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Friday February 4, 2005

Misanthropic page-turner

Schopenhauer’s ideas propel Peninsula psychiatrist’s new novel

by dan pine
staff writer

In the words of that immortal philosopher Linus Van Pelt from the “Peanuts” gang: “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”

That sentiment could have come from the pen of Arthur Schopenhauer, one of the most influential –– and misanthropic –– minds of the 19th century. While Schopenhauer’s name may be familiar, most people haven’t a clue regarding his work.

But Irvin Yalom does.

Yalom, a Palo Alto-based psychiatrist who doubles as a writer and philosophy buff, has written a new novel, “The Schopenhauer Cure.” The book intertwines a biography of the German-born philosopher with the tale of a psychiatrist and a difficult former patient who adopts Schopenhauer as a guiding light. Once the shrink learns he is terminally ill, he reconnects with his patient, leading to an epic battle of wills between the two.

More than anything, “The Schopenhauer Cure” is a book about ideas. “Other writers start with plot or characters,” says the 73-year-old author. “All my novels have started with ideas.”

To briefly sum up Schopenhauer’s big idea: People stink. He saw his fellow humans as mere bipeds, overly concerned with meaningless trivia, governed by sexual and acquisitive appetites. He had no friends, no social life and no regrets.

“As you read Schopenhauer,” says Yalom, “you realize he was an original thinker, with a heavy unacknowledged influence on our field [of psychotherapy]. Freud came of age when the work of Schopenhauer was in full flower.”

The story of the novel plays out in a group therapy setting, pitting the gloom of Schopenhauer against the more hopeful aims of modern psychotherapy.

While the novel’s protagonist Julius Hertzfeld is Jewish, there is little Jewish content in the book. That may be because Yalom, though himself the son of shtetl-born Jewish immigrants, has largely rejected the religion of his ancestors.

“The best example of a Jewish philosopher is Baruch Spinoza,” says Yalom. “He was someone who took an extremely rationalistic view of the world and said the Scripture is manmade, God is nature, there is no personalized God.”

Despite what he calls his “nonbeliever’s position,” Yalom says he remains very involved with Jewish culture. “My kids belong to temples. We always have seders. I’m your typical Israeli-like secular Jew.”

Yalom’s interest in philosophy goes back to childhood in his hometown, Washington, D.C. “I’ve been a voracious reader of philosophical fiction ever since I was an adolescent,” he says. “In college I didn’t have time for it and went straight into premed. But afterward as a psychiatrist, I got much more interested in philosophy.”

Even with a busy practice and teaching schedule (he is a professor at Stanford), Yalom managed to write fiction. His best-known works are “Lying on the Couch” and “When Nietzsche Wept.” He also wrote what is considered the authoritative textbook on group therapy.

But his latest novel may be his most complex yet. By giving voice to Schopenhauer’s pessimism through his character Phillip Slate, Yalom makes a persuasive case: Perhaps detaching from all forms of human amusement and self-deception, as Phillip does, is the path to inner peace.

Or maybe not.

“In the long run, Phillip’s misanthropy and isolation from other people did not serve him well,” says Yalom. “It helped him move into a kind of meditative distancing from the world, but my own bias is that it’s not enough to support a life with the living.”

Though “The Schopenhauer Cure” is only now coming out in the United States, the book has been a bestseller in Israel for several months. So was his previous novel “When Nietzsche Wept.”

Leading the double life seems to suit Yalom just fine, especially since his philosophical fiction is often about psychotherapy, and his therapeutic approach has been influenced by philosophy.

The new novel similarly integrates his twin passions.

“I wanted to write about group therapy,” says Yalom. “It gets bad press and is often ridiculed. But there is magic there. The group can be like a mercy ship. I wanted to portray the process.”

“The Schopenhauer Cure” by Irvin Yalom (368 pages, HarperCollins, $24.95).

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