The Life, Psychology, and Legacy of Arthur Schopenhauer.
A Psychobiography of Psychoanalysis’s Grandfather
Arthur Schopenhauer was a pure philosopher, a rare kind of thinker seldom found nowadays. For reasons that will be covered in the following essay, he was divorced from the pressures of most contemporary philosophers. Today’s philosophers are preoccupied with publication pressure and academic advancement. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was relatively disconnected from these concerns. He was afforded a unique opportunity to live a fully examined life. Not without hardship, but a life seated within a stable, contemplative, and endearingly pessimistic disposition.
He was free to make his observations and philosophize to his heart’s content. Never did his stomach go hungry, never did a bill go unpaid. Unbound by the limits of material necessity, Schopenhauer was able to fashion his own system of ideas and deliver something truly unique to the world he left behind over 150 years ago. He was a civilized Diogenes, a Westernized Buddha, a rival to Hegal, a mentor to Nietzsche, and a father to Freud.
The following essay will trace Schopenhours life from early development through his death in 1860. Along the way, major events and themes in his life will be identified and discussed. A surface-level coverage of his central philosophical ideas, infamous hatred of women, and alluring pessimism will then be elaborated. The essay will close with a psychoanalysis of Schopenhauer using three different psychoanalytic approaches.
One final note: Most of the biographical information included in this essay is sourced from David E. Cartwright’s biography of Schopenhauer, which is available on Amazon for interested readers. All uncited page numbers refer to this book.
Cartwright is a philosopher and expert on all things Schopenhauer. He claims his biography results from over 60 years worth of academic scholarship on (and perhaps obsession with) Schopenhauer. He currently holds appointments as professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Director of the North American Division of the Schopenhauer Society.
Part I: Early life.
Section I: Birth context
Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788, in the free city of Danzig, Prussia, which is now located in the southwest corner of the modern-day Gulf of Gdansk in Poland (Directly below the “c” in “Baltic Sea” in the map below).
As a Port City, Danzig was home to many trading merchants from around the globe. The atmosphere was cosmopolitan and progressive for the time. It was a semi-autonomous city free of national control and, more importantly, safely outside the influence of the Holy Roman Empire, which was, a Voltaire amusingly pointed out, “neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.”
Less than a year into Schopenhauer’s birth, the French Revolution would begin to take shape. Those familiar with its history will recall that the French Revolution was not just any revolution but a large-scale destabilizing event whose ripples were felt across the world and significantly altered the course of European history and Western culture. This lack of worldly stability proved to be a foreshadowing event for the story of Schopenhauer’s life.
Now moving to a narrower vision of Schopenhauer’s world, we turn to Schopenhauer’s family.
Section II: Family
Schopenhauer had a relatively small family unit. Consisting only of his mother, his father, and his younger sister. As you may expect, this was comparatively uncommon for the late 18th-century European family. Though the reason for this will be clear soon.
The patriarchy of the family, Heinrich Flores Schopenhauer, then 37, married the 18-year-old Johanna Schopenhauer in 1785. Three years after, Johanna gave birth to Arthur, and two years after that, she gave Arthur a sister named Adele.
As any psychoanalyst worth their salt will tell you, one should investigate and understand their parents to better understand who one is.
Father
Above all, Heinrich was a merchant, an international businessman who had his hands in various trading relationships across the globe. He inherited a notable fortune from his father, Arthur’s paternal grandfather, and spend his life amassing wealth for the Schopenhauer family.
Heinrich was politically liberal for his time expressing interest in Enlightenment values and republicanism, so he was supportive of the French Revolution until it reached its radical phase with the reign of terror. Until then, he, along with many other wealthy merchants, rejoiced at the possibility of free trade relations with France.
As an anglophile, he loved England and English culture, so much so that he wished for Arthur to be born in England to inherit English citizenship and land rights.
But most impactfully for Arthur, Heinrich was extremely prone to anxiety and depression.
Cartwright’ writes
The foggy days and gloomy London Nights triggered [Heinrich’s] anxiety, a dim expression of the depression and melancholy that would become increasingly pronounced during the remaining eighteen years of his life (p. 2).
His wife, Johanna, would often journal about her husband’s mental instability and impulsivity.
She wrote about venturing out to England from Danzig with Henrich in one entry, unaware of the young Arthur slowly maturing inside her. Upon discovering her pregnancy, Heinrich became distressed and conflicted.
On the one hand, he desperately wanted Arthur to be born in England. On the other hand, he worried dearly about his wife's health as giving birth away from home carried with it serious risks at the time. Initially, Heinrich settled on remaining in England to have his child. Though he eventually changed his mind after obsessing over his wife’s health.
This was a drastic decision because it was winter at the time, and the month-long wagon journey would only increase Heinrich’s worries over his wife’s health. They eventually completed the trek on time and had Arthur a month after their return. But Hendrich’s anxiety never subsided.
Mother
Johanna Schopenhauer was well-educated for a woman at her time. She was fluent in English which was atypical of women in Danzig. Her father introduced her to Western literature, specifically Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and others.
Because of her wit and literary experience, she was often shamed and ridiculed by her peers. In her Memoir, she wrote of several experiences like these:
‘A girl and learning English! For what on Earth would you use that?’ This question was repeated daily by friends and relatives, because this was unheard of at the time in Danzig. I began to feel ashamed at my knowledge of the English language and therefore I resolutely refuse to learn Greek.
Johanna spent a good portion of her life concealing her intelligence, though she would later blossom, becoming the most famous female writer in all of Hamburg at the peak of her career.
She also possessed a cheerful personality that compensated for Heinrich’s stoic demeanor. In line with her liberal education, Johanna was allowed to decide on whom and when to marry.
Surprisingly, little is known about when, where, and how Johanna met Hinrich. One thing, however, is abundantly clear: she lacked an “ardent love” (p. 8) for Heinrich. The passions between them were stale or nonsexist. They both viewed the relationship as deeply and coldly transactional.
Johanna, likely reacting to her internalized shame, sought the life of a traditional homemaker and jumped on the opportunity to live as the wealthy Heinrich’s subservient wife. Heinrich wanted a young beautiful wife who could serve as entertainment for visiting business associates. Both felt satisfied with their mutual agreement yet lack the deep bonding love that holds many couples together.
Section III: Homeless, at home
Although born into a wealthy estate, young Arthur was also born into an enduring sense of homelessness. In 1793, when both Prussia and Russia began carving up sovereign polish territories in the wake of the chaos erupting in France, Prussia annexed the Polish city of Danzig. Arthur had just turned five years old.
In protest, Heinrich immediately resolved his attachments to Danzig and relocated the Schopenhauer family to the merchant-friendly free city of Hamburg, where they all reminded for four years. The extremely costly move resulted in financial troubles and planted the seeds of Schopenhauer’s lifelong sense of homelessness and loneliness.
After the birth of Arthur’s sister, Adele, in June of 1797, he and his father departed from Hamburg to France to escape the newly hectic household.
After a few weeks of sightseeing in Paris, Arthur was left in the care of the de Blésimaire family, the head of which was a close business associate of Henrich’s. There, in the French city of Le Havre, he was tutored in the French language and French literature. It would also be where Arthur would first experience what a loving and compassionate family looks like. They accepted him as their second son, and he made good friends with their first son, Jean Anthime, which he soon considered a brother.
After mastering French, Arthur then traveled back to Hamburg — alone — as an 11-year-old boy. Upon returning to his father in Hamburg, Arthur recalled, even in old age,
my good father jump[ing] with joy when he heard me chatter away as if I were French (p. 27).
Schopenhauer looked back at this time of instability with ambivalence. On the one hand, he felt that he had “never acquired a new home,” lamenting that by his fifth year, he was “already homeless in tender childhood” (p. 1).
Perhaps defending against the emotional turmoil these evens had caused him, Schopenhauer blamed his insecurity on his somber temperament in saying that
nature has done more than is necessary to isolate my heart, in that she endowed it with suspiciousness, sensitiveness, and vehemence…Even as a 6-year-old, my parents, returning home one evening from a walk, found me in the depths of despair since I suddenly imagined myself to be forever abandoned by them (p. 19).
Cartwright, however, challenged this naturalistic interpretation of Schopenhauer’s insecurity when he wrote
Given Schopenhauer’s youthful experiences of being raised by parents who failed to express love between one another, it may be the case that Schopenhauer’s observation is one of mistake causality. It was likely that his early family life colored his character much as did his ‘nature’ (p. 19).
All that being said, Schopenhauer also defined the two years he spent away from his parents in Le Havre, in his abandoned state, as “the most joyful part of my childhood” (p. 18).
Section IV: Decisions
Soon after Arthur’s return from France, his father enrolled him in Christian Runge Private School, an institution specifically designed to instill the skills necessary to carry on the family business in the heirs of merchant families. Even though Henrich was not explicit about his plans for Arthur, his intentions clearly showed through his action.
Arthur would study at Christian Runge Private School for four years, from 1799–1803.
Although taught ethics and responsibilities, Arthur and his classmates were not immune from the rambunctiousness that often possess many adolescents. It was there he first began to smoke cigars, drink alcohol, attend parties, learn to play the flute, and, most importantly, discover his love of all things intellectual. Arthur had found what he had never felt before in intellectualism, a sense of belonging. Motivated by this newfound sense, Arthur won the recognition of the school’s leader, Dr. Runge, and pled with him to convince his father of his potential as a scholar.
Near the end of his studies at Christian Runge Private School, Arthur would exclaim to his father in a passionate speech that
Dr. Runge bore witness for me, that I possess other and higher intellectual capacities than those needed by a merchant (p. 31).
So, in Arthur’s 15th year, Heinrich offered him a choice:
Accompany him and Johanna on a leisure tour through Europe on the condition that he would promise to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a wealthy merchant.
Or,
Remain in Ranges private school to learn Latin as preparation for a scholarly life.
After much consideration, Arthur’s will to see the world won over his scholarly ambitions. In 1803, they began their luxurious journey.
Part II: Adolescence
Section I: Boarding school
After five weeks of luxurious travel and sightseeing throughout Europe, Arthur’s parents enrolled him in the Wimbledon school for young noblemen and gentlemen in England — essentially a 19th-century boarding school.
Arthur’s relationship with his father took a turn at this point in his life. For example, the letters Heinrich sent Arthur while away in Le Harve were loving and encouraging. In contrast, the letters he sent Arthur in the Wimbledon School were far harsher and critical in nature, focusing specifically on Arthur’s penmanship and posture: essential qualities of a successful and worldly merchant in Henrich’s eyes.
In an attempt to ease Arthur’s worries, Johanna wrote to Arthur that “you know that your father manufacturers worries when there is no real ones” (p. 43). Although Arthur continued to believe that his father had his best wishes in mind, he was well aware that he “had to suffer a great deal in [his] education, due to the hardness of [his] father” (p. 43).
Amusingly, Cartwright likened the content and tone of Heinrich’s letters to Arthur at this time to the state of nature envisioned by the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But instead of being “nasty, brutish, and short,” as he so famously described life before centralized governance, Heinrich’s letters were merely “nasty, fussy, and short.” Cartwright then suggested Heinrich’s “nagging criticism seems more of an expression of his own increasing mental instability” (p. 43).
Section II: A Philosopher’s Birth
After completing his three-month-long education at the Wimbledon school, Schopenhauer embarked on a far more influential journey through Europe.
It was a time where Schopenhauer was first introduced to the horrors and suffering of the world. He saw, among other things, poverty, death, and slavery.
The most chilling of these stories is when Schopenhauer recalled at one point witnessing the dangling body of a hung man in France and noticed himself unable to disassociate this mental image with that of a ventriloquist puppet, one of his favorite forms of entertainment.
Although deeply aware of his emotional reactions to events such as these, Schopenhauer, from a young age, was able to detach himself from his emotions. Repression, avoidance, and intellectualization were his favored defenses as he was far more interested in the means by which these emotions arose within him than how they affected him at the moment.
His lifelong journey of introspection and his study of human suffering truly began with his exposure to all the horrors the world contained.
Schopenhauer would later compare this personal journey to that of the Buddha’s when he wrote
I was affected by the wretchedness of life, as was the Buddha when in his youth he caught sight of sickness, old age, pain, death. The truth, which the world clearly and loudly proclaimed, soon vanquished the Jewish Dogma that had been imprinted in my mind. The result for me was that this world could not be the work of an all-good being. But rather, that of a devil who had summoned into existence creatures, in order to gloat over the site of their agony (p. 78).
Section III: Return, Tradagy, and Abandonment
After returning from their tour of Europe, the rest of the Schopenhauer family split with Heinrich. Arthur’s father returned to Hamburg for business while Johanna and Arthur went back to Danzig, where they stayed for three months.
Arthur would immediately begin making good on his promise to become a merchant; though, Arthur would soon realize that this was a promise that had brought him an “odious occupation and the worst type of slavery.” He had then “come to the realization that [he] had agreed to the worst journey through life” (p. 84).
Although a painful reality, Schopenhauer’s regret would soon morph into a profound dread.
In a sudden shock to the entire Schopenhauer estate, on April 20th, 1805, Heinrich Schopenhauer’s body was found floating in the cold waters behind the family compound.
Both Johanna and Arthur viewed his death as a suicide. Although Heinrich’s increasingly strange and erratic behavior following the return from their tour proved possible that Heinrich may have fallen instead of jumped out of the warehouse loft into the river below.
It was this experience, the untimely and shocking death of his father, that would solidify Arthur’s identity as the father of philosophical pessimism, as he is often referenced.
Out of grief fueled guilt from the memory of his father, who, for all his criticisms, he loved dearly, Arthur attempted to hold his promise. Though, he would eventually abandon It.
Arthur would continue to cherish his father’s memory throughout his life. In the opening pages of The World as Will and Representation (WWR), the book which brought Arthur the fame that he, and his late father, had always believed his thought deserved, he wrote:
I thank Heinrich Flores Schopenhauer for all that I am, your active care has sheltered and bore me not merely through the helplessness of childhood and the indiscretions of youth, but also into man’s estate right up to the present day. For by putting in the world a son like me, you at the same time provided that he would be able to exist and develop as such in a world like this…Therefore, my father, let me extolt you! Everyone…shall be aware of your name and know that if [you] had not been the man [you are], [I] would have been ruined a hundred times. And so let my gratitude do the only thing it can do for you who have finished; let it carry your name as far as my name is able to carry it (p. 90).
So, in the end, Hinrich’s passing was his greatest gift to young Arthur: the gift of stability, a quality he had never acquired but longed for in childhood. A trusted based on which to peruse his passions without fear of starvation or eviction.
After a prolonged 4-year bereavement period, which he characterized as the intensification of the “darkening of my spirit” (p. 88), Schopenhauer was not only free to pursue his philosophical ambitions but free from poverty through inheriting a good portion of his father’s estate. By living frugally and using what business savvy he had picked up in childhood, Arthur would never need to work another day in his life — a truly free philosopher.
Part III: Adulthood & Later Life
Section I: Mother and Son
Before he could begin his adventure, however, fate had one more abandonment to lay at Arthur’s feet.
After the customary year-long period of morning, Arthur’s mother, Johanna, grew restless and bored. She promptly decided to take a trip through Germany. In Weimar, she would find her rebirth as a member of the intelligentsia— a loose group of influential intellectuals. After settling on her decision to further her life as a writer, Johanna returned to Hamburg to collect nine-year-old Adele. She, however, did not issue Arthur a personal goodbye. Instead, she deceived him by leaving him a short proxy letter, which she wrote on September 21st, 1806:
When you receive these lines I will presumably no longer be here; but even if I am, do not come to see me, I cannot bear farewells… I hope my deception will not give you pain; I did it for my sake, since I know how weak I am in such moments, and I know how much any violent emotion affects me (p. 99).
Schopenhauer, still very skilled at distancing himself from his emotions, took this as yet another example of the wretchedness of life. At this point, he had learned to expect the worst out of life, so he took this news rather well and continued working on his craft.
Their relationship would continue to deteriorate over the years, summed up well by this comic. In the following year, on November 6th, Schopenhauer’s mother would devastatingly write to him
All of your good qualities become obscured by your super-cleverness and are made useless to the world merely because of your rage at wanting to know everything better than others…With this you embitter the people around you, since no one wants to be improved or enlightened in such a forceful way, least of all by such an insignificant individual as you still are
If you were less like you, you would only be ridiculous, but thus as you are, you are highly annoying (p. 130).
Cartwright interpreted Johanna’s brutal letter as an attempt at “putting her iron fist in a velvet glove” to hold a mirror up to Schopenhour to convey what the world saw in him. And that if he didn’t change his attitude soon, his dreams, work, and efforts would all be erased by his own doing. In some ways, her honesty was commendable, her style and delivery, however, contemptible.
At one point, they lived together again, in Weimar, Germany. Under the same roof, the resentment and rage between the two grew each day.
Exchanges of this kind would continue for another seven years until May 7th, 1814, where Johanna would dramatically cut off all communication with her son. She wrote:
The door which yesterday, after your highly improper behaviour towards your mother, you slammed so noisily is closed forever between you and me. I am tired of bearing your behaviour any longer, I’m leaving for the country and I shall not return home until I know that you are gone. I owe this to my health, for another scene like yesterday’s would bring on a stroke that might prove fatal…My duty towards you is at an end, go your way, I have nothing more to do with you… Leave your address here, but do not write to me, I shall henceforth neither read nor answer any letter from you…So this is the end…You have hurt me too much. Live and be as happy as you can be.
They would never meet again. However, they would communicate again. Once in 1819, when Johanna had lost a good portion of her fortune to a banking crisis, Schopenhauer offered to help cover some of the expense, but Johanna coldly refused. Later, in 1831, they resumed communications, but they were largely sporadic and superficial. After she died in 1838, Schopenhauer would continue to think and speak ill of her. He had come to blame her coldness and self-centeredness on both the sourness of their relationship and his father's death. If Henrich had a good-natured and attentive wife, Schopenhauer reasoned, perhaps he would not have descended into madness and killed himself.
Section II: Schopenhour on Women
One can take what Schopenhour says about reality, life, and meaning without ever accepting his view of women.
It doesn’t take psychoanalytic training to understand how one’s default view of others is embedded in, yet not solely determined by their experience with their early caregivers. A young boy neglected and shamed by his parents will likely (though not inevitably) find himself avoiding others, friendships, and romantic relationships out of fear that they will be treated in similar ways. It may seem absurd from an outside perspective; if so, think of this process less psychoanalytically and more neurobiologically.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself through experience by developing new neural pathways (neurogenesis), altering existing ones, or forgetting older ones (synaptic pruning). During childhood, our brains are very plastic or sensitive to change. As we grow old, our brains slowly become less plastic, we become “stuck in our ways,” so to speak. The average adult appears to have significantly fewer neural pathways than the average child.
Suffice it to say, whatever happens in early life will likely follow us in some way into adulthood: a central psychoanalytic assumption.
Therefore, Schopenhauer’s infamous reproach for women can be reasonably traced back to his experiences with his mother. I’m sure there were experiences with other women along the way that assisted in him coming to his conclusions. Still, those experiences may have simply reinforced an idea of women he held since early childhood.
That said, let’s look at what he really thought of women. In 1851, he would write
The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies…But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.
In short, Schopenhour saw women as inferior by nature, effective liars, and largely irrational. Some have even taken it upon themselves to draw very clear links between Schopenhour’s view on women and the modern red pill and incel movement.
I believe that Schopenhauer’s disdain for women is almost exclusively a consequence of his poor relationship with his mother. Other than the aforementioned connections, another point to consider is that Schopenhour’s general philosophy is completely absent from his sexism. One can take what Schopenhour says about reality, life, and meaning without ever accepting his view of women.
I also believe this was by design. His major work, WWR, deals with serious philosophical problems, ascetics, ethics and only mentions women near the end of the almost 600-page tome. Almost no one reads entire books, period. Even fewer read more than half of a non-fiction book. Fewer still read difficult books by 19th-century philosophical one-hit wonders (Sorry Schopenhauer, no one is reading On Vision and Colours). If Schopenhauer wanted his ideas to be dependent on his view of women, he would have made that clear upfront rather than sneaking it in near the end of a near-impossible book.
Section III: The University Years and Early Scholarly Life
Refocusing back on Schopenhour’s life, he now found himself unshackled from the grief of his father’s death. In turn, he decided to put all his efforts into living a scholarly life.
In 1811, Schopenhour enrolled at the University of Berlin to study philosophy. From enrollment to the publication of his dissertation, on the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason published in 1813, Schopenhauer’s life was relatively uneventful. He was studious, ambitious, driven, and still consumed by the pessimistic lens through which he viewed the world.
It would be endearing to say that Schopenhauer left his traumatic childhood in his past, but it wouldn’t be truthful. The scars of abandonment, homelessness, and guilt continued to provide in adult life. But Schopenhauer would use this pain as a curdlan from which to draw creative energy to produce countless essays and translations of philosophical work.
A full examination of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is outside the scope of this essay; in fact, it deserves its own essay. But just for fun, here are a few excerpts from his work.
Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune, in general, is the rule.
From On the Sufferings of the World;
In the first place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed
From On the Vanity of Existence;
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice…that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person
from On Suicide.
Section IV: Late-life & Death
Later into Schopenhauer’s life, he would travel around the world for leisure and business. At times fleeing to Italy to escape an outbreak of cholera or to Mexico for real-estate opportunities that eventually failed.
For the last 28 years of his life, from 1832–1860, he would renounce the life of an academic professor of philosophy (one he was never particularly good at or fond of) to lead a life as a recluse philosopher, absorbed in his own studies. He would publish more and more, perfecting his earlier work and releasing completely new ideas.
Schopenhauer would never marry but did maintain on/off relationships for over a decade that resulted in three children, two of which unfortunately died early in childhood.
When his third and final child was born, Schopenhauer told a friend that he was
quite glad to experience the birth of my last child through which I see my mission to the world completed…I now feel a heavy burden that I have borne and felt since my 24th year to have been lifted (p. 539).
Approaching his death, Schopenhauer’s work would finally begin to receive the praise and thoughtful criticism he had longed for. He was not (consciously) afraid of death. He once proclaimed that “it would only be a blessing, to attain absolute nothingness.”
On September 20th of 1860, he would receive that blessing, passing peacefully in his sleep. An end he had always wished for.
Part IV: Psychonalysis of Arthur Schopenhauer
Section I: On The Worth of Psychoanalysis
When beginning his laborious critique of Kant, his beloved teacher, and idol, Schopenhauer opened with a quotation from Voltaire (often misattributed to Lewis Carroll) that summarizes how I feel about Freud and psychoanalysis as a whole. He wrote
It is the privilege of a true genius, and especially a genius who opens up a new path, to make great mistakes with impunity
Freud made plenty of mistakes. For one, as Juliet Mitchell astutely observes, “psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society but an analysis of one.” Freud, like Schopenhauer, was not immune from historical forces; hence, their ideas are largely a product of the time in which they developed. As such, sexism is rampant in both of their writings. However, again like Schopenhauer, one can extract the useful bits of wisdom found across Freud’s oeuvre without paying any appreciable attention to his laughably dated views on women.
Despite Freud’s all too human imperfections, contemporary neuroscientific research has begun to vindicate much of Freud’s claims about the psyche: a revelation he predicted nearly a century ago. After all, he did begin his career as a neurologist. Moreover, admittedly rife with methodological limitations, psychotherapeutic research shows substantial support for therapy based on Freud's ideas.
That said, although Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis are at times cast as pseudoscientific relics of the past, they are, in the most practical sense, valuable methods of inquiry limited chiefly by the problem of induction; which, by the way, remains unsolved and is at the root of all scientific endeavors.
Section II: Psychoanalysis of Schopenhauer
Let’s start with Freud’s theory of the oedipal complex to help explain why Arthur’s personality is so similar to his father's. The oedipal complex is the first introduction to a triadic relationship; in this case, we have Arthur, his mother Johanna, and his father, Heinrich.
The complex begins with Arthur directing his libidinal (sexual) energy towards his mother Johanna in the form of affection, attention-seeking, and of course, feeding. However, because of the relationship between Heinrich and Johanna, it causes Arthur a problem in that if he were to act on this libidinal energy, he might be faced with punishment from his father, namely through castration anxiety (the severing of Aurthr’s penis) — Children tend to think much more bluntly than adults.
This forces Arthur to solve this dilemma by identifying with the aggressor, the person who might cut off his penis, and through this, he unconsciously internalizes Heinrich’s personality characteristics in the hopes that he might be able to direct his libidinal energy towards someone similar to Johanna in the future. This is one of the many explanations for the common pattern of women dating those who remind them of their fathers and vice versa.
Although Arthur and Heinrich indeed share more similar personality characteristics than Arthur and Johanna, it’s not the case that Arthur and Johanna share no personality characteristics. Namely, Auther’s intellectual and writing ability seems to come from Johanna. So, while the oedipal complex helps explain the similarities between Heinrich’s and Arthur’s personalities, it doesn’t tell the full story of Arthur’s personality.
The second critique of this explanation is that the relationship between Heinrich and Johanna might not be strong enough to cause castration anxiety because although Johanna and Heinrich were married, they were never really all that close and seldom shared a passionate moment between one another in front of Arthur as far as we know.
So, if the relationship between Johanna and Heinrich isn’t particularly strong, then it’s hard to believe it would result in the level of castration anxiety needed to motivate Arthur to internalize Heinrich’s personality characteristics.
These limitations lead me to believe we need complementary theories to explain Arthur’s personality and worldview.
And to do this, Keren Horney’s (hor-ney) theory of neurosis will come in handy.
Section III: Schopenhours’s Neurosis
Karen Horney’s theory of neurosis centers on an idea she calls basic anxiety: The initial condition of human existence. The feeling of being helpless, small, fragile, and insignificant in a world where danger and hostility are ever-present.
She felt that everybody experienced basic anxiety to a degree but was far more pronounced in people who experienced disturbed parental relations such as excessive partiality, neglect, or hostility.
Any and all of these disruptions can lead to neurosis and, in her view, could be solved in three basic ways: Through helplessness, aggressiveness, or detachment.
Horney believed that the healthy individual flexibly used all three solutions when the situation called for it. The neurotic individual, however, rigidly used only one solution all the time. All three of these solutions carried with it a related style of coping or coping strategy.
The neurotic solution of helplessness led to a coping strategy she called moving towards people or the compliant personality, who expresses needs for approval, affection, and a dominant partner.
The aggressive solution led to moving against people, the aggressive personality, who needs to exert power, exploit others, horde prestige, admiration, and achievement.
And finally, the detached solution led to the coping strategy of moving away from people or the detached personality, who is excessively independent, perfectionistic, and purposely seeks solitude.
In Horney’s view, these coping strategies have an associated aspect of the self that becomes repressed through their usage.
Moving towards people repressed one’s senses of competence, self-sufficiency, and efficacy.
Moving against people represses one’s weakness, vulnerabilities, and frailty.
And moving away from people led to a repression of one’s social needs, the necessity of interpersonal interactions, and relatedness.
If we look at this from Schopenhauer’s perspective, I believe it’s clear that he characteristically uses the detachment solution, moving away from people coping strategy, and then, therefore, represses his social needs.
As a young child, he felt alone, abandoned, fearful, and separated himself from his anxiety. In his professional career, he often moved away from other people, establishing his independence. He wished to be viewed as new and creative. And finally, the repression of his social needs emerged through his solitary lifestyle, a withdraw from others. Remember, he died alone but at peace.
This analysis gives us a far better description of Schopenhauer’s personality and shines a light on the origin of his characteristic pessimism. But I’d like to attempt to answer why exactly Schopenhauer began using this particular set of stargates and behavioral patterns in the first place. And to do that, we turn to another post-Freudian analytic theorist, Margret Mahler.
Section IV: Separation-Individuation
Mahler, like many analytic theorists, had her own theory of psychological development. A full tour of her theory is far beyond the scope of this essay. Only the relevant bits will be considered. Click here for a fuller picture of her theory.
The third phase of Mahler’s child development theory is called separation-individuation (a predecessor to modern attachment theory), which occurs roughly a month after birth to about two years of age.
It must be noted here that we don’t know a lot about what happened during this critical period of Schopenhauer’s life, but as we’ll see, the issues Schopenhauer deals with seem to emanate from this period. Therefore, we may be able to reasonably glean something about Schopenhauer’s early development by observing their effects on his personality.
Separation-individuation begins with the hatching phase, characterized by increased attention to the outside world while using the mother as the object of the infant’s orientation (their base of operations).
Then, once this interest in the external world turns to novel exploration, the infant starts to practice individuating by assuming the mother will assist whenever they are in trouble.
Over time, the infant gradually increases their physical and psychological distance from their mother to explore the external world while returning every so often for emotional refueling to explore further; this is the rapprochement phase.
And finally, as the infant explores farther away, they start to develop what Mahler calls object constancy (not to be confused with object permanence), a stable internalization of the mother the child can draw emotional refueling from when physically separated. This promotes physical independence while still retaining a psychological connection to the mother.
Importantly, Mauler noted that disruptions at any point of this process can result in issues of independence and identity. We saw an example of these issues when Schopenhauer was just six years old. When his parents had left him only for a short walk, they returned only to find him in the depth of his despair because he had suddenly imagined himself to be forever abandoned by them.
Additionally, although he eventually resolved his crisis of identity, Schopenhauer was split between the life of a scholar and the life of a merchant for a long time. His crisis of independence, which he took to an extreme, appeared unresolved as he reminded recluse and alone for most of his adult life.
Both of these can serve as evidence of the claim that Schopenhauer experienced at least some disturbance during this critical period (likely emotional neglect given the character of his parents), which in turn may have resulted in choosing detachment as the solution for his neurosis, leading to the moving away coping strategy, and finally the repression his social needs.
All of these early experiences colored not only Schopenhours personality but his view of the world. Or, more generally, one’s early experiences color their personality, which in turn inform their view of the world. It's hard not to make the logical connection between early neglect, detachment, his repression of social needs, and his characteristic sense of pessimism fully articulated by his dreary yet compelling philosophy of life.
Section V: Closing
With that, I’d like to begin to draw this essay to a close but pointing out that although Schopenhauer was, by his own account, a genius, a prolific writer, wealthy, and a unique thinker, he was still subject to the same psychological forces that cause strife within all of us.
Not at all to say that his way is the only way, but I personally think Schopenhauer’s method of dealing with internal anguish is firstly misunderstood and secondly far undervalued today.
Although he is often cited as the father of philosophical pessimism, as counterintuitive as it may seem, Schopenhauer never regarded his worldview as bleak, nihilistic, or self-defeating. In fact, by the account of those around him, he was a calm and collected man, especially in old age.
On the eighty-eighth page of the WWR, he wrote
all suffering really results from the want…every keen pleasure is an error, an illusion…because every possession and every happiness is only lent by chance for an indefinite time…every pain rests on the disappearance of such an illusion…Therefore the wise man always holds himself aloof from jubilation and sorrow, and no event disturbs his ataraxia.
Ataraxia is a Greek word with multiple interpretations. Some associated synonyms are equanimity, imperturbability, and quietism. All of which reflect an ongoing state of consciousness free of emotional volatility or a state of serene calmness.
A similar contemporary psychological version of this idea would be the experience of flow or the flow state, where one finds the perfect balance between challenge and skill. An experience where one often loses their sense of self-consciousness, focuses their concentration on the present moment, and experiences an altered sense of time. All of which free one from the inherent suffering that Schopenhauer believes characterized life.
One could say he eventually found and maintained his ataraxia in old age — his calm and unshakably stoic demeanor which brought him the inner peace he rarely felt in his traumatic childhood.
Schopenhauer once said
A pessimist is an optimist in possession of all the facts.
Put another way, Schopenhauer was a realist in that he accepted the word as it appeared to him. That the world is characterized by suffering and misfortune, but instead of internalizing the depressive emotions that one may expect to accompany such an observation, Schopenhauer used that truism as a base from which to discover how to live a truly meaningful and worthwhile life, not in spite of, but because of his suffering.
In closing, I believe Schopenhauer’s greatest student, Nietzsche, said it best when he said that
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering
