Inside/Outside Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is both subject and interlocutor in this innovative study. The book mirrors the psychoanalytic situation, mediating between the philosophical world that Nietzsche created for himself and the external world challenged by his philosophy.Eugene Victor Wolfenstein, a distinguished social theorist and practicing psychoanalyst, focuses on the opposition between the principles of psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's concepts of the will to power and perspectivism. Through critical engagement with these Nietzschean concepts, Wolfenstein brings them into the purview of psychoanalytic theory and practice.Using this revised version of psychoanalytic theory, Wolfenstein then conducts a psychobiography of Nietzsche's life. He contends that Nietzsche philosophized from within a transitional space between the maternal and paternal extremes of the male imaginary, a space in which gender identity is notably unstable, and sublimity consorts with the most abject misery. This psychic location is the impetus for Nietzsche's conceptions of eternal return and the feminine.Finally, Wolfenstein explores Nietzsche's genealogy of morals from a psychoanalytic perspective and in the light of Nietzsche's psychobiography. He concludes that Nietzsche's revaluation of values leaves us painfully short on both love and compassion. The whole book is also framed by a critical engagement with Michel Foucault's problematics of power/knowledge.

If there is one word that describes Wolfenstein's book, it is ambitious. This work ranges across psychoanalysis, critical theory, political philosophy, and inevitably ethics., Nietzsche's psyche, ever a fascinating subject for his readers—is the centerpiece of Wolfenstein's investigation.... Wolfenstein's analysis is a good read, and a worthy indulgence, for those of us who cannot resist peering into the chthonic depth of Nietzsche's psychobiography., This is a great book. In relatively short space it manages to enact a dialogue among the proponents of Nietzsche and Foucault, psychoanalytic theory and practice, and Hegelian critical theory, in which all three of these vibrant voices take turns at center stage. Its remarkable breadth, moreover, is more than matched by its depth.

Eugene Victor Wolfenstein is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles and a member of the faculty of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. His previous books include Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution, Personality and Politics, and The Revolutionary Personality.