him. "This makes traffic with people no small test of my patience.... Disgust at mankind, at the 'rabble,' has always been my greatest danger." (Ecce Homo, pp. 48-49) Then he said, "My formula for greatness in a human being is...not merely to endure that which happens of necessity...but to love it." (Ecce Homo, p. 68) Another example is his bragging about not reading any books for years while he was busy writing books for future generations to read and study.
- demonstrated little empathy for the people and groups he was so critical of; showed little empathy for the effect his behavior had on others.
- in his writings he produced long lists of unrelated, sometimes bizarre aphorisms, assertions, and metaphors.
- experienced a period in which he became possessed by a personality named Zarathustra. For a year he was totally absorbed in listening to the conversations of this imaginary person and writing an account of Zarathustra's life in an imaginary world. He claimed that Zarathustra is "the highest species of all existing things." (Ecce Homo, p. 107)
- while writing about Zarathustra he could, by his own account, be seen laughing, dancing and talking to himself as he went for long walks.
- showed many signs of grandiosity. Stated "It is my fate to be the first decent human being." And "I am the bringer of good tidings such as there has never been." Predicted that in the future, universities would have professorships or "chairs" endowed for the sole purpose of studying the Zarathustra volume. Upon completion of Human, All Too Human, which he describes as a memorial of a crisis, he said he felt tremendous certainty that he held in his hands a "world-historic" book. In an autobiography he included essays on "Why I am so wise," "Why I am so clever," and "Why I write books like this." He predicted that his existence would create a crisis in the human race like none other before, stating, "I am not a man, I am dynamite." (Ecce Homo p. 126)
- His best friend and acquaintances believed that he had a mental breakdown. He interpreted that as information about how far advanced beyond their comprehensions he had become.
[What Dr. Siebert may or may not know is that Nietzsche's abandoning Bayreuth and Wagner was triggered by Wagner's leaking information that he (Nietzsche) was going blind due to excessive masturbation.The Tristan Chord, Bryan Magee, beginning pg 330. etal]
What Would Happen to Nietzsche Today?
If you saw only the description above, without knowing the name of the person, what would you think? If Nietzsche were alive today in our country, what do you think would be the reaction to him? Would he be respected as a great teacher of how to *self-manage a deep, healthy metamorphosis*? Would he be diagnosed as "a schizophrenic"?Did Nietzsche go through a classic peak experience in which he achieved a higher level of consciousness and then defied the world to understand? Was he, as he claimed, an example of great health, or abnormal mental health? Did he experience a schizophrenic breakdown which was too much for him to accept, that he tried to deny? What was "Nietzsche's syndrome"?
There is No Proof That Schizophrenia is An Illness
After all these years, the case has still not been proven that schizophrenia is a disease or an illness. As summarized elsewhere (Siebert, 1985b), no one can catch schizophrenia from someone else, it has a correlation of occurrence in families and twins close to that of IQ, athletic ability, music ability, etc., no one dies from it, there is no known cure for it, people can recover from it on their own with no treatment, the longer a person is given drugs or treated in a mental hospital the worse off they are, the less treatment given the better the recovery, and some people are made stronger by the experience. No illness known to medical science acts like this.But if it isn't a disease or illness then what is it? Is it possible that in some instances of schizophrenia we are observing some sort of desirable development? Does something happen in the human brain during young adulthood that is a version of what Jaynes has described as a breakdown in the bicameral mind? Is there an unrecognized process of neurological integration going on that takes years to occur?
Is there another developmental stage beyond those already identified? Is there a cerebral stage that occurs when a young person tries to take control of his or her brain functions? Are some versions of schizophrenia a developmental crisis that is being interfered with rather than facilitated?
Conclusions
Two mental and emotional states, the survivor personality and schizophrenia, have followed a parallel course of development during the 20th century. Now, almost 100 years later, the incidence of schizophrenia and the survivor personality is each estimated at being present in 1% to 2% of the population. The author's assertion is that they are manifestations of the same basic phenomenon. The classic "dementia praecox" form of schizophrenia is a misunderstood, mishandled, disrupted, interfered with, version of the survivor personality and, conversely, a person with a survivor personality demonstrates a successful form of schizophrenia.
Research Questions
The organizing theme of this paper is that the survivor personality and some forms of schizophrenia are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Research is needed to explore the perspective that the survivor personality is a successful outcome of what is currently perceived during metamorphosis as schizophrenia and, conversely, that schizophrenia, when it becomes chronic, a disrupted, aborted, malfunctioning version of the survivor personality.
- If there is validity to this hypothesis, two variables seem to play a key role in determining the outcome. First, is the person distressed by the experience? Are they frightened? Do they ask for help? Do they want "it" to go away? Or, is the person OK with it and willing to let it happen? Does the person experience it as desirable, as opening doors to understanding while family, friends, and therapists are the ones distressed and feel compelled to act for the person's own good to try to make "it" go away?
- Second, is the person street smart? An invulnerable? Able to tell people offering unwanted help to go away? Able to defend his or her mind and feelings from intrusion, therapy, and help even during a vulnerable period? Or, is the person passive and compliant with what others want him or her to do? Does he cooperate in the recommended treatment program to the best of his ability even though no cure takes place?
In the present circumstances, these two variables within the person appear to determine whether or not the Nietzsche syndrome produces "a survivor" or "a schizophrenic."
The problem is that there is a serious lack of information. Even though over 100,000 books and articles have been published on schizophrenia, important research areas have been neglected:
Anyone with experience in psychiatric wards knows that many patients do not agree that they are mentally ill. The question is, if schizophrenia is a disease or illness, then why do so many people diagnosed as schizophrenic have to be talked into believing they are sick? What differences are there between people who agree that they are schizophrenic and those who do not?
Why are people who refuse to believe that they are mentally ill viewed by therapists as the sickest of all?
What is the long term outcome when people diagnosed as schizophrenic disagree that they are sick and successfully avoid treatment? How do escaped mental patients compare with cooperative patients years later? Are the treated patients more healthy and improved when compared to the ones who got away?
This is the end of Dr. Siebert's article as quoted in its entirety.
"One of the best known models to arise out of this work has been Gregory Bateson's double bind theory (Bateson, Jackson, Haley & Weakland, 1956-1972), which proposes that contradictions in the interaction between family members predisposes its members to schizophrenia." from an article by Adrian. Look for this in the Gemini/Sagittarius split in the astrology chart.
References
for Dr. Siebert's article
Bleuler, Eugen. Dementia Praecox or The Group of Schizophrenias
(1911), International Universities Press, Joseph Zinkin, M.D., translator,
1950.
Jones, Ernest. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, II, p. 344, 1955.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Human, All Too Human, 1878.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Joyful Wisdom (also known as the gay science) 1882-1886. Thomas Common translation, 1910, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883-1885. Thomas Common translation, The Heritage Press, 1967.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Beyond Good and Evil, 1886. Helen Zimmern translation, 1907, George Allen & Unwin Publ., 1967.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, (1888). Penguin Books, Hollingdale translation, 1979.
Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, (1888), in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann, The Modern Library, 1968.
Siebert, Al. "The Survivor Personality," International Mensa Journal, January, 1967.
Siebert, Al. "Mental Illness Concept Stems from Faulty Paradigm," The Oregonian, Feb. 3, 1976.
Siebert, Al. "The Human of The Future: The Synergistic Personality," Western Psychology Association Convention, San Jose, CA, 1985a.
Siebert, Al. "Should Some Cases of Schizophrenia be Facilitated Instead of Treated?" Western Psychology Association Convention, San Jose, CA, 1985b.
Siebert, Al. The Survivor Personality, Practical Psychology Press, 1994.
Siebert, Al. "If Schizophrenia is a Disease Why Doesn't it Act Like One?" Successful Schizophrenia internet website, 1998.
Siebert, Al. The Survivor Personality, Berkeley/Perigee, 1996.
Siegel, Bernie, M.D. Love, Medicine, and Miracles, Harper and Row, 1986.
Walter, Timothy L., and Siebert, Al. Student Success, 1st edition, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.
Notice to students, editors and publishers: If you quote or reprint any part of this research paper, please send an electronic copy to
email: Al
Siebert, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 505
Portland, OR 97207
THIS ARTICLE IS REPRINTED IN ITS ENTIRETY FROM SUCCESSFUL SCHIZOPHRENIA.
Check back for a future article exploring incest as a theme in worldviews of Aquarians (brothers and sisters).
Nancy R. Fenn
Video of FN staring into the abyss after the disintegration of his mental health.