The Schopenhauer Cure(95)

Gill watched Pam and Tony walk down the street together. He (and Philip of course) were the only ones Pam had not hugged at the end of the meeting. Had he crossed her too much? Gill turned his attention to tomorrow’s wine-tasting event—one of Rose’s big nights. A group of Rose’s friends always got together at this time of the year for a sampling of the year’s best wines. How to negotiate that? Just swish the wine and spit it out? Pretty tough to pull that off. Or come right out with the truth? He thought of his AA sponsor: he knew how the conversation between them would go:

Sponsor: Where’re your priorities? Skip the event, go to a meeting.

Gill: But wine tasting is the reason these friends get together.

Sponsor: Is it? Suggest another activity.

Gill: Won’t work. They won’t do it.

Sponsor: Then get new friends.

Gill: Rose won’t like it.

Sponsor: So?



Rebecca said to herself: Real stuff in, real stuff out. Real stuff in, real stuff out. Must remember that. She smiled when she thought about Tony counting his money when she had talked about her flirtation with whoredom. Secretly she had gotten a kick out of that. Was it bad faith to accept an apology from him?

Bonnie, as always, hated to see the meeting come to an end. She was alive those ninety minutes. The rest of her life seemed so tepid. Why was that? Why must librarians lead dull lives? Then she thought about Philip’s statement about what you are, what you have, and what you represent to others. Intriguing!

Stuart relished the meeting. He was entering full-bodied into the group. He repeated to himself the words he had said to Rebecca about how her looks served as a barrier to knowing her and that he had recently seen something deeper than her skin. That was good. That was good. And telling Philip that his cold kind of consolation had made him shiver. That was being more than a camera. And then there was the way he had pointed out the tension between Pam and Philip. No, no, that was camera stuff.

On his walk home Philip struggled to avoid thinking of the meeting, but the events were too heady to screen out. In a few minutes he caved in and permitted his thoughts free rein. Old Epictetus had caught their attention. He always does. Then he imagined hands reaching out and faces turned toward him. Gill had become his champion—but not to be taken seriously. Gill wasn’t for him but instead was against Pam, trying to learn how to defend himself against her, and Rose, and all other women. Rebecca had liked what he had said. Her handsome face lingered briefly in his mind. And then he thought of Tony—the tattoos, the bruised cheek. He had never met anyone like him—a real primitive, but a primitive who is beginning to comprehend a world beyond everydayness. And Julius—was he losing his sharpness? How could he defend attachment while acknowledging his problems of overinvestment in Philip as a patient?

Philip felt jittery, uncomfortable in his skin. He sensed that he was in danger of unraveling. Why had he told Pam that she was unlucky to have met him? Is that why she had spoken his name so often in the meeting—and demanded that he face her? His former debased self was hovering like a ghost. He sensed its presence, thirsting for life. Philip quieted his mind and slipped into a walking meditation.





33


Suffering, Rage, Perseverance




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To the learned men and philosophers of Europe: for you, a windbag like Fichte is the equal of Kant, the greatest thinker of all time, and a worthless barefaced charlatan like Hegel is considered to be a profound thinker. I have therefore not written for you.



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If Arthur Schopenhauer were alive today, would he be a candidate for psychotherapy? Absolutely! He was highly symptomatic. In “About Me” he laments that nature endowed him with an anxious disposition and a “suspiciousness, sensitiveness, vehemence, and pride in a measure that is hardly compatible with the equanimity of a philosopher.”

In graphic language he describes his symptoms.

Inherited from my father is the anxiety which I myself curse and combat with all the force of my will…. As a young man I was tormented by imaginary illnesses…. When I was studying in Berlin I thought I was a consumptive…. I was haunted by the fear of being pressed into military service…. From Naples I was driven by the fear of smallpox and from Berlin by the fear of cholera…. In Verona I was seized by the idea I had taken poisoned snuff…in Manheim I was overcome by an indescribable feeling of fear without any external cause…. For years I was haunted by the fear of criminal proceedings…. If there was a noise at night I jumped out of bed and seized sword and pistols that I always had ready loaded…. I always have an anxious concern that causes me to look for dangers where none exist: it magnifies the tiniest vexation and makes association with people most difficult for me.



Hoping to quell his suspiciousness and chronic fear, he employed a host of precautions and rituals: he hid gold coins and valuable interest-bearing coupons in old letters and other secret places for emergency use, he filed personal notes under false headings to confuse snoopers, he was fastidiously tidy, he requested that he always be served by the same bank clerk, he allowed no one to touch his statue of the Buddha.

His sexual drive was too strong for comfort, and, even as a young man, he deplored being controlled by his animal passions. At the age of thirty-six a mysterious course of illness confined him to his room for an entire year. A physician and medical historian suggested in 1906 that his illness had been syphilis, basing the diagnosis only upon the nature of the medication prescribed, coupled with Schopenhauer’s history of unusually great sexual activity.