Ebook: Nietzsche and Psychotherapy

Drawing on over a century of international Nietzschean scholarship, this groundbreaking book discusses some of the unexplored psychological reaches of Nietzsche’s thought, as well as their implications for psychotherapeutic practice.

Nietzsche’s philosophy anticipated some of the most innovative cultural movements of the last century, from expressionism and surrealism to psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology and phenomenology. But his work on psychology often remains discarded, despite its many insights. Addressing this oversight, and in an age of managerialism and evidence-based practice, this book helps to redefine psychotherapy as an experiment that explores the limits and intricacies of human experience. It builds the foundations for a differentialist psychology: a life-affirming project that can deal squarely with the challenges, joys and sorrows of being human.

Nietzsche and Psychotherapy will be of great interest to researchers interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and philosophy, Nietzschean scholars, as well as to clinicians grappling with the challenges of working in the so-called "post-truth" age.

Review
"Manu Bazzano’s Nietzsche and Psychotherapy is not just "a breath of fresh air" in contemporary psychotherapy. It is what Nietzsche would call a full "gale." It blows open windows and doors on vistas of which most of those concerned with "mental health," "behavioral science," and "wellness" – those handmaidens of social-political hygiene – have no clue. Nietzsche rightly considered himself the first of a new type of psychologist that had yet to be imagined, and said that it would take a century and more before his writings would begin to be understood. Today, some hundred plus years later, we are seeing an emerging Nietzschean type of psychology. Bazzano’s Nietzsche and Psychotherapy is a major contribution to that development. It is an important and challenging work, because Nietzsche is an important and challenging thinker, and because applying him to psychotherapy is an important and challenging enterprise. This book is not for psychotherapists who, faint of heart and without realizing it, labor for the sake of social-political hygiene rather than for the life that animates their clients. It is for psychotherapists who dare to be bold and, most importantly, willing to dignify the lives of their clients by inspiring and encouraging the same boldness and daring in them." --Daniel Chapelle, author, Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis; The Soul In Everyday Life; and (forthcoming) Nietzsche and the Buddha: Different Lives, Same Ideas – How Nietzsche May Yet Become the West’s Own Buddha.

"With curiosity, skill and mischievousness, Bazzano taps the bell of psychotherapy with Nietzsche’s hammer. The resulting sound is something I wish for every therapist to hear – it dispels Gods and their shadows, and resonates with the beauty of engagement. Read it at your peril – the more rigorous your therapeutic worldviews, the deeper they will crack." --Dr Niklas Serning, Senior Lecturer University of the West of England, Consultant Psychotherapist OTR, Chartered Psychologist, Existential and Child psychotherapist, Registered Supervisor



About the Author
Manu Bazzano is a psychotherapist in private practice and a visiting lecturer at Roehampton University, London. He facilitates seminars and workshops internationally on Zen and Phenomenology. His books include Buddha is Dead (2006); Spectre of the Stranger (2012); After Mindfulness (2014); Therapy and the Counter-tradition (2016); Zen and Therapy (2017); Re-visioning Person-centred Therapy (2018). www.manubazzano.com.