remembered talking to Miriam about Carlos. Carlos was a
particularly unlikable man, crass, self–centered, shallow, sexually
driven, who sought his help when he was diagnosed with a fatal
lymphoma. Julius helped Carlos make some remarkable changes,
especially in the realm of connectivity, and those changes allowed
him to flood his entire life retrospectively with meaning. Hours
before he died he told Julius, «Thank you for saving my life.»
Julius had thought about Carlos many times, but now at this
moment his story assumed a new and momentous meaning—not
only for Philip and Pam, but for saving his own life, as well.
In most ways Philip appeared less pompous and more
approachable in the group, even making occasional eye contact
with most members, save Pam. The six–month mark came and
went without Philip raising the subject of dropping because he had
fulfilled his six–month contract. When Julius raised the issue,
Philip responded, «To my surprise group therapy is a far more
complex phenomenon than I had originally thought. I`d prefer you
supervise my work with clients while I was also attending the
group, but you`ve rejected that idea because of the problems of
�dual relationships.` My choice is to remain in the group for the
entire year and to request supervision after that.»
«I`m fine with that plan,” Julius agreed, «but it depends, of
course, on the state of my health. The group has four more months
before we end, and after that we`ll have to see. My health
guarantee was only for one year.»
Philip`s change of mind about group participation was not
uncommon. Members often enter a group with one circumscribed
goal in mind, for example, to sleep better, to stop having
nightmares, to overcome a phobia. Then, in a few months, they
often formulate different, more far–reaching goals, for example, to
learn how to love, to recapture zest for life, to overcome loneliness,
to develop self–worth.
From time to time the group pressed Philip to describe more
precisely how Schopenhauer had helped so much when Julius`s
psychotherapy had so utterly failed. Because he had difficulty
answering questions about Schopenhauer without providing the
necessary philosophical background, he requested the group`s
permission to give a thirty–minute lecture on the topic. The group
groaned, and Julius urged him to present the relevant material
more succinctly and conversationally.
The following session Philip embarked upon a brief
lecturette which, he promised, would succinctly answer the
question of how Schopenhauer had helped him.
Though he had notes in his hand, he spoke without referring
to them. Staring at the ceiling, he began, «It`s not possible to
discuss Schopenhauer without starting with Kant, the philosopher
whom, along with Plato, he respected above all others. Kant, who
died in 1804 when Schopenhauer was sixteen, revolutionized
philosophy with his insight that it is impossible for us to
experience reality in any veritable sense because all of our
perceptions, our sense data, are filtered and processed through our
inbuilt neuroanatomical apparatus. All data are conceptualized
through such arbitrary constructs as space and time and—”
«Come on, Philip, get to the point,” interrupted Tony. «How
did this dude help you?»
«Wait, I`m getting there. I`ve spoken for all of three
minutes. This is not the TV news; I can`t explain the conclusions
of one of the world`s greatest thinkers in a sound bite.»
«Hey, hey, right on, Philip. I like that answer,” said Rebecca.
Tony smiled and backed off.
«So Kant`s discovery was that, rather than experience the
world as it`s really out there, we experience our own personalized
processed version of what`s out there. Such properties as space,
time, quantity, causality arein us, not out there—we impose them
on reality. But, then, whatis pure, unprocessed reality? What`s
really out there, that raw entity before we process it?That will
always remain unknowable to us, said Kant.»
«Schopenhauer—how he helped you! Remember? Are we
getting warm?» asked Tony.
«Coming up in ninety seconds. In his future work Kant and
others turned their entire attention to the ways in which we process
primal reality.
«But Schopenhauer—and see, here we are already!—took a
different route. He reasoned that Kant had overlooked a
fundamental and immediate type of data about ourselves: our own
bodies and our own feelings. We can know ourselves from
theinside, he insisted. We have direct, immediate knowledge, not
dependent on our perceptions. Hence, he was the first philosopher
to look at impulses and feelings from theinside, and for the rest of
his career he wrote extensively about interior human concerns: sex,
love, death, dreams, suffering, religion, suicide, relations with
others, vanity, self–esteem. More than any other philosopher, he
addressed those dark impulses deep within that we cannot bear to
know and, hence, must repress.»
«Sounds a little Freudian,” said Bonnie.
«The other way around. Better to say that Freud is
Schopenhauerian. So much of Freudian psychology is to be found
in Schopenhauer. Though Freud rarely acknowledged this
influence, there is no doubt he was quite familiar with
Schopenhauer`s writings: in Vienna during the time Freud was in
school, the 1860s and �70s, Schopenhauer`s name was on
everyone`s lips. I believe that without Schopenhauer there could
have been no Freud—and, for that matter, no Nietzsche as we
know him. In fact Schopenhauer`s influence on Freud—
particularly dream theory, the unconscious, and the mechanism of
repression—was the topic of my doctoral dissertation.
«Schopenhauer,” Philip continued, glancing at Tony and
hurrying to avoid being interrupted, «normalized my sexuality. He
made me see how ubiquitous sex was, how, at the deepest levels, it
