“Night Song”—Nietzsche's Poetic Insight into the Psychotic Process

Poetic insights often express a process not in terms of theory, but of feeling. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, has long been revered for his ability to portray his illness and suffering in poetic form. One critic 9 says, “There are passages in his works, especially in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which in beauty and grandeur rival the Psalms. Nietzsche was a poet philosopher.” In this paper we shall discuss one section from what he called his “spiritual child” Zarathustra, and use this section as a reaffirmation of the psychoanalytic understanding of the psychotic process.

Nietzsche finally lost contact with reality in Turin in 1889, and remained psychotic until his death in 1900. He had a unique facility in describing the psychotic process, which, as his illness progressed and his grandiosity increased, he considered a martyrdom. What is the real feeling of a patient whose contact with objects is slipping away, who has an accompanying sensation of inner deadness that is yet bursting with the warmth of withdrawn libido? This end of the world feeling has been described by Freud and others only by using empathetic inference. Even the very perceptive schizophrenic has great difficulty in expressing these varied affects. The famous Schreber, 15 adept at describing other aspects of the psychotic process, says that there are some things which cannot be described in words. The typical psychotic episode, overwhelming in its suddenness, gives even the creative artist little respite to attempt a description of the experience.