Free The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin Yalom Page A

Can't deny that I have some slight interest in Schopenhauer, but spending a couple hundred hours with Philip to learn about Schopenhauer right now is low on my wish list. And if that excerpt he read about the dying Buddenbrooks is a prime example of what Schopenhauer has to offer me, then it leaves me cold. The idea of rejoining the universal oneness without any persistence of me and my memories and unique consciousness is the coldest of comfort. No, it's no comfort at all.
    And what draws Philip to me? That's another question. That crack the other day about the twenty thousand dollars he wasted on his therapy with me--maybe he is still looking for some return on his investment.
    Supervise Philip? Make him a legitimate, kosher therapist? There's a dilemma. Do I want to sponsor him? Do I want to give him my blessing when I don't believe that a hater (and he is a hater) can help anyone grow?
    8
    Halcyon Days
    of Early
    Childhood

_________________________
    Religion has everything on its
    side: revelation, prophecies,
    government
    protection,
    the
    highest
    dignity
    and
    eminence...and more than this,
    the invaluable prerogative of
    being allowed to imprint its
    doctrines on the mind at a
    tender
    age
    of
    childhood,
    whereby
    they
    become
    almost
    innate ideas.

_________________________
    Johanna wrote in her diary that after Arthur's birth in February 1788 she, like all young mothers, enjoyed playing with her "new doll." But new dolls soon become old dolls, and within months Joanna wearied of her toy and languished in boredom and isolation in Danzig. Something new was emerging in Johanna--some vague sense that motherhood was not her true destiny, that some other future awaited her. Her summers at the Schopenhauer country estate were particularly difficult. Though Heinrich, accompanied by a clergyman, joined her for weekends, Johanna spent the rest of her time alone with Arthur and her servants. Because of his fierce jealousy, Heinrich forbade his wife to entertain neighbors or to venture from home for any reason.
    When Arthur was five, the family encountered great stress. Prussia annexed Danzig, and, shortly before the advancing Prussian troops arrived under the command of the very general Heinrich had insulted years before, the entire Schopenhauer family fled to Hamburg. There, in a strange city, Johanna gave birth to her second child, Adele, and felt ever more trapped and despairing.
    Heinrich, Johanna, Arthur, Adele--Father, mother, son, daughter--the four bound together yet unconnected.
    To Heinrich, Arthur was a chrysalis destined to emerge as the future head of the Schopenhauer mercantile house. Heinrich was the traditional Schopenhauer father; he attended to business and put his son out of mind, intending to spring into action and assume fatherly duties when Arthur had finished his childhood.
    And the wife, what was Heinrich's plan for her? She was the Schopenhauer family seedpod and cradle. Dangerously vital, she had to be contained, protected, and restrained.
    And Johanna? What did she feel? Trapped! Her husband and provider, Heinrich, was her lethal mistake, her joyless jailer, the grim evacuator of her vitality. And her son, Arthur? Was he not part of the trap, the seal to her coffin? A talented woman, Johanna had a desire for expression and self-realization that was growing at a ferocious pace, and Arthur would prove a woefully inadequate recompense for self-renunciation.
    And her young daughter? Little noticed by Heinrich, Adele was assigned a minor role in the family drama and was destined to spend her entire life as Johanna Schopenhauer's amanuensis.
    And so the Schopenhauers each went their separate ways.
    Father Schopenhauer, heavy with anxiety and despair, lumbered to his death, sixteen years after Arthur's birth, by climbing to the upper freight window of the Schopenhauer warehouse and leaping into the frigid waters of the Hamburg canal.
    Mother Schopenhauer, sprung from her matrimonial trap by Heinrich's