The Spinoza Problem

    by Irvin D.Yalom                                                             

Irvin D. Yalom is a psychiatrist with a deep interest in philosophy. He published works on Nietsche and Schopenhauer and has turned now to Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century philosopher in a novel he published in 2012 at age eighty.

In his foreword Yalom reminds his readers of a quotation by André Gide:

''Fiction is history that might have happened".

 The main theme of this novel is the life and philosophy of Spinoza who left little  information about his personal life but provided future generations with a treasure of new ideas. By wrapping fact and fiction together in a story with enough dialogues and invented characters, Irvin Yalom has constructed a novel which is intended to reach large readerships as a bestseller!

The author added an antagonist to his story by imagining the unexpected intersection of Spinoza's life with Alfred Rosenberg's, the Nazi ideologue. Two very different  characters are paired, Spinoza, the secular philosopher of rationalism and freedom and his opposite, Rosenberg, the radical ideologue of the Nazis who is obsessed with annihilating the  Jews.

 The novelist tried hard to find a connection to make this construction plausible. Yalom invented an imaginary link between the two characters while he was on a visit to the Rijnsburg Museum's library and learned that Spinoza's personal books had been confiscated by the Nazis. He quickly found out that Rosenberg, the commander of Nazi pillages all over Europe, had been responsible for this theft because he had a deep interest in Spinoza's books.

 The cause of this interest in the philosopher's books is the next mystery Yalom will try to unveil in the following chapters.

The answer goes back a long time when Rosenberg, who already held anti-Semitic speeches in school, had been ordered, as a punishment, to learn some passages of Goethe's biography by heart in which Spinoza is said to have been Goethe's spiritual mentor.        

Apparently Rosenberg has never been able to forget this lesson, neither could he understand how his real German idol, Goethe, the greatest writer, could have been a follower of Spinoza, a Jew. This obsession would stay with him for the rest of his life  and would motivate him, years later, to expropriate Spinoza's library.

While some bookclub readers thought that pairing Spinoza with Rosenberg was a pleasant invention, others thought this fictional connection between very distant figures, was a bit farfetched.

 After having diagnosed Rosenberg's deep inferiority complex in relation to Spinoza

 Doctor Yalom, who is used to delve in the minds of patients, called it a 'Spinoza Problem'.

When we discussed the novel in our book group it became obvious that the major purpose of this novel has been the use of 'psychoanalytical methods' to explore the minds of these historical characters and Rosenberg's has probably been selected as a prototype of the Nazi mind.

 Alternating chapters, describe Spinoza's problems before and after his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam and his social and emotional losses while other chapters are entirely devoted to a tormented Rosenberg who is suffering from severe obsessions and has a compulsive need for approval by Hitler. Irvin Yalom, 'the psychiatrist', illustrates these stories with dialogues which the two characters could have had with fictional confidants, a method he has used throughout his long career as therapist and teacher.

In those conversations we sometimes came across little gems like Spinoza's forceful condemnation of 'Religion as the sanctuary of ignorance' or a particular dialogue in which his friend, psychiatrist Dr. Pfister, says to Rosenberg 'We all love to hate Jews but you do it with such…such intensity'.

Our readers enjoyed these dialogues and thought that the author has met his purpose of 'teaching' in a step by step method explaining Spinoza's views on religion and his rejection of it in an organised form or his theories about the suppression of passions as we read aloud a few passages of 'Ethics'.

Our conclusion : Spinoza's ideas on religion and freedom of thought are more than ever of current interest!

 On the other hand, Yalom's psychotherapeutic techniques applied to Rosenberg's mind, are less convincing.

 In some chapters an attempt to heal his obsessions through psychotherapy is shown in dialogues between Rosenberg and his friend Dr.Fister. Of course the healing process eventually ended up in failure! Is that a proof of the shortcomings of Yalom's field of postmodern psychotherapy?

Although the writing style was not liked by every one and some found the chapters a little heavy handed, on the whole, the book had a rather favourable reception and it not only broadened our knowledge but certainly stimulated us to deepen our interest in Spinoza and the other philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Irène