Part III. Friedrich Nietzsche's Personality and Psychotherapy

Nietzsche considered the change of his ways of thinking to be absolutely the result of the changeability of his physical condition. “A philosopher who has passed through many states of health, and will do so again and again, has also passed through many philosophies; he simply cannot do otherwise each time than to transpose his condition into a spiritual form and, perspective; this art of transfiguration is his philosophy.” (Nietzsche's Works, Volume V, page 8) In his recollections written in 1888, his Ecce Homo, Nietzsche tells how from his sickness he received the impulse to develop within himself an optimistic world conception: “For once, pay attention to this: the years of my lowest vitality were those when I ceased to be a pessimist; the instinct for self-reconstruction forbade me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement.” (Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume II, page 338)