Nietzsche on Individuating (with a Hammer)

Become who you are. -Nietzsche

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. - Carl Gustav Jung

The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops…he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate... -Winnicott

Sounding out what rings true

Parents, therapists, teachers, and leaders can respect, and even admire, resistance from those we’re working with. (Which is not to say we have to like it!) Resistance helps us individuate, grow up, and become who we truly are. Here I look at what one of history’s great psychologists has to say about using a hammer to resist.

In one of the first philosophy classes I took back in college we were reading Nietzsche, to whom I’d taken an instant liking. Nietzsche’s brilliant pull-no-punches, spare-no-hammer, wisdom-from-on-high style spoke to my own rebellious mood. I was already determined to find my own way, rather than follow anyone else. I would set the terms by which I succeeded (or failed), rather than accept anyone else’s terms. In other words, I was determined to make things hard for myself. And I did. (Only much later, in my own therapy, did I begin to uncover the deeper roots of my go-it-alone philosophy.)

Anyway, one morning the professor asked us to raise our hand if we identified more with the independent free spirit, or with the community-minded herd animal as Nietzsche’s described them. Shockingly, all but one of us identified with the free-spirit! Our teacher, who had of course foreseen how this would go, cheerfully observed the paradox that our little herd of humanity appeared to be composed almost entirely of free spirits! Imagine the odds, he said, given how rare Nietzsche thought free spirits were.

The whole setup was beautiful, and embarrassing.

Still, looking back I admire the spirit behind raising our hands. Sure we were naive, but our naïveté announced that strong and healthy desire of youth to distinguish ourselves from the herd, to make something special of ourselves, to become free spirits who owned our lives and lived according to our own purposes.

There’s just one problem. The world already has a firm idea of who we should be, and shapes us through familial, institutional, and cultural forces. As Heidegger noted, we’re thrown into the world, and into a very specific corner of that world. We’re inheritors of group identities—son, daughter, mom, dad, liberal, conservative, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, philosopher, therapist, lawyer, writer, poet, neurotic, and so on. Yet none of these labels makes us an individual. Not even our individual identity as a Gary or Brian or John or Sally or Joni or Nietzsche makes us an individual, except in the trivial sense of having our own separate bodies. So do bacteria.

So, as Socrates said, to become truly ourselves requires questioning the authority of our given identities. Instead of mindlessly adopting whatever views, beliefs, and identities are in the air, Socrates and other good therapists encourage us to engage in dialogue with them, and make conscious choices. Ultimately, we may choose what was given. But first we need to push back, reject, pull out the stops—and get a little distance by ascending to those ‘rarer climes’ for a better view, as Nietzsche advised.

Hence the resistance. And the hammer, and the wannabe free spirit wielding it. Winnicott thinks along the same lines, observing that when a child feels safe, “he pulls out all the stops.” Nietzsche brilliantly captures this psychology of negation, this developmental drive to rebel that frees up space to become ourselves. We hope the kids sitting at the back of the class looking on their teachers with practiced skepticism will come around. I was one of them, and I got a taste of my own medicine when I started teaching. Behind the arrogant mask (mine, anyway) there’s often seriousness and nagging insecurity: Who am I, really? Who could I become to get the love and respect I wanted?

But I still haven’t told you about the hammer. I’ll give Nietzsche the last word, or swing, with his hammer. But first some context. The passage is from his last book, Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer. The philosopher’s hammer isn’t just any hammer, and contrary to a common opinion it’s not actually for destroying things: it’s for sounding them out. The hammer is our minds when we use them to distinguish what rings true among all the false-sounding idols surrounding us. What’s worth identifying with? Who are our true friends and allies? Which ideas and beliefs ring true? Who are we, truly?

The problem, as Nietzsche notes, is that

There are more idols than realities in the world….For once, then, to pose the questions here with a hammer and, perhaps, to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound which speaks of bloated entrails—what a delight for one who has ears even behind his ears, for me, an old psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent must become outspoken….not just the idols of the age, but the eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork.

A spirited call—at least for intellectually minded 20-year olds—to raise their hands and hammers! To discover what collapses when sounded out, and what rings true after testing. Parents, teachers, therapists, and other well-intentioned helpers everywhere: Respect the hammer! For as Winnicott and Hegel before him recognized, negation is often a highway of despair: repair and progress come about through rupture and rebellion. It’s hard for everyone.