Freud and Nietzsche are two thinkers who are convinced that man is controlled by irrational forces. In Freud these are the drives, in Nietzsche the Wille zur Power. With their ideas they go against the Enlightenment view of man as a rational being, maître et posseseur of nature. Freud and Nietzsche show that man is not even a maître et posseseur of himself. In this article we will examine to what extent the neurotic resembles Nietzsche’s weak person, using examples from the case study of the Ratteman. We will first explain what neurosis means and how it arises according to Freud, then we will discuss Nietzsche’s Wille zur Power and how the weak person directs this will to power towards himself, in order to arrive at the similarity between the two. Finally, we will see how ascetic morality can also be understood as a form of neurosis in Nietzsche’s view.
The neurosis
In childhood, our psyche is divided into three parts that constantly oppose each other (Es, Ich and Über Ich). When these three parts do not find harmony in their cooperation, when they are in constant conflict with each other, then Freud will speak of a neurosis (Lear, p.1; p 17-18). According to Freud, the cause of this conflict within the psyche is always the result of an unresolved conflict during our childhood. (Freud, p.5,p.22)
Thus it is possible that the Oedipal conflict remains unresolved. The child has a sexual desire that goes against the will of the father. The child is in love with its own mother (or a mother figure), but the father (or a father figure) stands between him and the mother, the father is the competitor in the battle for the mother. The father ensures that the child’s wish is not fulfilled. (Freud, p.5; p.73) Normally the child will identify with the father after a while (Lear; p.6; p.184). The child will realize that if he becomes like his father, he will also find a wife just like his mother. However, it may be that this goes wrong, for example that the mother gives in too often to the child’s wishes and that the father continues to act too strict (or not strict enough at all). The child will continue to lust after the mother and cannot identify with the father. The sexual desire remains connected to the incestuous object, so that every desire remains a forbidden desire, with every desire he goes against the will of his father (J. Corveleyn, Psychoanalysis, Man and his fortunes, p. 100).
The hatred of the father, which always stands in the way, is repressed with all force. People often openly proclaim their love for their father. Precisely through the repression of hatred, love becomes more powerful (Freud, p. 5; p. 75, just as a person who often enters into (physical) conflict with others must practice his fighting techniques, must train his muscles, so that he can overcome his opponents. can be true. For example, someone who wants to repress his hatred must train himself to love so that the hatred, the opponent, is always defeated by love. The neurotic constantly experiences an intolerable aggressiveness, because he cannot express this aggressiveness, he directs it at himself, which causes a feeling of guilt arises.
A person who manages to resolve this infantile conflict can later lead a normal sexual life without having the feeling of doing something wrong. The neurotic cannot do this, every sexual act is immediately followed by a feeling of guilt , since every sexual desire goes against the will of the father. So the guilt arises because of two conflicts. There is a feeling of guilt because of the intolerable libidinal lusts, lusts that go against the will of the father. Furthermore, there is a feeling of guilt because of the intolerable aggressiveness that one constantly experiences. Moreover, it is important to note that guilt is not always present as a conscious feeling. ( J. Corveleyn, Psychoanalysis, Man and his vicissitudes, p. 101)
Against his father’s wishes, the Ratteman falls in love with a poor girl (= sexual wish) and thus resists an arranged marriage (= father’s will ) . He tries to withdraw from the conflict by postponing his decision (conflict remains unresolved). Outwardly we only see how he hesitates between two women, inside there is a conflict between his sexual desire and the will of his father. The Ratteman always emphasizes his love for his father and every bad thought about the father is repelled with full force.
When the Oedipal conflict is not resolved because the mother is too permissive or the father is not strict enough, we often see how the self-image from the narcissistic period (in which the world is an extension of the child’s desires ) is not fully adapted to reality. (Freud, p. 5; p. 71). The mother (who is too lenient) continues to confirm this narcissistic image again and again or the father (who is not strict enough) does not break the unity between mother and child (J.Corveleyn, Psychoanalysis, Man and his fortunes, p. 100) . The neurotic often continues to believe in the omnipotence of his hatred/love for someone (Freud, p. 5; p. 71).
We also see how the Rat Man is convinced of the omnipotence of his love or hate. He also seems to have sufficient reasons for this (he thinks so himself). For example, he states that if he does not respond to a lady’s request to love her, she dies a little later. As if that were not sufficient proof that his hatred leads to death, he also gives the example of the man in the hospital for whom he felt enormous hatred, because he had been given the room he wanted, who died a little later.
Even in his childhood he experiences this feeling of omnipotence. When he explodes in anger against his father, the latter is very frightened. Precisely because his father is so shocked, the Rat Man thinks that his anger must be very powerful, he then becomes afraid of his own anger. (The Rat Man’s father was normally very strict, the children were regularly spanked. This time the Rat Man was completely surprised because of his own anger. He had scared his own powerful father, if his anger could make an impression to such a powerful man, then she must be extremely powerful)
What seems like a coincidence to someone else is anything but a coincidence to the neurotic. It is not that unusual for a man to die in hospital, this happens regularly in hospitals. Moreover, it is nonsense to think that a lady dies because you do not love her. A healthy person does not think that his feelings or ideas have any influence on things, and we would have to think very hard of ourselves to believe that. For the neurotic, however, this is different, he still largely sees the world as an extension of his desires, when he feels hatred towards someone (and therefore actually wants something bad to happen to this person) this person will also do something. terrible thing happened.
Nietzsche’s will to power
The demon of power – not need, not desire – no, love of power is the demon of man. Even if everything is given to him – health, food, housing, entertainment – he is and remains unhappy and sulky: because the demon continues to wait and wants to be satisfied. If you take everything away from people and satisfy the demon, they are almost happy, as happy as people and demons can be. (RJ Hollingdale, The portable Nietzsche, Dutch translation Elza van Nierop and Tine Ausma, Amsterdam, Prometheus Amsterdam, 1991, Part 3, p. 211)
Because man has long thought that things were also alive and animated, his sense of powerlessness much greater than it should have been. He was not only threatened by fellow man and animals, but really by all things. It is precisely because of this great feeling of powerlessness that the will to power has become man’s greatest tendency. Man feels powerless, threatened and from there he develops a will to power. (Nietzsche, Morgenröte, p. 23) We can also demonstrate this with an example from everyday life. We see how bullies are often people/children who feel very insecure and powerless and in order to hide this and also gain a feeling of power, they tyrannize others.
The need for power is so great for some that they start to tyrannize certain parts of themselves, of their own being. This is where people derive pleasure from the exaggerated demands they place on themselves. Indeed, one starts to deify the demands in one’s own soul. This expression of will to power arises from a weakness, namely that one is unable to have power over other objects and is forced to tyrannize part of oneself in order to gain a sense of power. This is also seen in ascetic morality, where man worships part of himself as God and therefore has to demonize another part of himself (Nietzsche, Menschliches Allzumenschliches, p. 137). That is why Nietzsche regards ascetic morality as slave morality, it is a morality that arose from the ressentiment of the weak. (The weak cannot accept their powerlessness against the strong, it causes them to ressentiment, they want to take revenge. They then create their own morality, but for this morality they have to appeal to the strong. Uncreative and weak as they are, they simply reverse the morality of the strong, because they are not strong enough to create something completely new themselves.) The strong person knows how to direct his will to power on external things and does not fall prey to them himself. For the strong man, the mighty one, the ruler the good one, the obsequious, humble one, on the contrary, the bad one. In Christian morality this is clearly the other way around, the humble is praised, the mighty is punished for his might. However, the weak man is not able to punish the strong himself, because he is too weak for that, he needs a God who can act as judge for him. (Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay)
The neurotic is a weak person
Now that we know what neurosis is and have a clear idea of what it means to be a weak man, we can consider to what extent an analogy can be found between the neurotic and Nietzsche’s weak man.
A person who has successfully completed all periods of his infantile development (which in principle is not really the case for anyone) experiences a balance in his soul, his drives are controlled in a balanced and healthy way by his Über Ich. We could compare this with ancient Greek culture where everything is still a perfect synthesis between the Dionysian principle of chaos and the limitless, and the Apollonian principle of order and measure. A healthy person will be able to live as a ,strong person,, a person who can survive in chaos and accept the world as it really is.
Since the neurotic has not been able to resolve certain infantile conflicts, his Über ego will be too strong and there will be no balance between his Über ego and his drives. With such a neurotic, the Apollonian will win the battle, everything must obey the will of the father (or father figure), otherwise one will be plagued by enormous guilt.
The neurotic is not a ,strong person, he cannot hold his own in the real world, he cannot hold his own in chaos. He cannot make his own choices or be creative in his life. He is a weak person who has to rely on something or someone else to shape his life. The neurotic allows his life to be determined by the conflicts of his childhood. He lets his life be determined by the will of his father. He doesn’t have the courage to take his life into his own hands. Just as in the Platonic Christian tradition human life was determined by a Hinterwelt or a God, so the neurotic’s life is determined by his infantile conflicts. The religious person needs a God as judge, the neurotic needs his father as judge. The neurotic is unable to judge for himself whether good or bad, he must always appeal to the will of his father. Both the believer and the neurotic are too weak to make their own decisions, to make their own choices. The believer chooses what his faith tells him, the neurotic never chooses, he is guided by the doubt created by an unresolved conflict. The Christians are the slaves of something that lies outside this life, of a Hinterwelt, the neurotic is the slave of his inner conflict.
Faith, neurosis of the masses?
Earlier we discussed how the will to power in a weak person leads to the tyrannization of a part of one’s own soul, whereby one then deifies the tyrannizing part of the soul. Here people really get pleasure from the strict demands they set for themselves. We also see how the neurotic allows himself to be demonized by his Über Ich. In that sense too, the neurotic is a weak person, comparable to the adherents of an ascetic morality. Out of inability to exercise power on the outside world, one turns to a part of oneself in order to still be able to satisfy one’s will for power. The will to power is not directed to the outside world, as is the case with the strong person, but to the inner self, one becomes a victim of it.
We also see how the neurotic is often superstitious, but not like a normal superstitious person. The neurotic is only superstitious in his compulsive thinking; once the neurotic has mastered a compulsion, he can also mock his own superstition (Freud, p. 5; p 68).
So we see that the Ratteman, who was highly developed and had enlightened ideas, was extremely superstitious. He believed in omens, in prophetic dreams, came across those he had just been thinking about. In his compulsive thinking he clearly believed in the existence of an afterlife and made extensive use of prayers.
The difference between the ascetic and the neurotic may perhaps lie in the fact that the ascetic is not smart enough to see that his faith is stupid, while the neurotic sees it but is completely helpless against it. The follower of an ascetic morality truly derives joy from his faith, the neurotic realizes that he is being carried away against his will by a faith that he knows is madness. In this respect the believer can also be considered a neurotic, the believer is a sick person. Likewise, all rituals of the ascetic faith can be seen as compulsions. The neurotic realizes that he is ill, but the believer considers himself completely normal, which is understandable since his entire community suffers from the same illness. The ascetic can live in peace with his neurosis, the neurotic cannot. Thus one can say that the believer is a happy neurotic, in contrast to the true neurotic.
Conclusion
Nietzsche shows us how we are all controlled by a Will to power. He then makes a distinction between a weak and a strong person. In terms of the Will to power we can define the weak person as someone who is forced to direct this Will to power on a part of himself. Nietzsche’s typical example of the weak person is the ascetic.
About ten years after Nietzsche’s death, Freud began his study of neurosis. When we then put the work of both thinkers together, we can say that the neurotic also directs his Will to Power to a part of himself, so the neurotic can also be seen as a weak person. Moreover, when we look at the ascetic in the light of Freud’s theory, we see that he too can be considered a neurotic. So there is clearly a similarity between Nietzsche’s weak man and the disease of the neurotic that fascinated Freud.