Part II. The Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche as a Psychopathological Problem

These lines have not been written to add to the statements of the opponents of Friedrich Nietzsche, but with the intention to offer a contribution to the understanding of this man from a point of view which, no doubt, comes into consideration in passing judgment on his strange ways of thought. The thorough student of the world conception of Friedrich Nietzsche will come upon innumerable problems which can only be clarified through psychopathology. On the other hand, it should be of the greatest importance for psychiatry for students to occupy themselves with an important personality who has had an immeasurably great influence upon the culture of the age. In addition, this influence has an essentially different character from the effects philosophers usually have upon their pupils. For Nietzsche does not work upon his contemporaries through the logical power of his arguments on the contrary, the wide dissemination of his concepts is to be traced to the same reasons which make it possible for zealots and fanatics to play their role in the world at all times.