CHAPTER II

Footnote 57:

A very beautiful example of this is found in C. A. Bernoulli: “Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine Freundschaft,” 1908 (Pt. I, p. 72). This author depicts Nietzsche’s behavior in Basle society: “Once at a dinner he said to the young lady at his side, ‘I dreamed a short time ago that the skin of my hand, which lay before me on the table, suddenly became like glass, shiny and transparent, through which I saw distinctly the bones and the tissues and the play of the muscles. All at once I saw a toad sitting on my hand and at the same time I felt an irresistible compulsion to swallow the beast. I overcame my terrible aversion and gulped it down.’ The young lady laughed. ‘And do you laugh at that?’ Nietzsche asked, his deep eyes fixed on his companion, half questioning, half sorrowful. The young lady knew intuitively that she did not wholly understand that an oracle had spoken to her in the form of an allegory and that Nietzsche had revealed to her a glimpse into the dark abyss of his inner self.” On page 166 Bernoulli continues as follows: “One can perhaps see, behind that harmless pleasure of faultless exactness in dress, a dread of contamination arising from some mysterious and tormenting disgust.”

Nietzsche went to Basle when he was very young; he was then just at the age when other young people are contemplating marriage. Seated next to a young woman, he tells her that something terrible and disgusting is taking place in his transparent hand, something which he must take completely into his body. We know what illness caused the premature ending of Nietzsche’s life. It was precisely this which he would tell the young lady, and her laughter was indeed discordant.

Footnote 58:

A whole series of psychoanalytic experiences could easily be produced here to illustrate this statement.

Footnote 59:

Ferenczi: “Introjektion und Übertragung,” _Jahrbuch_, Pt. I (1912).