Key points
Nietzsche was an inspiration for Freud's psychoanalysis, though his contribution was not always recognized.
Nietzsche and Freud's approaches to change differed, however.
Nietzsche viewed real transformation as possible only through a plunge into darkness, risking madness.
Freud wished to bring the unconscious into the daylight of comprehension.
Who was Nietzsche? Philosopher, psychologist, poet, madman, provocateur—these names orbit around him but never settle. He is the “strange German,” dismissed by some as the father of nihilism and amorality, revered by others as the prophet of self-becoming. No thinker has hovered so closely to the abyss or beckoned so many to peer into its depths. Fewer still have so haunted the origins of the psychoanalytic revolution, both as inspir